Page 1 of Primal Urges

PROLOGUE

LUCAS

The sound of Lucas’s heartbeat thumping in his ears was the only sound that filled the space around him.

It had taken on a life of its own.

It was a warning.

A monster.

An omen sent to warn him that what he was about to do was not a wise idea.

The room was silent.

There was no humming from the air conditioner that sat perched in their window.

Normally, the sound was soothing. A reminder that he was not alone in all of this. There was hope. A break from the intense heat that usually plagued the room.

But not tonight.

Tonight, even the air conditioner remained silent. Another sign that perhaps he was about to make the biggest mistake of his life.

His heartbeat kicked up a notch.

He turned toward the bedroom window.

Even the world around him appeared to have abandoned him.

There was no honking or yelling or screeching from the midnight traffic outside. It was as if the entire world around him had gone silent, quietly slipping away while he wasn’t looking, leaving him alone to battle his demon.

Yes, the universe somehow sensed that tonight, something dark and sinister was about to unfold.

Outside, the stars appeared to have lost their brightness, opting instead to dull their lights and turn their faces away from the third-floor walk-up, the setting for tonight’s suspenseful thriller.

Lucas swallowed hard as he sat in the darkness… waiting.

He tried to control his breathing, hoping that his courage would not fail him as it had so many times before.

He hated himself for being so weak. He cursed his parents for not raising him to be a tougher man. If they had taught him to stand up for himself and be brave, perhaps he wouldn’t be in this mess.

But that was merely something that people in his situation told themselves, no doubt hoping to regain some of the dignity they had lost over the years.

Lucas was weak. And he knew it.

Today alone, he’d changed his mind at least seven times.

Always so weak. He hated himself.

Sitting on the floor, with his knees pulled tight against his chest, he hoped that this time he’d have the courage to do what needed to be done.

He knew that he would never be happy again. He’d resigned himself to that sad truth.

Love was a myth—a cruel joke that some romance author decided to play on a naive and unsuspecting world.

When one really thought about it, love was the cause of so many tragedies. Murder-suicides, broken hearts, even… domestic abuse.

That last one was strange in theory. When someone loves someone, why would they feel the need to hurt that person? But if you ever ask an abuser why they beat or abused their partners, they will always say that they did it because they loved them.

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