Primal (The Prey Drive, #1)

by Kayleigh King

For the ones who’ve felt expendable⁠— You are worthy of being someone’s first choice. Always.

The woman who’s haunted my dreams and the one who’s wreaked havoc on my soul since I came face to face with her again after nearly eight years is one and the same. Noa. The very sweet thing I’ve been denying and downplaying my connection to for days. She’s mine. The perfect, inescapable truth slams into me with the force of a killing blow, tearing through the last threads of my denial like a blade to the gut. She is my fated mate. My scent match. The one soul in existence designed to fit against mine in a way that no one else ever could. The one meant to balance, anchor, and complete me. And I have to reject her.

I have to sacrifice her. For my pack. For my people. For the omegas I refuse to fail like I did Carly.

She is meant to be my destiny, my perfect match. She is my heart living and beating beyond the confines of my chest. And I have to break it. To break her.

For her I will be the monster. I will be the villain in our painfully short-lived love story, the one who walked away. The one who picked duty over our shared destiny.

Ice and dread creep up my throat as I stare down at the small, broken female who was meant to be mine to love. To cherish. To protect. Instead, I’m failing her in every way that matters and then some.

Not many people have the cruel clarity of knowing, in real time, that they are actively living through the moment that will become their greatest regret. But I do. I am one of the unfortunate few who gets to spend the rest of my life knowing that no failure, no mistake, will ever compare to the pain I am causing right now. Nothing I do from this moment forward will ever measure up to this loss. Nothing could ever hurt more than this.

My mate, the other half of my very soul I was put on this earth to protect, lies broken before me.

“It’s time to remember, Noa,” she repeats one last time. “The threads have already started to unravel. The binds are starting to break. He will help with the rest.”

“The problem is thinking you have to do something to be worthy of compassion. That it is somehow a transaction. It’s not, or it shouldn’t be.”

That piece of her is still there, buried under my guilt and rage and fear—and my wolf has been protecting it. Shielding it. From me.

I’m not strong enough to give up my remaining piece of her.

I can’t live with this. I can’t breathe knowing I chose to break her. That I sacrificed the one thing I was supposed to protect most.

She’s my other half, my scent match, and I’ve spent three days pretending I can exist in a world where she’s not mine, but it’s a lie.

Because the only hands I want on me are hers. Noa’s. The only touch I crave is the one I rejected before I got the chance to really know it, like a fucking coward.

I’m cold. Not in a way a heater could fix—it’s the kind of cold that lives in your marrow. It’s not an actual temperate issue, but a lingering effect of my still raw rejection.

And that’s how I know the universe has a twisted sense of humor, because, somehow, we’ve both dedicated ourselves to the same fight. Devoted to the same cause. A cause that, in another lifetime, we might’ve stood side by side for. We could’ve battled it together, but instead, here we are, sacrificing each other in its name.

In his mission to save his omegas, he ripped me apart and then left me lying there with integral pieces missing.

Trauma, of any degree, doesn’t just vanish. It leaves a scar that we can’t erase with time or a really good therapist. It lingers. You don’t get rid of it, or simply move on from it, it's something you learn to carry. You learn how to navigate around it while you simultaneously relearn how to live your new normal.

This isn’t some tragic breakup sob story. This is rot. A slow decay. This is what it feels like to be severed from someone you were created for.

And now I must stand before Noa again, an executioner before his victim, and pretend I deserve to still breathe the same air as her.

I vow, right here and now, that one day, hearing me say her name will be the thing that heals her, not breaks her.

“You never gave me the chance. I might have been able to help you. I could’ve helped them. And maybe we could’ve done it together. But it never occurred to you to talk to me first. You just made the decision, and now we’ll never know because you broke…everything.”

“How could I ever look at you and not see the man who stood in that clearing and said those things to me? Who let her speak to me like that. Who let her stand beside you like she belonged there.”

She’s my mate. That truth lives in every thought I have, every steady, stubborn beat of my heart. It’s imprinted into the marrow of me, undeniable and constant—Noa.

Because I will spend every breath from here on out trying to make it right. To do right by her. My sweet Noa. Because the only mark I will allow to grace my throat is hers.

How do I trust him with my life, with my heart, with the last fraying pieces of my soul when he’s the reason they’re broken to begin with?

The truth is, I’m the one who’s not worthy. Not of her forgiveness. Not of her trust. But I’ll spend the rest of this life, and whatever comes after, proving how wrong I was to ever make her believe otherwise.”

way. He didn’t just leave the hoodie. He laid the first piece of my nest, and my omega side preens at the offering.

That’s when I hear it. A voice that isn’t mine in my head. “My mate. My omega. My sweet Noa.”

Rennick Fallamhain, great pack Alpha, came in his pants.

“We were meant for each other,”

“I denied it, fought it. But it’s so fucking obvious. Fuck, baby, I’ve been dreaming about you for months. You were always there—your voice, your eyes. Telling me it was time to remember. I even dreamt of us being in this very room.”

“You can keep running, sweet one,” he said, voice low and steady, “but I'll keep chasing. One day, you'll believe that I'm not walking away from you. Not again.”