Primal (The Prey Drive, #1)

by Kayleigh King

If there is something I’ve learned in these difficult months it’s that humor, no matter how dark or macabre, is the only way forward when dealing with deep, debilitating grief.

“Hi,” she whispers.

Noa’s gentle greeting isn’t for me, it’s for him, and he is delighted to be acknowledged by her.

And the final nail in my preverbal coffin is the way my name slips from her mouth on her next exhale. I already knew I adored the sound of it on her lips, but this is my undoing.

It’s a thought that nearly brings me to my knees in both denial and bewilderment before this female. “Mate. Mate. Mate. Mate. Mate!”

My life is devoted to the care of omegas, though I don’t bear that title either. Always close, always almost, but never enough.

Caught between worlds, never truly a part of any.

“I have stood by you, supported you without question, for years, Nick. Not once have I ever doubted you as an Alpha. But right now? Right now, you are so fucking consumed by your sense of duty you can’t fully comprehend the gravity of the mistake you’re making.”

“You keep saying this is the only way. That you don’t have a choice. But you’re wrong. One day soon you’re going to wake up and realize it. I just hope for your sake that you can survive it. What you’re about to do, strong men have withered away from less.”

“And I hope for that girl—that innocent fucking girl—to be able to survive it too, because ...

The moment our eyes lock, my stomach plummets. I watch as the color drains from his face, his expression shifting in a way that makes my breath catch because for one fleeting second, his façade slips, and I see the truth before he slams his mask back into place.

There’s no escaping the truth. Not anymore. 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.

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.

And a part of me, a small, fragile sliver buried deep in my chest, had clung to something else, something just as damning. Hope. Hope that fate wouldn’t be so cruel. That it wouldn’t hand me my perfect match only to rip her from me. That it wouldn’t force me to stand here now, looking into the eyes of the one person I was meant to spend my life with, knowing I have to give her up.

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.

Canaan’s earlier words about surviving this creep back into my mind, but in this moment, I’m not sure I want to survive it.

The unshed tears pooling in her eyes—eyes too beautiful for this world, too achingly poignant—might as well be the ink I use to sign my own death sentence. And since I’m dead anyway, I go in for the kill shot, knowing I’m going to regret these words for the rest of my life.

This thing between us, it’s something that is as vital as the air in our lungs and something as strong as gravity.

Forgive me, sweet Noa. Please. Forgive me.

“I, Rennick Fallamhain, Alpha of the Fallamhain Pack, reject you, Noa Alderwood, as my fated mate. My scent match. My destiny. You will never bear the title of my Luna, you will never wear my mark, and you will never carry my children. From this moment forward, I renounce any claim you have on me.”

It’s not a single pain I can pinpoint. It’s everything at once. Hot and cold. Sharp and dull. A dull ache and a searing stab. It’s in my bones, in my blood, sinking its claws deep into the fibers of my very soul.

You will not scream, Noa. You will not give him or his cunt of a chosen mate the satisfaction of hearing you scream.

“You take another step closer, and I will rip your throat out with my fucking teeth, Fallamhain.”

“What? You came here with your grand plan to reject her, and you didn’t bother to do a shred of research, Alpha?”

His silent plea is the last thing I hear before the darkness swallows me whole. My only hope is that, within the emptiness, I will be free from the anguish he has left me to endure.

After all, I was the one who shattered something sacred, the one who spoke those dreadful words aloud. It should be me writhing on the ground.

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

What once felt like a righteous sacrifice feels like nothing more than a goddamn crime.

“She’s yours. Your fated mate.” I don’t bother telling him I knew the second I looked into her eyes. That every atom in my body recognized her as mine in that moment. There’s no point in saying it now. Instead, I turn around and mumble so quietly, so brokenly, I’m not sure if he hears me. “Not anymore.”

Watching Noa, my heartbreakingly generous and too-kind-for-this-world best friend, be torn apart by the man who was meant to love her, is like witnessing someone’s heart being ripped straight from their chest only to be devoured by the very teeth that should have been used to protect her.

Right now, Noa needs me to be strong, to be the one to guide her through this. Because there is a way through this. Well, there is if both sides of the bond are properly severed.

Her side wasnt properly broken?... A chance for itto be fixed im assuming. Not that he deserves it

He was nothing. Until he wasn’t.

Grief crushes in from all sides. Heavy and relentless, stealing my breath, my thoughts. It takes everything until I can’t be sure I exist. I want to wake up. I want to slip into oblivion. I want it to stop.

The idea of showering, of scrubbing this nightmare from my skin, should be a relief. Instead, a darker thought slithers in, whispering in the back of my mind. What’s the point?

“It hurts because a vital piece of you was just ripped away—like tearing out a part of your heart and expecting the rest to keep beating. We’re not meant to survive without it…and yet, somehow, we have to.”

Through the fog of my memory, I see the horror carved into his guilt-ridden face, the way he stared down at me. Like a murderer standing above his victim, waiting for them to bleed out.

“But I swear to you, on everything I have and hold dear, it gets better. The pain will fade. It won’t disappear, but it will fade. It will always be there, just beneath your skin. Some days, you won’t notice it. Other days, it’ll demand that you remember. But you’ll adjust. You’ll learn to live with it just as I have. And until that happens, you have to fight like hell, because you can’t let it win, Noa.”

Oh, look at that, your sarcasm is still firmly intact. Not all is lost. Maybe there is hope of survival, after all.

My mind screams it’s too much, too big of a task, but I think of Seren telling me I have to fight. That I have to choose to keep going.

I’m still mentally workshopping what he’d look like with his wiener cut off and stapled to his forehead like some sad, pitiful little unicorn. My wolf is fully on board with that plan, by the way. Just give me the word, and I’m sure I can make it happen.”

Rhosyn and I were meant to cross paths. Fated, not in the mate-bond way, but in the found-my-people kind of way. And just like that, I know we’re going to be friends. The fiercely loyal, mildly feral, help-you-bury-a-body kind of friends.

“You’re literally standing there half naked, and I’ve been ranting about limp-dick unicorns. Why didn’t you say something?”

“Get dressed, I’m going to grab your blow-dryer. I’ll help you dry that mane you call hair. It looks like a two-person job.”

I love her

When Seren said I’d have to fight, I didn’t think that would include the simple, automatic things—like hydrating, eating or fucking breathing.

As it stands now, I feel like I’ve lost everything but the pounding heart in my chest, and if I’m being honest, I don’t know if I want to keep that. Not when it was meant to beat in sync with hers.

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. One I can’t keep telling myself because if I do, it’s going to eat away what little remains of my soul. And I need those pieces. I need them if I have any hope of making right…of fixing what I broke.

The only touch I crave is the one I rejected before I got the chance to really know it, like a fucking coward.

What could possibly cure something like this? I’ve spent years learning the art of healing, but how do you treat an injury you can’t see? There isn’t a salve or antibiotic that can treat a wound that is soul-deep.