Page 344 of Primal

Hey, random q. You like horror movies?

My thumb skims the screen. Like I could trace her collarbone through pixels.

The one where the shark’s also a time-travelling dinosaur? Hard pass.

I watch her read it. Watch her scoff like she expected nothing else.

She switches back to Brett’s message.

PAYTON

Sure, why not.

My screen fades to black.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The worst part wasn’t the altar digging into my hips. Not Derek’s laugh. Not the cameras, the watchers, the gun pressed to Kade’s skull. Not what’s slicking the marble under me.

It was the betrayal.

Mine.

I should be numb. I should be gone.

But when it started to build … when that pulsing traitor curled up inside me …

He knew.

And he used that.

Not for himself.

For me.

He pushed me past it. Made me feel it like it was the last fucking thing he’d ever get to give me.

That white-hot rush? It belonged to him.

Every sound that slipped out? His.

Part of me doesn’t want to come down from that high. At least there, even under the cameras and those two monsters behind their masks—

I felt alive.

Cold air floods the space Kade left. The emptiness hits harder than the fullness.

After everything, my body remembers. The ghost of his fingers on my hips. The spot on my lower back he kissed like some secret he didn’t mean to give away.

I can’t move. The marble is unforgiving. My fingers are still clenched tight.

Kristy is sobbing somewhere, and the sound twists up inside me, bends back on itself—until all I want to do is scream.

“Bravo.” Derek claps once.

My skin crawls.

“You two really are my favorites,” he muses, tone syrupy with approval. “Now, roll her over.”