Page 360 of Primal

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I’m three, maybe five steps out when I hear it.

bang.

Muffled by the chapel doors, rain, my own heartbeat but still loud enough to stop me short.

The gun. The fucking gun went off again.

I could turn back. Charge through those doors and—

And what? Get my head blown off? Make everything Kade did for me worthless?

I run. Away from the stink of blood and rot. Away from the altar, from his hands on me, from the sounds I couldn’t stop making.

“Kristy!”

5:20 am. Almost dawn. Not that it matters. The storm drowns everything.

Don’t know where the exit is. Where I am. How long I was lying on that fucking altar.

My hoodie’s soaked through, dragging me down. My eyes sting. My sneakers slosh through mud. Every step.

A branch cracks ahead.

Lana. She’s slowing—favoring her right side, one hand clamped over her shoulder where Kristy jammed that antler in.

I lunge forward.

Don’t know if I’m chasing her—

Or the memory of the girl who showed up with crackers and Gatorade when I had the flu.

Senior spring. We almost got matching tattoos. She chickened out last second.

We snuck onto the dorm roof. Lay side by side. The stars blinked and planes soared overhead.

‘Promise me something,’ she said, drunk-poking my ribs, ‘if we’re ever miserable at thirty, we’ll run off with the circus.’

The friend who never fucking existed.

“Lana!” My voice shreds.

I push harder. Run faster.

Something snags my ankle.

Watch for tree roots—

My knees hit so hard my teeth rattle. Mud through my skirt. Thunder cracks.

Please be okay. Please be okay. Please—

A scream.

I’m up before I feel the pain, branches whipping at my face.

Another shriek—closer. Cut mid-breath.