I wasn’t in my body anymore. I could feel it, barely.
Pressure. Movement. Hands.
But it was distant. Like watching someone else through a fogged-up window. My mind drifted somewhere safer. Somewhere quieter.
A field. A locked library. A hallway with no doors. Anywhere but here.
I didn’t cry. Didn’t speak. Didn’t move. Because I wasn’t here. Not fully.
And that was the only way I knew how to survive.
If death wasn’t going to take me, I would find a way to force its hand.
I refused to live here anymore. I refused to live with the pain and torture for a second longer.
For once, I didn’t want to serve another Alpha. I didn’t want my words to be taken from me. I didn’t want to be in pain for days afterwards.
I just…couldn’t anymore.
***
Voices were somewhere close by, but too far away to make out a single word spoken. It sounded like it was all underwater and in an entirely different language. If whoever was talking, was trying to get me to follow any sort of command, it was all a lost cause.
I wanted to stop. To obey. To be quiet. But the tears kept coming, silent and relentless.
My eyes refused to open. And my body… It ached in ways I didn’t know were possible. My back burned like raw skin against flame. My shoulder pulsed with fire deep in the bone, each throb worse than the last.
But I was still breathing.
Still here.
Somehow.
Hands moved me—positioned me like a doll, turning me this way, then that. Fabric brushed against my skin, cold and clinical, touching places I couldn’t protect.
Voices murmured.
Then… Nothing. The world slipped away again.
Weightless. Silent.
Back to the dark where pain couldn’t reach me. Where I didn’t have to be anything at all.
***
No more. Please…no.
My mind screamed, but my mouth stayed shut. Someone moved me, limbs manipulated like I wasn’t even there.
Warm air brushed my face, but the cold never left. It clung to me. Sank deep. Settled in my bones like it belonged there.
I felt hollow. Frozen from the inside out. And no amount of heat could thaw what had already gone numb.
The urge to push whoever was near me, holding me, away. I would have, if my arms were limp at mysides, hanging down as though they were pieces of string, waiting to be strung up once again.
I had no strength to do anything other than to breathe. And even that was more work than it should be.
The world tilted, spun, then slipped into darkness again.
