Chapter 27

Chapter 27
Nyra 
The next morning brings no relief. If anything, it’s worse.I wake in a puddle of sweat, the sheets half-twisted around my legs like I’d fought them through the night. My shirt clings wet to my back. My underwear is gone. I don’t even remember taking it off. My body must have ripped it away while I was delirious, half-mad with the heat searing through me. My thigh is hooked over the corner of the bedframe, as though I’d tried to climb out in my sleep and failed. I groan, curling in on myself, one hand pressed against the aching space between my thighs. It doesn’t help. Nothing helps. I know these symptoms. I’ve charted them. Logged the hours and heartbeats, tracked the cycles of every wolf put under the drug. But this time there is no monitor, no chart. Only me.
This is Heat.

But it doesn't make any sense. I’m not a wolf. 
I’m not. 
I’m not. 

Still, every nerve in my body burns like I’m being split open from the inside out. The ache isn’t fever. It’s worse. It’s need. Pulsing. Relentless. The kind of need that sharpens behind my eyes and takes my breath and folds my body against itself like I’m about to break. I roll to my side, try to sit up, but the pull only deepens. My stomach clenches hard, dragging me back down. I collapse against the mattress, panting, slick with sweat, trembling in my own skin. Something inside me is turning over. Turning on.

I try everything.
First the bed — kicking the sheets away, stretching my limbs wide across the mattress, hoping space will help. It doesn’t. The air feels heavy, wet, pressing heat back into my pores. I strip off my shirt and fling it aside. My bare skin sticks to the sheets anyway.
Second the floor — cool tile beneath my cheek, cold pressing into my ribs. I tell myself it will smother the fire. It doesn’t. My back arches clean off the tiles. My knees curl tight to my chest. I rub my thighs together like a child desperate for friction. Nothing. My body only shudders harder.
Third—shaky hands, pressed between my legs. My breath cuts out in sharp bursts as I touch myself, skin already wet, slippery, feverish. I chase rhythm. Pressure. Any relief. But each gasp crumbles into frustration. Every moan falls flat. I can’t stay in it long enough, can’t push hard enough. It’s like trying to run through water. I strain for the edge and collapse short every time. My body clenches, searching, begging. For him.
That thought is a curse. A blade.
Because suddenly he’s everywhere.

In the dark behind my eyes. In the ache hollowing out my stomach. In the slick pulse between my thighs. I see him kneeling again—chains biting into his wrists, collar digging into his throat, drugged but not broken. I see his mouth open like he could breathe me in even from across the room. I hear the sound he made once, just once, when he said my name. My hips jerk against my hand. I bite my lip so hard it bleeds. I whisper his name anyway. Once. Twice. Maybe a dozen times, until it’s just sound spilling from me like a prayer.
And then—
Release.
Not pleasure. Not relief. Just a brutal breaking. My body seizes, trembling, and I come with my hand buried deep inside me and my other fist curled in the blanket, biting down on the fabric to stifle the cry that tears out of me. It floods me like ice and fire colliding, ripping my lungs empty.
For two seconds—three—there’s silence. Relief.

My head falls back. My arms go slack. I blink up at the ceiling, dazed, trembling. Maybe it’s over. Maybe I can breathe. But then it creeps back in. A slow, insidious pulse between my thighs. A pressure curling hotter, heavier. Worse, because I know what it feels like to escape. And I know now how false it is. I grit my teeth and slide my hand back down. My body answers instantly, hips lifting, slick and aching.
This time it hurts.
Not relief. Punishment.

The hours blur. Each orgasm is a wave breaking on stone—hard, pointless, destructive. They crash into me one after another, leaving nothing but splinters. I grind against the mattress, muffling cries into the pillow. Sweat soaks the sheets. My thighs cramp. My vision goes spotty. I keep going. Again. And again. Because stopping is worse. At some point I crawl off the bed and end up on the floor, blankets twisted around me like a nest. My body rocks on its own. My throat is hoarse. I moan, I sob, I whisper curses into the dark. My own name feels foreign on my tongue but his—his is carved into me.

Rane.

I don’t know if I say it out loud. I don’t know if I’m awake. Each climax feels like drowning, like surfacing just long enough to scream before being dragged under again. My chest burns. My nipples ache. My cunt throbs so raw it feels like it’s been flayed.

“If this doesn’t stop,” I whisper, pressing my forehead to the floor, “it will kill me.”

Time unravels. I don’t know when the sun rises. I don’t know when the shadows shift. I only know the fire doesn’t leave. Not once. Not even when my body finally collapses in on itself, trembling, slick with salt and sweat, curled in the wreckage of torn sheets. Somewhere in the haze, I think I hear chains rattle. I think I smell iron and smoke. I think I feel his breath against my neck. My lips shape his name one last time before blackness drags me under.

And still, the heat waits.