Chapter 138 WORSE THAN DEATH
DEREK’S POV
I didn’t know pain could quiet the world. I had felt broken bones, claws tearing skin, fire in my veins during full moons that went wrong. None of that came close to this and this pain didn’t scream. It pressed. It sat heavy on my chest until breathing felt like a mistake.
The bond snapped, not clean and definitely not quick.
It tore like it had been waiting to do this ever since and now was the perfect time for that.
The rejection hit like a blade pushed straight through my spine. I heard myself cry out, but it sounded far away, like it came from another man. My wolf slammed into the back of my mind, wild and panicked, crashing against the walls of my skull. Alpha strength only made it worse, there was no place for the pain to go. It stayed, growing, feeding on itself.
I hit the ground on my knees. So did she.
We were only a few feet apart, but it might as well have been miles. My hands clawed at the dirt without me telling them to. My body wanted to reach her. My wolf needed it and every part of me screamed that if I could just touch her, just pull her close, the tearing would stop.
I tried to crawl but it just felt like something far heavier than me was at my back, preventing me from doing anything.
My arms shook so badly they gave out. My muscles felt hollow, like the strength had been scooped out of them and left behind as an echo. I dragged myself an inch forward, then another, breath breaking in my chest. Across from me, she did the same. Her fingers dug into the ground, nails breaking, blood smearing the earth.
We couldn’t make it because the one thing that had been holding us together was as good as non-existent. The bond was gone, but the pull was still there. Cruel and pointless like it was mocking us, daring us to do something that we normally wouldn’t do.
Being Alpha meant my senses stayed sharp even as my body failed. I heard her breathing and heard the way it hitched like she was choking on it. I smelled her blood, her fear, her magic…too sharp now and too bright that it burned my nose.
The pain peaked, then slowly, like a storm running out of rain, it settled into something duller, still awful but still heavy but I could think again.
I lifted my head and watched her and realized she was lying on her side, curled in on herself, arms wrapped tight around her middle like she was trying to hold something in. Her eyes were open and empty and it was locked on me.
She was alive, that much I knew and that truth hit almost as hard as the rejection.
I forced myself upright. Every movement felt wrong, like my body had forgotten how to obey. I got one knee under me, then the other. The world tilted but stayed upright.
“I’m here,” I said.
My voice sounded raw and torn even as I watched her lips move but no sound came out.
I reached for her without thinking and the second my fingers crossed the space between us, something inside me screamed.
It wasn’t painful at first. It was a warning. A sharp, instinctive terror that froze me in place. My wolf slammed against my ribs, not pushing forward this time but back, trying to retreat.
I didn’t listen as my hand brushed her wrist and fire tore through my arm.
Not heat or drain. Like something had latched onto me and started pulling my life out through my skin. My vision went dark at the edges even as my heart stuttered, missed a beat, then another.
I jerked back with a shout.
The connection broke, and I collapsed onto my hands, gasping. My chest burned as my arm felt numb, dead weight hanging from my shoulder. I stared at my palm and the skin had gone pale, veins dark and thin, like the blood had been sucked deeper inside.
“What did I do?” I whispered.
I looked at her again, she hadn’t moved but her eyes were wide now with fear, sharp and clear.
I tried again but slower this time and even more careful.
The moment I leaned toward her, the drain started. Weaker than before, but unmistakable. My heartbeat slowed, heavy and wrong. Each second closer felt like stepping into deep water with stones tied to my legs.
I fell back again, coughing and horrified understanding crawled through me. It wasn’t rejection pain anymore, it was her.
I sat there, shaking, staring at the space between us like it was a living thing.
“She’s poison to you.”
The thought wasn’t mine alone, my wolf felt it too. Curled tight inside me now, wounded and afraid. The bond had protected us once and balanced us. Without it, something had gone wrong, something had twisted.
I tested it again, just to be sure. I didn’t touch her and I only reached my hand out, stopping inches away. My skin prickled and the air felt thick and charged. My heart began to slow again, a heavy drag pulling at it.
I pulled back fast. The effect stopped immediately, there was no doubt left.
Her witch essence…something that had always been part of her, something I had shared a bond with, was lethal to me now. Not to others, not to the world.
Just to me. I laughed once, short and broken. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
She shook her head weakly, tears slipping down the sides of her face into the dirt. She tried to push herself up, failed, and froze when I moved at the same time. We both stopped and we stared.
The truth settled between us, heavy and cold and we couldn’t even comfort each other.
“I can’t touch you,” I said, forcing the words out, because if I didn’t say them, I might try again and that would be the end of me.
“If I do… it drains me fast.”
Her breath hitched as she pressed her hand to her mouth, like she was holding back a scream. Her shoulders shook.
I wanted to cross the space so badly it hurt worse than the rejection. My body leaned toward her on its own, then locked up, every instinct screaming no.
Being Alpha meant my healing should have kicked in already. It hadn’t but my strength was crawling back instead of surging. I felt thin and stripped down to something fragile.
She was the same. I could see it in the way she moved, slow and careful, like one wrong shift would break her.
“We need distance,” I said.
The words tasted like ash just as she flinched like I had physically slapped her but I hated to think that there was more to what she was letting me see.
“I know,” she whispered. Her voice was hoarse, scraped raw. “I can feel it too.”
We didn’t argue, there was nothing to fight. The truth was clear and cruel and if we stayed close, if we kept testing it, one of us wouldn’t survive the night. I forced myself to stand.
The moment I put more space between us, my breathing eased and my heart steadied. The drain faded completely, that was enough to answer enough.
I took three steps back and then five. Each one felt like I was tearing something out of my chest and leaving it behind on the ground between us. She turned her face away when I stopped.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
I didn’t know what else to say because sorry didn’t cover it. It didn’t touch the shape of what we had lost, she nodded once. A small, broken movement. The silence stretched, heavy and dangerous.
I looked at her and understood something that made my stomach twist. We had survived the rejection and survived the tearing but we weren’t healed yet and in that moment, I had a feeling that it would take a long time before any kind of healing would take place.
We were weaker than we had ever been. Separated not just by distance, but by something far worse, something that made closeness fatal and alive. I felt it settle into my bones, cold and final. I had never seen anything like this but whatever it was, I knew this was something I would never forget in a hurry because it was already a part of me.
We were alive but worse than dead and I didn’t know how to live with that and somewhere out there, I knew Soul would feel it. This weakness and this open wound. He would see it as an invitation.
I turned away before the need to go back broke me because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t walk a
way alive and neither would she.
THE FIRST STEP