I thought I knew what pain was. I thought it was being handed over like livestock. Standing silent while men discussed my future like a trade agreement. Being delivered to a pack that didn’t know me, to an Alpha who didn’t want me. I thought pain was watching Rayven look at me and see someone else.
But this... this was different. This was quiet. And it was inside me.
It started slowly.
A heaviness in my chest that no amount of sleep fixed. A fog behind my eyes that wouldn’t lift even when Phoenix smiled in her sleep or Talon wrapped his tiny fist around my finger.
I loved them. I knew I loved them. But sometimes I felt like I was watching someone else hold them.
Like I was standing just outside my own body, observing a mother who looked like me but didn’t feel like me.
The days blurr
