Pain came first.
Not physical pain. Awareness pain. The agony of existing after ten years of nothing. Every thought was fire. Every memory was glass cutting through fog. Every sensation was too much, too loud, too real.
“Stay with me,” Kade’s voice said through our merged consciousness. “We are waking. Do not fight it. Let it happen.”
But waking meant separating. Meant becoming two people again instead of one. Meant losing the perfect unity we had as the seal and becoming individuals with all the loneliness that brought.
“I am afraid,” I said. Or thought. Or felt. The boundaries were unclear.
“Me too. But we do this together. Like everything else.”
Our merged form began to split. Slowly. Painfully. Like tearing fabric that was meant to stay whole. The nine bloodlines we absorbed trie
