ALLISON
I was well acquainted with pain.
For the longest time, it was all I knew. My constant companion, my cruelest teacher. It had shaped me, molded me into the person I'd become, carved out the hollow spaces inside me and filled them with steel.
In the two years I'd spent as Michail's blood slave, I'd endured every conceivable form of suffering. Physical pain that shattered bones and tore flesh. Emotional agony that fractured my soul. The scars ran deep, visible and invisible, a roadmap of trauma etched across my being.
But this...
This was something else entirely.
It felt like liquid fire had replaced every drop of blood in my veins, and with each traitorous beat of my heart, the inferno spread, scorching me from the inside out. An overwhelming urge consumed me; to peel my
