Page 71 of Tenebrous

The pain tightens around me. I double over, one hand braced against the ground while the other claws at my chest. There is no wound, no blood. Nothing for me to mend, yet every breath feels as though my ribs are being pulled apart.

Mate. Gone.

I throw my head back and bellow again, the sound rushing through the tunnels, shaking loose dirt and stone. Small creatures scatter deeper into the mountain. No Benjamin among them.

Staggering to my feet, I search for his scent. It still fills the den, clinging to the furs and the gravel beside the spring. Beneath it lies the unmistakable smell of decaying bones.

My gaze snaps toward the tunnel leading to the cavern of the dead. “No.”

Immediately, I force myself through the passage, shoulders striking against the walls. Agony worsens in my chest with every step, and it stretches until something inside me feels ready to tear.

He is… moving away from me.

That knowledge comes without thought. I feel him through the frayed edges of our distant bond, a warmth retreating farther from the mountain. Every instinct demands that I follow, but the tunnels divide in too many directions and his scent tangles everywhere. I cannot trace his exact location.

When I finally reach the bone chamber, I find some remains disturbed. A few are missing their coverings.

Benjamin was here, and he chose to leave me.

My knees strike the ground as a roar rips apart my throat, torn from somewhere deep inside of me that did not exist before him. Gone. Missing.

The cavern only answers with echoes. Again and again, my grief returns to me, causing my limbs to go slack. It takes me far too long to crawl toward the place where his scent disappears into the right-hand tunnel.

My claws scrape across the stone as another violent pull tears through my middle, igniting a snarl. He is missing from me now.

“Benjamin.” Forcing myself upright, I try to follow.

His scent is faint, but I find it on the walls where his hands had traced the stone. On the ground where his knees struck dirt, in drops of sweat and blood. The sight of crimson drives a panic straight through me.

He was hurting. Yet he left anyway.

I follow until moonlight appears at the end of the passage. Pain becomes an unbearable, searing burn as my body refuses to step outside. Not from fear of the dark, as I have walked inside it many times, but from the sudden certainty that if I cross the mouth of the tunnel and find the forest empty, something inside me might die.

“Mate.” The word leaves my lips on a plea.

Outside, crickets chirp. Water ripples somewhere nearby and wind whistles through the trees, but Benjamin still does not answer. I sink against the tunnel wall and press my forehead to the cold stone as another tormented roar claws free.

It shakes the trees beyond the entrance, sending birds fleeing from the branches.

My human does not return to me. The tether between us stretches thinner, every step he takes slowly shredding my beating heart. Each one cuts deeper than the last.

Why? Why would he leave me? I gave him food and warmth. Safety. I healed his wounds, held him when he slept. Was I not enough?

He said he needed sunlight and fresh air. I could have found those things. I would have hunted anything he asked of me, if I'd been given the chance.

But he did not wait. He did not believe I could care for him.

My claws grind against the stone wall, leaving deep gouges in their wake. Perhaps he does not want me, and that thought sends a pitiful snarl through my lungs. Against my cheek, the feel and scent of his lips still haunts me.

“Goodbye,” he'd whispered into my skin. The words he'd spoken blur at the edge of memory, too soft for me to have understood them then.

My eyes open. He had said goodbye. I heard him. Some sleeping part of me had known, but I had not woken, content to bask in the glow and scent of my mate at my side. And now he is gone.

Another bellow tears through the mountain, rougher than before. My throat burns, but I cannot stop it. Every scream is an answer to the silence he left behind.

Come back. Please.

Come back, come back.