Total pages in book: 144
Estimated words: 137871 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 689(@200wpm)___ 551(@250wpm)___ 460(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137871 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 689(@200wpm)___ 551(@250wpm)___ 460(@300wpm)
Cerberus is free after centuries entombed and plans to show his traitorous mate just how ruthless he can be. His vengeful black heart knows no mercy. He intends to punish Adriel with an eternity of torture.
There is only one way to ensure that doesn’t happen—one of them must die.
Running for her life in a lethal hunt, Adriel’s path collides with a vexing witch who surprises her by offering protection—but there’s a catch that could alter her destiny forever.
Primal Kill is a life-or-death, high fantasy, dark paranormal romance with multiple points of view and LGBTQ themes from award-winning and bestselling author Lydia Michaels.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
SOUNDTRACK
Enjoy the Music that Inspired Primal Kill
Click here to listen to the series playlist on Spotify.
Black Magic Woman by VCTRYS
It’s My Life by Bon Jovi
Go Your Own Way by Fleetwood Mac
Songbird by Eva Cassidy
Zombie by The Cranberries
Wings by Birdie
Kill of the Night by Gin Wigmore
Three Little Birds by Kacey Musgraves
Wolves Without Teeth by Of Monsters and Men
Love, Reign o’er Me by Pearl Jam
Can You See Me In The Dark by Halestorm & I Prevail
No Light, No Light by Florence + The Machine
As It Was by Harry Styles
Hungry Like the Wolf by Duran Duran
PROLOGUE
Long After 1730…
Time has lost all meaning…
Life is only pain…
Death is the only relief…
Cerberus Maddox XI growled, choking on dust and rubble, entombed by the crushing weight of clay-hardened earth that slowly compacted with time. Roots and gravel bound his mutilated body—enough to trap, paralyze, suffocate, and kill him again and again.
Unsure how long he’d been suffering or how many times he’d died only to return to this eternal torture, Cerberus clung to what was left of his decaying sanity, though his mind fragmented long ago. Immortality had no power here, and longevity had become a curse. With no blood to alleviate the endless pain or speed his recovery, existence was insufferable.
Sensory deprivation left Cerberus deaf, blind, and incapable of movement. He sometimes suffered the sweet relief of hallucinations where the fixed memories of his past also tortured him.
Those agonizing memories became his mirrored reality, his escape from the physical suffering that was his endless existence until he died once more.
Again.
And again.
And again, only to be brought back to this living hell.
Awareness came like baptism through fire. Sharp pain pulsed and surged through every wasted shred of him. The cycle never ended. It couldn’t. And by the thousandth time he died, he was certain immortality was a curse and his desire for vengeance would live forever inside of him.
His body hummed in agony. Each throbbing beat of his heart radiated awareness as tortured nerves buzzed and burned.
Echoes of muscle memory faded. Wounds deliberately healed and the dead cells withered away. Rotting. He was rotting.
Gone were his arms. Gone were his legs. Torn flesh and muscle left him a fraction of the warrior he once was. All he had was breath and pain, but there was no air left to breathe, so the pain inevitably won.
Dampness chilled his bones, stiffening every torn joint and shredded muscle into a tough, ossified husk. His decaying body became a raw nerve with time, exposed and infected, tingling with haunting twitches as he decomposed into a living corpse—buried alive for a long, possibly eternal, restless repose.
The stench of his rotting arms and legs reached his nose. His tormentors left his severed limbs with him so he could suffer the slow decay of his own muscle and flesh.
This deep in the earth, sand dampened to mud and slowly solidified into cold clay. Fossilized in time, encased in agony with no limbs left to claw his way out, nothing existed beyond his tortured mind.
The odd sensation of wrigglers and beetles nibbling the decay became a constant torment and comfort. So long as the worms were with him, composting his body's organic matter, he was never truly alone.
Trapped in the nothing.
No space.
No time.
Only pain.
His agonizing existence repeated on a steady loop of suffering and death.
Suffering and death.
The ricochet of time was lost in the darkness.
His disoriented mind forgot what it was to walk and breathe without agony. After years of this relentless imprisonment, he struggled to recall the wholeness he celebrated before his limbs had been torn clean—amputated by force with the excruciating purpose of punishing him.
Punishing him for her. He inwardly snarled.
She was nothing! A whore, like her mother…
He should have let her die when he killed her the last time. He could have prevented her from coming back. She was immortal but utterly fragile compared to him. How dare they do this on her account?
Once again, he vowed to make her suffer tenfold. He relished the day he would finally escape this living tomb and show her the agony he’d survived. How long had it been since he looked up at the sky and breathed fresh air? Years? Decades? Centuries?
Too long.
She knew nothing of real pain. He ached to show her how truly dreadful he could be. His craving to repay her for the crime of quartering and entombing him alive obliterated all other desires.
I’m coming for you girl…
The debt she owed him would cost her dearly. One day, she would pay for leaving him this way, just as he made her mother pay in the blood of those she loved.
Vicious bitch.
It was no wonder Lilias’s descendants were equally venomous. Wiping out her line would do the world a service.
Like a delicious poison, the temptation of his memories puzzled together a vision of Lilias when they first met. She’d been fresh and frightened, with supple breasts and a wet little quim just beyond flowering.