"I never left," Kael replied. "I just stopped pretending the cage had a lock."
Chapter 9 ends not with a howl, but with the absence of one. Because the loudest roars are the ones that never leave the chest. And Kael had finally stopped fighting the quiet.
"Then call me leashed," he whispered. "Just don't call me broken anymore." Instinct Unleashed -Chapter 9- By Kind Nightmares
By Kind Nightmares
The rain had started to fall harder, slicking Kael's hair to his forehead, dripping into his eyes. He blinked slowly. When he looked up, his irises caught the fractured moonlight—amber now, where they had been brown. "I never left," Kael replied
"You came back," Elias said. His voice was softer than Kael expected. Almost gentle. That was worse than any growl.
He stepped into the clearing. The grass flattened beneath his weight as though bowing. In the center lay the carcass of a stag—not killed, but undone . Ribs splayed open like the pages of a forbidden book, organs arranged in a pattern that felt almost ritualistic. His mouth watered. He hated that it watered. He knelt, fingers hovering over the warm ruin, and for a moment, he saw himself reflected in the black pool of the animal's unblinking eye. And Kael had finally stopped fighting the quiet
End of Chapter 9.