West of Destiny--SAMPLE (Book 5 of The Claimed Series)

Book 5 of The Claimed Series
I didn't hear anymore. Pain sliced through me, rocking me backward on my heels. My knees almost gave out with the shock of it and I clutched at my gut before my hand moved up to my heart.
It ached. Everything ached, and I whimpered out a little before lifting my head to him and looked him dead in the eyes.
"Thank you," I whispered before I let the full pain consume me. My foot stepped backward and I was falling suddenly over the cliff to my certain doom.
I didn't want another mate, didn't want to leave my parents. I just wanted to feel no pain, and this was the only way I thought I could achieve it.
I heard a yell, though it wasn't my own. The whole time my body plummeted toward the water I was silent. As if I'd gone temporarily mute. The pain was still there and it made breathing hard to come by, but I closed my eyes and looked down, the sting of the wind making my cheeks feel like sleet was pelting at me unforgivingly. Holding my breath, I plunged beneath the surface of the cold water and waited for my lungs to give out and liquid to fill me.
But that was the problem with death. Sometimes if didn't want to come easy, and the body's first reaction was to survive. Survive at any cost.
Just as I thought my lungs would burst with the need for air, my head popped up above the water and I took a deep, necessary breath. The only thing I could hear was the water, and I rode along with the current, my body hitting hard, jagged rocks every few feet.
I felt ribs crack and a bone in my shoulder become displaced from its socket. There was so much pain that after a while, I didn't feel anything anymore except for the chill of the river. It was freezing and my teeth chattered-that was when I wasn't trying to gulp life-saving air into my body to keep it alive.
I wanted to die.
My body fought to live.
At some point I think I passed out and everything went dark.