Third Person POV
The water was ice.
Not just cold, not just sharp—but numbing. Biting. Like the river itself wanted to carve his sins off his skin.
Jonas sat waist-deep in the current, motionless. The freezing water sluiced over blood and mud, over broken skin and matted hair. His body had healed just enough to hold together, the worst wounds sealing, but the pain lingered—ghosts of claws, of bone-crushing impact, of the Savage’s cold eyes pinning him to the ground.
Bloody mutt.
He had been too close to death. If he hadn’t fired that grenade when he did, he would’ve joined the corpses.
He’d been forced to run. To flee.
A few hours after he’d crossed the boundary, the pain struck. Not physical. Not tangible. Worse.
His wolf had howled—a sound of agony and mourning so deep it shatter
