Third Person POV
Jonas hadn’t slept in over three nights.
Sleep was a cruel joke now — a hollow promise.
Because each time his eyelids drooped, he saw her.
Katherine.
Her name was branded into his bones.
The ghost of her scent clung to him like sweet smoke — even now, years later, it haunted the corners of his mind and the ruined scraps of his soul.
He had killed her.
He had fuc.king killed her.
And somehow, he still wasn’t free.
No amount of self-loathing or forced denial could erase the truth.
She had been his mate.
Even before her eighteenth birthday, he’d known. Her scent had hit him like a freight train the first time he saw her after he turned eighteen. She was walking barefoot through the woods behind her father's cabin — arms full of wildflowers, hair a tangled halo of
