Igor’s POV
I woke up in the middle of the forest for the fourth night in a row—the same way every time: naked, half-shifted, my claws half-formed, my heart pounding hard. The mate bond was starting to truly disrupt my life.
I constantly felt a deep, burning sensation in my chest, as if my soul itself were being ripped apart by her absence.
It was like no matter how hard I tried to forget her, I somehow missed her more. As crazy as that sounded, I never imagined a day would come when I would care for anyone—much less a mate. Something so insignificant and unimportant now seemed to decide my mental balance.
My mouth tasted of dust, as if I had swallowed or chewed on the earth itself. My own pack and territory now felt like a foreign land to me. It seemed the world had lost its taste.
An
