[Emma's POV]
Exhaustion was a tyrant, dragging me down into its dark kingdom, but the moment I crossed the threshold of sleep, I knew I had not escaped. The world did not dissolve into formless dreams. It crystallized with a cruel, hyper-real clarity. The scent was the first betrayal—cedar smoke, pine resin, and the underlying sweetness of wild roses.
I was standing in the exact center of the living room in the secluded farmhouse, Jaxon’s promised sanctuary. Moonlight fell in the same silver slab across the same worn braided rug. The quilt was folded precisely over the arm of the sofa. Every detail was a perfect, loving replica, crafted by a mind that had studied it with a predator’s intimacy. It was a beautiful, inescapable cell.
Damon was not a phantom superimposed on the scene. He w
