FAZER LOGINEmber's POVMorning classes had a way of making things feel more manageable.Not because they solved anything — they did not — but because the structure of them, the specific demand of being present and noting things and following a sequence, gave the brain something to do that was not the thing it wanted to keep returning to. I had slept badly and woken early and spent forty minutes staring at my ceiling before Rebecca stirred and the morning began in earnest.By the time we were walking to the first lecture I had managed, through sheer discipline, to think about the chemistry project for eleven consecutive minutes.That was the longest stretch I had managed since the party.Rebecca was on my left, Claire on my right. The main corridor of the academic building, the nine o'clock rush of students moving in both directions, the ordinary noise of a school morning. We were talking about something Claire had found in the campus press that was relevant to nothing but was amusing, and I was
Ember's POV"I forgive you," I said.Ethan looked at me."I mean it," I said. "Not because it excuses what you did. Not because we are going back to anything. But because carrying unforgiveness around is something I am not willing to do for the rest of my time on this campus and beyond." I held his gaze. "You are forgiven. That is what I can give you. That is all I can give you."He stood there.Something in his face went through several things quickly.Then his hand tightened on my arm."Then come back," he said. "If you forgive me—""No," I said. "Ethan. That is not what forgiveness means.""But—""Let go of my arm," I said."Ember—""Let go of my arm right now or I will scream," I said. "I will scream and there are students on every path within fifty meters of where we are standing and I will scream until every one of them comes running." I held his eyes. "Do you understand me?"He looked at me.For a long moment — long enough that the reality of it sat between us.Then his hand dr
Ember's POVHe had said danger.I stood on the path and looked at him and the word was still in the air and I knew — the wolf instinct that had been sharpening for weeks, the thing that had moved my hand before I decided to move it — I knew he was telling the truth about that part. Whatever he had found out, it had frightened him. That was real.But it was not the only thing happening in this conversation."Tell me what you found," I said."First—" He stopped. He pressed his lips together. "First I need you to hear something."I waited."I am sorry," he said. "For everything. The way I treated you when we were together, the way I behaved when I came back, the notes—" He shook his head. "All of it. I am sorry for all of it."I looked at him."Okay," I said."Okay," he repeated. Like he had expected more than that and the brevity of it had caught him."I heard you," I said. "I am not going to tell you it did not happen because it did. I am not going to tell you we are fine because we ar
Ember's POVKnox was watching me.I could feel it without looking at him — the specific quality of attention he had when something had registered and he was deciding whether to press it. I kept my eyes on the phone for a moment longer than necessary, giving myself the time it took to arrange my face into something that did not give away what was on the screen.Then I looked up."Who was that?" he said."Nothing important," I said. "Someone from my course about a submission."He held my gaze.The thing about Knox was that he had excellent instincts and he knew when something did not line up and he did not always announce that he knew. He had learned — or had always known — that announcing it immediately was not always the most useful response. Sometimes he just held the information and watched.He was doing that now.I looked at him steadily."Okay," he said. Just that. Not pressing it, not flagging that he did not believe it, just accepting the version I had given him and letting it s
Ember's POVKnox looked at the window for a long moment after he said it.The wolf would know before the person did.I sat with that and watched his face and did not push the silence anywhere. There was something in how he was holding himself — the set of his shoulders, the particular quality of the stillness — that told me the memory was present in the room with us, that the priest and his father and the night when he was twelve were right there underneath the surface of everything he had just said."You do not have to talk about it more," I said.He looked at me."I pushed," I said. "I asked you to tell me and you told me and I am glad you did. But I pushed and I can see that it is — I can see that it costs something." I held his gaze. "I am sorry for making you go back to it.""You did not make me do anything," he said."I asked.""I chose to answer," he said. "That is different." He looked at his hands briefly. "You asked because you deserved to understand and you were right to as
Ember's POV"What about the curse?" I said.Knox looked at me."The not sleeping with the same person twice," I said. "Is that part of the wolf blood? Is that something I have as well?"He shook his head. "No," he said. "That is not wolf blood. That has nothing to do with what you are." He held my gaze. "That is specifically mine. A different thing entirely.""Tell me," I said.He was quiet for a moment.Not the managing quiet — not the kind where he was deciding how much I could handle. The kind where something lived that was not easy to bring out and he was finding the beginning of it.I waited."I was twelve," he said.I kept my eyes on him."My father had enemies," he said. "That is not unusual for an alpha — the position creates them, the decisions you have to make to hold a pack together create them. Most enemies were manageable. This one was not." He looked at the window. "A woman. She had been connected to the pack years before, before my father took leadership. When he took o
Ember's POVKnox showed me the note the next morning.He came to my room before breakfast, which he did not usually do, and I knew from the fact that he was there before eight that whatever he had to show me was not something he wanted to carry through a full day without telling me first.I opened
Knox's POVThe bonfire had been going for two hours and I had spent most of it watching Ember from across the crowd without making it obvious that I was watching her.I was good at that. Years of learning how to stay alert in a room full of people without letting anyone see that you were doing it h
Ember's POVAfter Knox left, the three of us stood in the room and Jessica was going on about the way he had supposedly been looking at her, and Kimberly was shaking her head saying no, she had watched the whole thing and Knox had barely taken his eyes off me for a second, and I was standing there
Knox's POVThe moment the door clicked shut behind her, I lost the fight. I had been holding it back since the second I turned from the window and saw her eyes open in the dark, through all of her questions and all of her anger and all of the things she said that I knew I deserved. I had stood ther







