登入Ember's POVMy father looked at me.Not with anger.With something that was worse than anger — the specific expression of a person who has been seen in a place they thought was hidden and has not yet decided what to do about being seen there. Something raw and exposed and entirely unmanaged.Then his face closed.Not gradually. The specific closing of someone who has felt something arrive on their surface and has decided to put it back.He stood up.He picked up his book from the table.He walked out of the sitting room.Not dramatically — no door slamming, no raised voice, no final word. Just the quiet, dignified exit of a man who had decided the conversation was finished on his terms and was removing himself from it.His footsteps on the stairs.His bedroom door.The soft but final sound of it closing.I sat in the sitting room alone.I looked at the chair he had been sitting in. At the impression still in the cushion. At the table where his book had been.I had hit it.Not guessed
Ember's POVMy father read the hesitation.I watched him read it — the specific way he processed information that arrived through silence rather than words. He had always been good at that. It was the thing about him that had made growing up in his house difficult in specific ways — he did not need you to say the thing. He found it in the space around what you said.He closed the book.He put it on the table beside him.He looked at me with the expression that had replaced the waiting one — something older, something that had been sitting underneath the waiting the whole time."Stay away from him," he said.I stared at him."Knox Rivers," he said. "Whatever he has told you about himself, whatever version of himself he has presented to you this semester — stay away from him.""Dad—""I mean it," he said. His voice had gone to a place I had not heard from it often. Not anger — something more serious than anger. The specific register of someone who was frightened and was using authority
Ember's POVKnox was at the door when I said it."Wait," I said.He turned."We need to swear it," I said. "Both of us. Not just promises — the actual swear."He held my gaze."By our blood," I said. "That we trust each other. That we stop keeping things back. That we treat the people around us as threats until they prove otherwise." I held his gaze. "Both of us. Together."He came back into the room.He held out his hand.I put mine in it."By my blood," he said. "I will trust you with everything I find. I will not manage what you receive. I will treat James and Selena as unverified until we know more." He held my gaze. "And I will keep you safe.""By my blood," I said. "I will trust you. I will stay away from Selena until we know who she is. I will tell you everything my father tells me about my mother." I held his gaze. "And I will be careful."We held hands for a moment.Then I said, "Be careful of James too."Knox held my gaze."He has his own agenda in this," I said. "You said i
Ember's POVKnox was quiet for a moment.Then he said, "Your origin is not only on your mother's side."I looked at him."Selena has been telling you about the wolf side," he said. "The Lycan world, the prophecy, what your mother was and what that means for what you are." He held my gaze. "She has not talked about your father.""My father is human," I said."Yes," he said. "Completely. And that is half of you." He held my gaze. "The prophecy does not describe a wolf who can shift. It describes a hybrid. The specific combination of both natures, fully. Not one diluted by the other — both present and both real." He held my gaze. "The human side of you is not the lesser half. It is not the part that needs to be developed into something else. It is the part that makes the peace possible."I held that."A full wolf cannot bring peace between the wolf world and the human world," he said. "Because a full wolf belongs to one side. The prophecy requires someone who belongs to both." He held my
Ember's POV"You are lying," I said.Knox held my gaze."You are doing exactly what you always do," I said. "You have found a version of the situation that makes Selena the problem and you are presenting it as fact because it serves what you want." I held his gaze. "You want me away from her. You have wanted that since she stepped through the portal. And now you have constructed a reason.""I have not constructed anything," he said."Your father told you a story about a war from thirty years ago," I said. "And you drove here at midnight to use it to tell me that my sister cannot be trusted." I held his gaze. "Do you hear how that sounds?""Yes," he said. "I hear how it sounds. I am telling you anyway.""Because it is convenient for you," I said."Because it is true," he said.I looked at the window."Selena told me you would do this," I said. "She told me that the protective instinct would turn into something that worked against my destiny. She described this exact conversation.""Yes
Knox's POV"You are in danger," he said.Ember held his gaze."Not the Ethan kind," he said. "Not the Charlotte kind. Something older and more organized and more specifically pointed at you than anything we have dealt with this semester." He held her gaze. "I need you to hear all of it.""Tell me," she said."My father told me the history of the pack tonight," he said. "The war that happened thirty years ago. The wolves who bonded with humans — they were labeled betrayers. The hunters went after them specifically. And their children." He held her gaze. "The hybrid children were killed alongside their parents."Ember held his gaze."Every one they could find," he said. "Except one."She was very still."The one who survived," he said. "Born at the end of the war. Mother died at the birth. Father took the child into the human world." He held her gaze directly. "The prophecy of the surviving hybrid is not just a Lycan world story, Ember. It is the reason the war stopped. Both sides pulle
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
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 POVTonight was supposed to be the best night of my life.I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and carefully lined my lips, taking my time the way I never usually did. I was the kind of girl who rushed through getting ready because there was always something more important waiting — a le







