로그인Ember's POV"Nobody can find out," I said.Knox looked at me."Even if it is true," I said. "Even if everything you believe is accurate and the bloodline traces back and the pieces align the way you think they might align." I held his gaze. "The confirmation requires the second time. And the second time without certainty is—" I stopped. "You said it yourself. That is not a test you run on a belief.""I know," he said."So even with everything," I said. "Even with all of it pointing in the same direction — nobody finds out without risking my life." I held his gaze. "That is the reality of it.""Yes," he said. Quietly. "That is the reality.""So you are asking me to be with you," I said. "Knowing that the answer to the most important question about what we are to each other is locked behind something neither of us is willing to do.""Yes," he said."And you are going to remain optimistic about that," I said.He held my gaze."Yes," he said.I looked at him."That is either very brave or
Ember's POV"My whole family has been waiting for it," Knox said.He was still looking at the ceiling. The lamplight on his face made him look younger than the campus version — less managed, less carrying. Just him, in a room, saying true things."My father since before I could understand what fated mate meant," he said. "My mother — she has been waiting in a different way, the quieter way, but it is there. James knows it is the thing that matters most to the pack's future." He paused. "Everyone who knows what I am has been waiting for this specific thing to happen for twenty years.""And you?" I said.He turned his head to look at me."I used to wait for it too," he said. "When I was younger. When the curse was still new and the hope that there was a way through it felt like something worth orienting toward." He held my gaze. "I do not wait for it anymore.""Why not?" I said."Because waiting for a fate you cannot control is a way of not being present in the life you actually have,"
Ember's POVWe lay on the bed looking at the ceiling for a while after he said it.Then I said, "You should listen to them."Knox turned his head to look at me."Your parents," I said. "The search. The priest, the Lycan world, all of it." I kept my eyes on the ceiling. "They are not wrong. Finding your fated mate is—" I stopped. "It is important. For the curse and for the pack and for everything your father has been building that you are going to inherit." I paused. "You should be looking.""I am not going to do that," Knox said.I turned to look at him."Knox—""No," he said. Flat. Clear. The voice he used when a decision had been made and the conversation about it was over."It is the right thing," I said."For whom?" he said."For you," I said. "For the pack. For the curse that has been sitting on you since you were twelve." I held his gaze. "You told me about it yourself. The only way through it is the fated mate. The only way the second time stops being a death sentence for the p
Knox's POVI held the letter for a moment.Then Lauren reached out and took it back.Not aggressively — the smooth, natural motion of someone who had decided something in the space between handing it over and watching me hold it. She folded it along its original creases and put it in the pocket of her cardigan and looked at me with the specific expression she used when a conversation had reached its endpoint."What is it?" I said."Nothing that concerns you right now," she said.I looked at her."It came from the Lycan world," I said. "The seal—""Old contacts," she said. "From before your father and I were together. I had connections of my own before this pack and some of them still write." She said it evenly, in the voice she used when she had decided on a version and was committing to it. "Personal matters. My parents. Nothing that affects the house."I held her gaze.Lauren held mine back.She was better at this than most people. She had been doing it since before I could read a r
Knox's POV Lauren looked at me for a long moment. The complicated expression — the one that had moved through eagerness and weight and arrived somewhere more settled — shifted one more time. "Come here," she said. I looked at her. She held out her arms. I crossed the room. She held on the way she held on when something mattered and she had decided that words were not the right tool for the rest of it. Not the brief hug of a parent greeting a returned child — the real kind, the kind that had years in it, that went back to a night when I was twelve and my father had brought me home from the priest and she had been waiting at the door and had held on exactly like this. I held on back. "You are going to find her," she said. Into my shoulder, quietly, the specific voice she used when she was saying something she meant completely. "The confirmation is going to come. James is going to find the bloodline or the priest is going to look in a different direction or something is going to
Knox's POVI had taken two steps into the corridor when I heard Lauren get up from her chair."Wait," she said.I turned around.She was on her feet, which was unusual — Lauren completed conversations sitting down as a general rule. Standing meant she had something else and had decided it could not wait until I was further away.She came to the doorway."If she is the one," she said. Her voice had a quality I had not heard in it during the earlier part of the conversation — the careful quality was gone, replaced by something more immediate. "If she is actually the fated mate—" She stopped. She looked at me with the specific expression she had when she had been holding a feeling back and had decided to stop holding it. "Knox. Do you understand what that means for this family?""Yes," I said."The curse broken," she said. "Twenty years of watching you manage it. Twenty years of knowing what it cost you." She shook her head slightly. "I have been waiting for this. I did not know who it w
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 POV I almost didn't go to the party. Parties were not really my thing, not in the way people thought they were. Everyone assumed that because I was the team captain and because girls always wanted to talk to me and because I had a reputation that followed me everywhere I went, I must love
Ember's POV I woke up in the middle of the night and for about three seconds, I didn't know where I was. Then it all came back. The party. Ethan. The key. Knox's apartment and the trophies on every shelf and the way he had looked at me when I told him I had never done this before — not with pity







