LOGINEmber's POVThe moon moved.I could not see it from inside Rebecca's room — the curtains were drawn and the window faced the wrong direction — but I felt it. I did not know how to explain that. I had not been able to explain most of what my body had been doing for the past several weeks and this was just the newest version of it. The moon moved higher in the sky and something inside me moved with it, tethered to it in a way I had no language for.The pain got worse.Not gradually. In steps. Each wave a little larger than the last, each one taking longer to pass, each one leaving behind a residue of something that did not fully clear before the next one arrived. By midnight I had stopped trying to find a comfortable position on the floor because no position was comfortable. I was on my side with my knees drawn up and my jaw locked against the sounds I did not want to make and Rebecca's hand around mine."Breathe," Rebecca said."I am breathing.""Breathe slower.""Rebecca—"A wave hit
Ember's POVIt started at ten.Not dramatically. Just a dull ache at first — the kind that sat somewhere between her ribs and her spine, in a place she could not put her hand on and press to locate properly. She had been lying on Rebecca's floor on the spare blanket, trying to read, and the ache had arrived and she had shifted position and told herself it was the floor. The floor was hard and she was not used to it and her body was registering the complaint.By ten-thirty it was not the floor.She turned over.The ache had moved — not to a different place but outward, like something expanding from a center point, pushing against the inside of her skin the way pressure pushed against a container. She pressed her hand flat against her ribs and the pressure pushed back.She made a sound.Rebecca looked up from her bed immediately."What?""Nothing," Ember said. "I am fine.""You made a sound.""I shifted position. It was nothing."Rebecca looked at her for a moment and then went back to
Knox's POVThe moon was coming and my body knew it before my mind had fully accepted the night.I had felt it all day. Underneath the training, underneath the fight with Ethan, underneath the office and the coach and the walk back to the dormitory — a low, persistent pressure building at the base of my skull like something leaning against a door from the other side. Patient. Certain. Not asking permission.Full moon.I waited until the dormitory floor went quiet. Just after eleven. I changed into dark clothes, picked up the small bag I kept ready for these nights, and went out through the side exit that had no camera.The abandoned house was six minutes from the campus boundary. I had found it in my first year — empty for years, boarded windows, solid walls, a ground floor room with a door that latched from inside. I had reinforced the latches myself. Added a second one. Tested them. This was the place. It had always been the place.I moved across the dark campus with the practiced qu
Knox's POVI heard him coming.Not the footsteps — those I heard a second later. The first thing I heard was the change in the air behind me, the specific shift that the wolf in me picked up before my human senses caught up to it. The change that meant something was moving toward me with intent.I had just enough time to half-turn before the punch connected.It caught me on the side of the head rather than the jaw this time — a different target, harder, the kind of punch that came from someone who had decided they were not going to get the same result as before and had adjusted accordingly. It hit and it was real and it knocked my balance sideways.I caught myself.I turned fully.Ethan was right there. He had not stopped at one — he was already coming with the second one, his face set with the expression of a person who had moved past calculation and was running on something older and less managed. He had wanted this since the path. He had wanted it since the office. He had walked ou
Knox's POVCoach Harlan sat behind his desk for a long time.He was not the kind of man who rushed decisions. I had known that about him since my first year — he was methodical, he weighed things, he believed that a decision made fast was usually a decision made wrong. I had respected that about him for three years. Right now, sitting in that chair waiting for him to finish thinking, it was harder to respect.Ethan sat beside me saying nothing.That was unusual. Ethan's default in a room full of authority was to talk — to manage, to reframe, to work the situation. The silence from his direction told me that even he understood this was not a moment where talking was going to help him.Coach finally looked up.He looked at Ethan first."I am going to look into what Knox has described," he said. "The incidents he referenced. The documentation with school management. The reports." He said it flatly, without emotion, the way he communicated decisions that were not up for discussion. "While
Knox's POVCoach Harlan's office was small.Two chairs across from a desk, a whiteboard on one wall covered in play diagrams, trophies on a shelf that had run out of space and started a second row in front of the first. A window that looked out over the side of the training complex. A room that smelled like lineament and old coffee and the specific combination of a place where difficult conversations happened regularly.Ethan was already there when I came in.He had taken the chair on the left. I stood until Coach came in behind me and closed the door and gestured at the other chair, and then I sat.Coach sat behind his desk and looked at both of us for a moment."Tell me what happened," he said.Ethan went first.He was good at this. I had known that for three years — had watched him work coaches and teachers and administrators in the specific way that people who understood authority learned to work it. He was calm. He was measured. He used the right words in the right order and he b
Ember's POVI looked at Claire. "Plan B for what?""She did not say what," Claire said. "Just that if the first plan didn't get them what they wanted, Plan B was ready.""Who was she talking to?""I don't know. A group of girls near the vending machines on the second floor. I didn't recognize them.
Ember's POVBy the next morning the story had already mutated again.Now it was Ethan attacking Knox in the dormitory corridor, Knox defending himself and Ember, school management being called in. Some versions had Ethan throwing the first punch. Some had Knox going after Ethan unprovoked. One vers
Ember's POVI knew something was wrong before I even left my room.I could hear it in the corridor. Not specific words, just the particular texture of voices that meant something had happened and people were talking about it. I had been on this campus long enough to know the difference between norm
Ember's POVKnox laughed and I could tell it caught even him off guard because for just a second he looked almost surprised by the sound of it coming out of himself.It was a good laugh. I was not going to think about that."A date," he said, shaking his head once. "I have never taken anyone on a d







