Get Out

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, not with impatience, but with something that looked almost like care.

Knox had kept every single promise he made.

I lay still and stared at the ceiling and let myself sit with that for a moment. I had been so afraid it was going to be a disaster and I was going to regret it the second it was over. But lying there in the quiet of his room, with the sheet pulled up around me and the city making its soft nighttime sounds outside the window, I didn't feel any of the things I had prepared myself to feel.

I felt okay. I actually felt okay.

Maybe even a little more than okay.

I smiled at the ceiling in the dark like an idiot, and then I turned over to look at Knox.

He wasn't there.

The bed beside me was empty, the sheets pushed back like he had gotten up in a hurry. I sat up slowly and looked around the room, and that was when I saw him.

He was standing at the window.

His back was to me, both his hands pressed flat against the glass, and he was staring up at the sky like something up there had grabbed him and wouldn't let go. The moonlight was coming through the window and it was hitting his skin and making him look almost silver, and every single muscle in his body was rigid — tight and locked, like he was fighting something I couldn't see.

"Knox?"

He didn't move.

"Knox." I said it louder this time.

He sucked in a long breath, slow and unsteady, and when he finally spoke his voice was so different from the one I had heard all night that for a moment I thought it was someone else.

"How did this happen." He wasn't talking to me. He was talking to the window, to the moon, to something I couldn't see or hear. "I've felt something like this before. But it can't be. It cannot be her."

I held very still.

"Could she be—" His voice broke on the next word, cracked right down the middle like something had hit it. He pressed his forehead against the glass and the next words came out so quietly I almost missed them.

"Is Ember my fated mate?"

The room felt like it dropped ten degrees.

I didn't know what a fated mate was. I had no idea what he was talking about. But my name, in that voice, with that kind of desperate terrified wonder wrapped around it — something about it made my chest feel very tight.

And then Knox turned around.

The second he saw that my eyes were open, his entire face changed. Everything that had been on it a moment ago — all that raw, unguarded panic and confusion and something that looked almost like longing — it all disappeared instantly, like a shutter coming down. What replaced it was just pure alarm.

"You need to get out of here."

I blinked. "Excuse me?"

"Get your things." He was already moving, crossing the room, reaching for my coat from the chair where I had dropped it hours ago. "You need to leave. Right now."

I stared at him. "What is happening? Two seconds ago you were at the window talking about—"

"I know what I was doing. Please, Ember." He held my coat out to me and his hands were shaking slightly, which scared me more than anything else he had done so far. "Just go. I'll explain everything later, I promise—"

"Explain what? What is going on with you?"

He didn't answer. He just stood there holding my coat, jaw so tight I could see the muscle jumping in his cheek, eyes flickering with something I didn't have a name for.

I took the coat from him.

I was not going to beg. I was not going to ask again. I had already humiliated myself enough tonight with Ethan — I was not going to add standing in Knox Rivers' apartment at two in the morning begging him to explain himself to the list.

"Wow," I said, pulling the coat on. I kept my voice very flat, the way I had learned to do when I needed something to not touch me. "You take cold-blooded to a whole new level, Knox. You know what? You're not even a player. Players are at least honest about what they want." I picked up my bag. "You're just an asshole."

I walked to the door and opened it and stepped out into the corridor without looking back at him.

I pulled the door shut behind me.

And then I heard it.

A sound came from inside the apartment — low at first, almost like a groan, the kind of sound a person makes when they are in real pain. But it kept going, and it kept changing, getting deeper and rougher and less like anything a human throat should be able to produce, and then it turned into something else entirely — something that made every single hair on my body stand straight up and sent a cold wave of pure animal fear rushing from the top of my head to the soles of my feet.

That was not a person. That was not any kind of sound I had ever heard before.

I did not stop to think or tell myself I was being dramatic or try to find a reasonable explanation. My feet made the decision before my brain did, and I ran.