The Curse

Knox's POV

The 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 there and taken every single word because I couldn't explain, and I couldn't explain because there was no version of the truth that was safe for her to know. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

But now she was gone, and the full moon was directly overhead, and I had nothing left to hold it back with.

The pain started in my spine.

It always started in the spine — a deep, burning pressure, like something inside the bone was trying to push its way out. I stumbled away from the door and grabbed the edge of the dresser with both hands, gripping it hard enough to leave marks in the wood. My skin felt like it was too small for whatever was underneath it. My vision went white at the edges.

I had been through this enough times that I knew the only thing to do was let it happen. Fighting it made it worse. Fighting it made it last longer. The best thing — the only thing — was to go somewhere safe and private and let the wolf have the moon and wait for morning.

But tonight was different. Tonight the shift was worse than usual, more violent, more urgent, and I knew exactly why even if I didn't want to admit it.

Is Ember my fated mate?

The words I had whispered to the window came back to me now like they were being played on a speaker inside my skull. I hadn't meant to say them out loud. But something about touching her, the way she smelled and the sound of her laugh and the specific kind of brave she was — a quiet, stubborn brave that she wore without even knowing it — had set off something inside my wolf that I had never felt before.

The dresser cracked under my hands.

I had a curse.

I had known about it since I was fourteen years old, when my father sat me down in his study and told me the truth about our bloodline with the careful, expressionless face of a man who had been dreading that conversation for years. A witch had cursed our generations , a curse that was designed to punish us for something an ancestor of mine had done that could not be undone. The curse was simple and it was brutal: I could not be with any woman more than once. If I slept with the same woman twice, she would die. There was no negotiating with it and no working around it. .

Except one.

The fated mate. The one person in the world the moon goddess had chosen specifically for me before either of us was born. If that person existed, the curse could not touch her. If I found her, I could love her without killing her.

The problem was that I had never found her. I had spent years looking, years paying attention to every feeling and every pull and every instinct, and nothing had ever come close.

Until tonight.I closed my eyes and I made myself a promise. In the morning I would fix it. I would go to her, and I would look her to start making this right.

***

Morning came and I put on clean clothes, drank two glasses of water standing at the kitchen sink, and stared at my phone for a long time before I finally made myself move.

I walked across campus to the girls' dormitory.

I didn't have a plan. I knew I couldn't tell her the truth — not all of it, not yet, not without proof or context or any of the things a person needs before you sit them down and explain that werewolves are real and you are one of them. I just knew that I had kicked her out of my apartment in the middle of the night on her birthday after she had trusted me with something precious, and I owed her at the very least an apology.

Even if the apology had to be a lie.

Her friends answered the door first with their eyes — wide and excited and talking over each other before I had even opened my mouth. I waited for Ember to appear in the doorway, and when she did I could see immediately that she hadn't slept. There were shadows under her eyes and a stiffness in the way she was holding herself that told me she had spent the night sitting with a lot of uncomfortable questions.

Questions I had put there.

"Good morning," I said. "I wanted to come and apologize. For last night."

Her friend — Kimberly, I thought her name was — immediately wanted to know what there was to apologize for, and I watched Ember's face go blank with the specific blankness of someone who has no idea how to answer a question.

I stepped in before she had to.

"I stumbled into her on the quad outside the party," I said. "Stepped on her foot. Almost knocked her over. I felt bad about it." I looked at Ember directly. "I'm sorry again. I hope it's not still hurting."

It was the most boring story I had ever told. That was exactly why it would work.

Ember looked at me for a moment — long enough that I could see she understood what I was doing and then she gave a small, barely there nod.

"It's fine," she said. "Thank you for coming by."

I looked at her one more time. I wanted to say something real that last night had been different from every other night of my life and I was going to figure out how to make this right. But her friends were right there, and the truth was too large and too strange for a dormitory hallway at eight in the morning.

So I just said, "Take care of yourself, Ember," and I turned around and walked away.

And I told myself that I would find a way.

I just didn't know how yet.