ANMELDENEMBER’S POVThree polite rapt on the wood.“Ember.” Rafael’s voice through the bedroom door, warm and concerned, exactly calibrated. “You haven’t eaten all day. I had the kitchen prepare something light — soup, bread. I’ll leave it outside your door. You don’t have to see me. Just eat.”I don’t answer. The clink of a tray on the floor is followed by his footsteps retreating.I don’t touch the tray.The second knock comes mid-afternoon. Softer, almost tentative.“I understand you’re angry, and I accept that. You have every reason.” A pause. A sigh that sounds almost frustrated. “But starving yourself in a locked room isn’t going to bring him back, Ember. It’s not going to undo what happened. Come out. Even just for air. I’ll keep my distance.”He waits three full minutes. I count. Then he leaves.The third knock comes at sunset. The softness is gone.“Ember, this is ridiculous.” His voice has dropped the warmth entirely, replaced by something clipped and strained. “Over twelve hours. B
EMBER’S POVI wonder whether he’s still on the plane or already landed.Whether Rayana is talking to him or whether they’re sitting in the silence of every damage from today — the silence of Nathaniel’s journal, of the bloody gash Knox left across his face, of my own words and lies stacking up beside his.I wonder whether he’s drinking — he’s probably drinking. Whether he’s replaying the same loop I am or whether the “wouldn’t think of it” was a lie and he’s already regretting saying it out loud.I wonder if he is thinking of me at all.My phone is on the nightstand. I reach for it knowing what I want to find and knowing I won’t find it, yet still hoping painfully, desperately.But there is nothing from Knox. The screen is full of notifications but his name is absent in every single one of them.What is there: eleven messages from Queenie.Ember please let me explain I know you’re angry and you have every right to be Please just let me Ember I need you to know that I never wanted Plea
EMBER’S POV“I hate to say it, but I told you so,” Rafael says softly. “He is gone, and he is never coming back.”I don’t move.My knees are in the snow and my hands are numb and the tears have frozen to tracks on my cheeks, and I am so far past the point of responding to Rafael Montenegro that he might as well be speaking to the mountains.He crouches beside me.The warmth of his body engulfs mine even through the cold, and I hate that — hate that he’s warm and alive and HERE when the person who should be here is thirty thousand feet above the Atlantic heading toward a country with a woman who knew him before I existed.“You’re going to get hypothermia.” His voice is reasonable, though tentative. “Come inside. I’ll make you something warm.”I stare at the empty helicopter pad. The wind has already started filling in the tracks Knox left in the snow. In an hour, there’ll be no evidence he was ever here at all.“Ember.” His hand settles on my shoulder. “You can hate me tomorrow, I prom
EMBER’S POV“Don’t compare me to Celeste.”“Why not?” Something cruel flashes across his face — the defense mechanism I know too well, the one where hurt converts to venom because venom is easier. “You’ve been running to Rafael all trip. Confiding in him. Crying on his shoulder. Letting him touch you and hold you and fill your head with every reason to leave me. How is that different from what she did?”“It’s COMPLETELY different and you know it—”“Is it? Because from where I’m standing, it looks exactly the same. A woman who says she wants me but keeps one foot pointed toward the exit. A woman who takes what I offer and then looks around to see if someone better is available.”“I have NEVER—”“The gallery. An hour alone with him. Oh, come on. I’m not stupid. That painting — the fucking painting — where he’s captured you in oil like you’re already his.”“He’s not—”“You’re just like her.”Three words. Quiet as a knife entering flesh.“You’re just like Celeste. Pretty words about wantin
EMBER’S POVThe movement is so fast it barely registers as motion — in a blink, his hand crossed the space between them in a devastating arc that splits Nathaniel’s skin from temple to jaw in three deep parallel gouges, ripping out an eye with no remorse.Blood sprays across the wall in a bright fan, spattering the wood panelling in a pattern that will never fully come out, and before Nathaniel can even stagger Knox follows through with a downward slash that catches his shirt at the collar and rips it apart to the navel, fabric and skin splitting together, the chest under opening in three long shallow lines that bloom red and raw from collarbone to stomach.Queenie screams, and my own heart stops.Nathaniel hits the wall and slides, catching himself with one hand pressed to his ruined face and the other to his torn chest, blood coursing through his fingers from both wounds.Finally, the mask is gone — the composure, the blankness, the professional act he’s worn for as long as I’ve kno
EMBER’S POV“I was protecting her from your wrath. I thought she’d come clean to me on her own and we could figure it out together—”“Figure WHAT out?” His voice cracks upward, incredulous. “How to negotiate with a traitor? How to manage the fallout politely? You knew about Nathaniel — you knew my own beta was working against me — and you kept it to yourself.” He takes another step, and the hurt in his face is calcifying into something colder. “Do you even realise how reckless and selfish that is?”The words hit me harder than they should, because some part of me knows he’s right, and that part is the part I’ve been trying to silence for weeks.“I was NOT being selfish!” My voice comes out fiercer than I intend. “Selfishness would have been blowing everything up the second I found out. But I believed what you had with him, with them, was worth preserving — that maybe they had a reason, an angle—”“What fucking angle, Ember?” His hand slashes through the air. “That man has proved himse
EMBER'S POVThe path is narrow, tucked away from the main flow of guests, designed for staff to move unseen.My heart races from the dance floor, from the decision I've made to leave with him, from the understanding that I'm walking toward something I don't fully comprehend
EMBER'S POVThe electricity between us is suffocating. My breath vanishes. My cheeks flush hot.I can feel exactly how hard he is against my lower back, and my traitorous body responds despite everything—nipples tightening, core clenching, arousal flooding back like it never left."Unhand me," I ma
EMBER'S POVThe Council of Elders exists because power unchecked becomes tyranny.I've learned this in the past eighteen hours, piecing together information from Queenie's whispered explanations and Knox's terse answers.Centuries ago, a Lycan King went mad with power and nearly drove our species t
KNOX'S POV She cries then, quietly, dabbing at her eyes with a napkin in a way that's clearly practiced but no less real for it.I wait while she composes herself, and when she looks up again, she's smiling with the kind of determination that tells me this isn't over."Will you at least dance with







