LOGINKNOX’S POVEvery fibre of the wolf, every instinct, every molecule of possessive territorial need that I have spent my entire life suppressing surges to the surface with a force that makes my vision go gold and my fangs extend and my mouth finds the curve of her neck where the mating mark belongs.The precise spot, the exact location, the place where my teeth would sink and the bond would seal and she would be MINE in a way that transcends language and law and death itself.My teeth graze her skin. She shivers. Whispers “please” again and the word is a key turning in a lock I have kept shut for a decade.My jaw begins to close—“STOP.”The voice comes from the riverbank and it’s Nathaniel, on his knees in the mud and snow, and beside him Queenie, also on her knees, both of them kneeling with their heads bowed and their bodies trembling in submission.The oldest form of it. The gesture a wolf makes when approaching an alpha in a state of feral possession and hoping to survive the encou
KNOX’S POV“Knox—” She can’t speak. I’m not letting her.Each thrust drives the words from her mouth and replaces them with sounds more honest than language — gasps and moans and the wet, broken whimpering of a woman being fucked open by the man she loves in a way she’s never been fucked before because no one has ever been this close.My cock is buried inside her pussy and my heart in her hands and the terrifying, annihilating truth that I would die for this woman and I would kill for this woman and if she asked me to choose between the crown and being inside her in this river I would throw the crown into the water and watch it sink.Phantom is surging.I can feel the wolf pressing against my skin, my eyes flickering gold, my canines elongating, the feral gene responding to her heat and the grip of her cunt and the bond with a ferocity that wants to consume her.Devour, take her so completely that the line between his body and hers dissolves.I want to crawl inside her ribcage and liv
KNOX’S POVI worship one breast with my mouth while my fingers work her pussy in deep, curling strokes, my thumb circling her clit in tightening spirals.The sounds filling the space between us are filthy and holy at the same time — the wet slide of my fingers inside her, the splash of water as her hips roll, the broken gasps falling from her mouth.“You taste divine.” The words spill against her skin between my teeth. “Every inch of you. Every breath. Every sound you make. Do you understand what you are to me? You are the only thing I have ever wanted badly enough to destroy myself for, and I would do it again, I would burn this forest down and the next one and the one after that, I would raze every kingdom I’ve ever built to fucking ASH if it meant keeping you safe and warm and making these sounds for me and only me.”She comes with a violence that nearly breaks my grip on her.Her pussy clamps down on my fingers so hard I feel it in my shoulder and her spine arches and she screams
KNOX’S POVHer hands find my face. My jaw. The gash across my cheekbone from Rafael’s claws, the split in my lip, the bruises layered on top of bruises.She traces each one with her fingertips and the tenderness of it destroys me more completely than any wound Rafael inflicted because this woman was stripped and pinned to the ground and almost claimed by another man and she’s touching MY injuries like I’m the one who needs caring for.“How did you find me?” Her voice is small. So small. The voice of a girl, not a woman, stripped back to something young and bewildered and afraid. “You were in Switzerland. You were thousands of miles away. How did you—”I take her hand from my face and press it flat against my chest. Over the heartbeat that has been hers since before I had the courage to admit it.“I felt you.” The confession comes out raw and unpolished. “I don’t know how. I can’t explain it in any way that makes sense. But somewhere over the Atlantic, something in my chest ripped open
KNOX’S POVIt’s hardly a fight, and more like an extermination. Every wolf that crosses the perimeter I’ve drawn in my mind around Ember’s position dies.I don’t give warnings. I don’t posture or snarl or give them the chance to retreat.They came for my woman and that is a death sentence and I deliver it with the cold commitment of a man who has found, for the first time in his life, something worth protecting badly enough to become the thing everyone always feared he was.Six wolves. Maybe seven.I lose count because counting requires the part of my brain that’s currently occupied by the sound of Ember whimpering behind me and every whimper is a lash across the part of my conscience that knows I caused this by leaving.At the final point of the clearing is a face I didn’t think I’d see in a while.Logan.He’s standing at the edge of the tree line, battered and bloody from whatever my purge of his wolves cost him, watching me with wide eyes that had just witnessed his men get slaught
KNOX’S POVRafael fights with desperate, unhinged conviction. He believes this.That’s what makes him terrifying and pathetic in equal measure — he has convinced himself so completely that Ember is his fated mate that he’s willing to die for a delusion.And the ferocity of that belief makes him dangerous because men who fight for what they love are always more vicious than men who fight for what they want.But I am not fighting for what I want. I am fighting for what I CHOSE. For a woman who told me to never come back and a letter that told me to stay and a choice I made on a tarmac in Switzerland that I will die before I unmake.He grabs a fallen trunk in his claws — massive, an entire pine — and swings it at me like a battering ram.The impact catches me across the ribs and sends me crashing through two smaller trees before I hit the ground hard enough to taste blood.My vision whites out for a second and I feel the feral gene SURGE, the man receding, the beast expanding, exactly th
EMBER’S POVI slump back into my seat unconsciously, not realizing how rigidly I’d been holding myself until the tension drains away.Knox lifts our entwined hands to his lips and presses a kiss to my knuckles, his eyes on me.It slows the tightening in my chest. Loosens the knot that Harrison’s qu
EMBER’S POV“Because I saw you on the news.” His voice cracks again. “During a press conference. I saw you standing up there, speaking to the camera, saying five words they have haunted me every night. You are dead to me. And though it wasn’t directed at me, I felt it so much. I felt it down to my
EMBER’S POV(PRESENT)We stay tangled together for a long time, neither of us willing to be the first to let go. His hand strokes through my hair.My fingers curl into the fabric of his shirt. The room is quiet except for our breathing and the distant hum of something mechanical — a generator, mayb
KNOX’S POVHe blinks, the picture of innocence. “I’m not sure I understand. I explained the purpose quite clearly at the beginning of the evening. Conflict resolution. Closure. An opportunity for all parties to—”“Bullshit.”The word is deadpan, and I see Logan’s head snap up, see Gale’s sobbing st







