MasukKNOX’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
KNOX’S POVI have never run this fast in my life.Phantom’s paws tear through the Alaskan forest with a force that splits the frozen ground under me, every stride eating distance like the earth itself is shrinking to bring me closer to the thing my wolf has been screaming about since Zürich.Since Rayana spilled the truth and I left my mother’s letter crumpled in my jacket at the airport and shifted before the tarmac ended because there was no time for cars, no time for roads, no time for anything except the animal and the direction it was pulling and the single, annihilating certainty that I was already too late.I left Rayana at the Fairbanks airport with my security detail. She could barely stand, the coughing worse, the grey of her skin darker than it was in Zürich, and the last thing she said before I shifted was “bring her back, Knox.”She said it like a plea and a command at the same time, like a dying woman handing you her final wish and expecting you to carry it because she w
EMBER’S POVThe transformation is fluid, dark fur receding into bronze skin, the wolf compressing into the tall, bloodied, naked figure of a man looking at me with an expression so tender it makes the terror worse because monsters aren’t supposed to look at you like you’re their salvation.“There you are.” A whisper, soft and reverent. “My little flame.”He crouches in front of me where I’ve collapsed in the snow, my body shaking with the heat, the cold, the warring instincts of a woman who wants to run and a wolf who wants to surrender.His hand reaches for my face, fingertips trembling, hovering an inch from my cheekbone.“I forgive you,” he whispers, and the sincerity in his voice is the most horrifying part. “For the scratches. For the running. For all of it. I could never hurt you, Ember. Not you.” His gaze flickers toward the snowdrift where Queenie lies motionless, toward the tree where Nathaniel’s wolf crumpled. “Your friends, unfortunately, will not receive the same mercy. Th
EMBER’S POVThe frame groans, metal buckling, my window shattering inward, and with the broken glass comes the full force of his scent, and the heat responds to it with a ferocity that breaks something inside me.My core clenches so hard I gasp and wetness floods between my thighs and the ache that has been building all night blooms into something so consuming that my vision whites out at the edges.My breasts are swollen and tender against the fabric of the dress and my skin is so sensitised that even Queenie’s arms around me feel like too much and not enough at the same time.And the emptiness between my legs is a living thing now, a howling void demanding to be filled by hands and mouth and body.I can feel every pulse of blood rushing south, can feel the slickness coating my inner thighs, can feel my wolf surging toward the surface with one word on her lips that she screams over and over: MATE. MATE. MATE.“Something’s happening to her.” Queenie’s voice, high and scared. “Nathanie
EMBER’S POVI stare down at Knox on his knees, my pulse slamming so hard I can feel it between my legs. He's grinning up at me like a wolf who's already tasted blood, gold eyes glowing, fangs just barely peeking past his lip.I fold my arms, pretending my thighs aren't already trembling."What do I
EMBER'S POVI'm terrified this will ruin the moment. This fragile, beautiful thing we've built under the Northern Lights.But I'm tired of everyone telling me what to think about Knox. Tired of Gale's poison and Rayana's warnings and rumors whispered behind hands at cocktail receptions.We don't ow
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 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







