LOGINEMBER’S POV“Silas!” Devika shrieks from the floor, her composure shattering. “Don’t just stand there, kill him! Butcher him right this second!”Silas doesn’t even glance at her. He just chuckles, a dark, rumbling sound that vibrates through the massive room.He steps closer, his dark eyes looking Knox up and down, dissecting the heavy rise and fall of the Alpha’s chest.“You bluff well for a man who doesn’t look so good,” Silas murmurs, highly amused. “What’s wrong, Wolf King? Your woman didn’t fuck you well enough before you came?”A guttural, chest-rattling growl rips out of Knox.Silas’s smile widens.“Or let me guess. Dead-nettle poison to mask your scent?”My heart drops straight into my stomach.I stare at the massive crime lord, completely paralysed. He figured it out.He took one look at Knox’s slowed reflexes, the blood that wasn’t clotting, and he decoded the exact poison we used in a matter of seconds.Silas chuckles again, shaking his head slowly like he is watching toddl
EMBER’S POVKnox deflects her arm; the explosive sound is deafening as the bullet tears wildly across the expansive floor.In a single, brutal blur of motion, Knox rips the weapon from her grip, hauls me behind his massive back, and drives Devika to her knees, racking the slide of her own gun against her temple.Across the room, the private lift doors slide open.The stray bullet buries itself directly into the shoulder of the man stepping out.All the breath is sucked out of my lungs.The man doesn’t stagger. He doesn’t drop the silver spoon in his hand. He doesn’t even look down at the blood rapidly blooming across the shoulder of his leather jacket.He just stands there, an enormous, scarred mountain of a man holding a small porcelain ramekin, staring at the chaos in the room“Enough,” he says, just as the rogues try to dive at us.The whole room changes. Every rogue freezes, the murderous heat of the mob instantly bleeding out into absolute terror.The man finally glances down at
EMBER’S POV“That is enough, Knox Volkov.” Her breath saws against my ear. “Or I redecorate this floor with your girl’s skull. Drop the men, drop the chain, and get down. Now.”Knox goes still.He turns, slow, and takes in the sight of my own mother holding a gun to my head.“Let her go,” he growls, dropping the rogue in his grip and diving forward.Bang.The gunshot cuts through the casino noise. A bullet buries itself into the floorboards an inch from Knox’s brogues, stopping his charge instantly.Devika grinds the hot barrel violently into the base of my skull. Before I can gasp, her free hand whips around my waist.The cold, wicked edge of a hunting knife presses hard against my ribs, the tip digging through my dress and biting sharply into my skin.“Get on the floor!” Devika shrieks, frantic and completely unhinged. “Do not play with me!”My heart races, a frantic drumbeat hammering against my ribs.“She’s bluffing, Knox,” I choke out, locking eyes with him.“I am not,” Devika hi
EMBER’S POVKnox matches their fury like a true beast.There’s no roar or hesitation to his steps. He just moves with a brutal, blunt-force violence, carried out with the terrifying speed of an apex predator trapped in a bespoke suit.The first rogue reaches him, and Knox catches the outstretched arm, twists, and snaps the elbow with a wet crack, using the man’s own momentum to hurl him into the second.They go down in a heap of limbs and splintered wood.But I can see what the dead-nettle poison is doing to him. Any other night, Knox is a blur, an untouchable force of nature.Tonight he’s grounded, fighting a desperate war of attrition, hauling a body that’s running on half its usual blood.A blade flashes from his blindside. He dodges a fraction of a second too late, and the steel opens a bright wet line across his jaw.He doesn’t so much as blink; he just buries his fist in the attacker’s throat with a sickening brutality, but his chest is heaving now, and it shouldn’t be.“Behind
EMBER’S POV“You stupid girl,” she hisses. “You stupid, reckless, selfish girl. You never think. You have never once in your life stopped to think before you fling yourself headlong into a thing — do you know whose house this is? Do you have any idea what these people do to those who lie their way onto their floors?” Her hands come up to her mouth, and she’s not even fully talking to me now; she’s talking to the room, to herself. “She’s buried herself. She’s walked in here and buried herself alive, and she’s dragged me down into the hole right beside her; of course she has, because that is what she does- that has always been what she—”“Mother, stop.” I’m on my feet now, hands out, gentling, pleading. “You’re spiralling. Nothing has to happen here. Nobody has to know anything. I am begging you — sit down, take a breath, and just talk to me. We only want to talk—”“We?”And her eyes snap past my shoulder.To the masked, silent bodyguard standing behind me. To the wall of black she’s be
EMBER’S POVThe VIP court is quieter, richer, sealed behind another set of black doors — a private room of luxury and low gold light, a single low table, chairs that cost more than I made in a year of my old life.Cassian settles me in with a drink I have no intention of touching, murmurs that the mistress will attend me shortly, and withdraws.And then it’s just me, and Knox, and the pounding of my own pulse.Knox steps in close behind my chair, mask still on, and his voice comes low and rough and just for me.“Whatever she is when that door opens — don’t let her get her hooks in you. You get your questions. You get your answers. We get out. That’s all this is.”“And if she won’t answer?”“Then she answers to me.” His hand brushes my shoulder, brief and possessive. “Sit. Be the heiress. I’ve got your back — I’ve literally got your back, I’m standing behind it.”Despite everything, I nearly laugh, and it steadies me, and I settle into the chair.I cross one leg slowly over the other,
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
EMBER’S POVWhen I step outside the girls’ cabin with Rayana and Queenie flanking me, Rayana is mid-monologue about the caribou she’s planning to devour at dinner — something about sinking her teeth into tender, perfectly seared meat that borders on orgasmic — and I’m half-listening, half-scanning
EMBER’S POVThe laughter dies. Everyone’s eyes slide to Knox, who shrugs without a trace of shame.“Not much of a secret if you all already know.”“You could have at least tried to be mysterious about it,” Rayana sighs. “Where’s the fun in confessing things everyone already knows?”“You said write
EMBER’S POV“Finally,” Rayana drawls. “I thought we were going to have to hose you two down.”“Shut up,” I say, but I’m grinning. “Let’s go eat your caribou.”Dinner is a production.Rafael has transformed the main lodge into something out of a fairy tale — candles everywhere, a fire roaring in the







