MasukEMBER’S POV“Never. Not once. Not his name, not his bloodline, not where he was from. Just that the affair was brief and that whatever he was connected to scared her badly enough to disappear.”“What did you do? When she told you.”Maurice’s face changes. “I lost my mind.” He says it plainly. “I put my fist through the kitchen wall. That wall, right there.” He nods toward a patch near the doorway where the paint doesn’t quite match the rest. “Then I got in the car and drove to every bar in a thirty-mile radius and drank until they stopped serving me. Then I drove home and drank everything in the house. Then I went to sleep on the lawn because I couldn’t find the front door.”“While I was inside.”“Yes. Probably alone and confused, because your mother had gone to a friend’s and the man you thought was your father was lying shit-faced in the grass trying to make the stars stop spinning.” His voice thickens. “I woke up the next morning with frost on my jacket and you standing over me in
EMBER’S POVHe blinks. The word hits him harder than I expected, or maybe harder than I intended, because something in his expression collapses and rebuilds in the space of a breath. I didn’t plan to call him Dad. It just came out. The muscle memory of this porch, this house, this man standing in this exact spot where he used to wait for me after school on the days he remembered to be there.“Can we come in?” I ask. “This isn’t a social visit.”He nods quickly, wiping his hands again even though they’re already clean, and holds the screen door open for us with such careful courtesy.The house is small enough that the front door puts you in the living room, and the living room bleeds into the kitchen without much of a boundary between them. It’s cleaner than I expected. He’s been keeping house in a way he never managed when I was growing up, and the effort of it is visible in the scrubbed counters, the single plate and single cup on the drying rack, the organised spice rack that I w
EMBER’S POVQueenie doesn’t answer.I glance over and she’s staring at the dashboard and tears are sliding down her cheeks in two clean lines and her mouth is pressed shut and she’s not making a sound. She’s just sitting there, crying silently, and the silence is louder than anything she could have said because the answer is in the tears and the tears say no.I don’t push. I don’t fill the quiet with comfort or platitudes. I just let her cry, because sometimes that’s the kindest thing you can do.After a while, she wipes her face, exhales, and straightens her shoulders the way women do when they’re putting themselves back together in real time.“Well,” she says, her voice rough. “That was deeply unpleasant.”“Yeah.”“I’m going to need to think about some things.”“Yeah.”“But not right now. Right now I need to do something very stupid and very loud.”I pull the car to the shoulder, and the engine idles in the quiet.“Roll your window down,” I say.“It’s minus ten degrees, Ember.”“R
EMBER’S POVThe question lands in the car like a third passenger. I take my eyes off the road long enough to look at her and from her face, I can tell she is not fishing for reassurance or testing me. She’s asking because she genuinely doesn’t know the answer and the not knowing is eating her from the inside.“Queenie—”“I know he’s my fated mate. I know the Goddess paired us. I know all the texts and the traditions and the lore that says this bond is sacred and chosen and meant to be. But the Goddess didn’t sit in that room this morning and listen to my husband confess that he drugged his best friend’s coffee and engineered a woman’s death for research data.” Her hands are twisting in her lap, fingers pulling at each other. “How am I supposed to lie next to him tonight knowing what he’s capable of? How am I supposed to let him touch me and trust that the hands on my body belong to the man I married and not the man who stood in a monitoring station while sixty-three people died?”“I
EMBER’S POVI drive.It’s a small thing, maybe nothing to anyone watching, but my hands on the steering wheel feel like reclamation.For weeks, other people have driven me places. Knox carrying me through hallways, Nathaniel behind the wheel of getaway cars, Rafael’s guards hauling me through forests.I’ve been a passenger in every sense of the word, moved from location to location by men who decided where I needed to be and when I needed to be there. Today I drive.The Alaskan highway stretches flat and white and endless ahead of us, and Queenie is in the passenger seat with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes fixed on the treeline, as if the snow-covered pines hold a clever secret.We haven’t spoken since pulling away from the compound. Knox’s goodbye is still warm on my lips, and a silver bullet gun is in the glovebox because trouble, Knox reasoned, has a GPS lock on my location, and he’d rather I carry something lethal.I didn’t argue. He’s not entirely wrong. If Gale somehow
Hi, everyone! Good evening. Just a quick update — I’m a little slow with writing today because I’m dealing with the flu. I’ve taken meds, but they come with drowsiness and sleepiness as side effects. My head’s been hot and hurting, and I’m honestly just exhausted. I’m still working on the chapter though! Just slower than usual because I’m frankly out of it right now. Hopefully I can finish before the day is over and get it posted. Also — big news: I’m officially done with my day job! Which means way more writing time from here on out. So yay to that! Now, I saw someone ask how often I update. Updates are daily double/triple updates! But let me explain my workflow so you understand why there might be pauses sometimes. I write in marathons. I have ADHD, so when I hyperfixate and lock in, I get a LOT done — we’re talking 10 chapters in two or three days. Then I take a break until the next wave of focus hits. Usually that lines up perfectly with the scheduled chapters running out, so
EMBER’S POVThe mattress dips sometime after three in the morning.I’ve been lying here for hours, staring at the ceiling, my mind running circles around the photo of Queenie still burning a hole in my phone.Sleep feels impossible. Every time I close my eyes, I see Rayana bleeding on the marble. S
EMBER’S POVI nod desperately.“Liar.” He pumps into me slowly, his thumb circling my clit with featherlight pressure that’s nowhere near enough. “You’re never quiet. It’s one of my favorite things about you.”“For goddess sake, Knox, please—”“Please what?” He’s smiling now, the bastard. Enjoying
EMBER’S POV“I want to recover here. In this penthouse. Not locked away somewhere safe and isolated.”And there it is. The trade she’s been building toward.I almost laugh.“You want to stay here,” I repeat slowly. “With us. With Knox.”“You heard me. What part of dying don’t you seem to understand
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







