LOGINEmber's POVThe ambulance was faster than I expected.Four minutes from Claire's call to the gate. They came with the specific efficient urgency of people who did this regularly and had learned to move without drama. They assessed Rebecca where she was, got her onto the stretcher, asked us questions we answered as quickly and accurately as we could, and then she was in the ambulance and moving.Claire and I ran back to the school for a moment — grabbed bags, told the security officer at the gate what had happened, got the name of the hospital from the paramedic who stayed behind to take our details. Then we got a taxi and followed.The hospital was not far.The waiting room was the waiting room. Plastic chairs and fluorescent light and a desk where someone took our information and told us the doctor would update us when there was something to update. We sat down. Claire had her coat still on. I had one hand on my phone and one hand in my lap and I looked at the door that Rebecca had g
Ember's POVClaire had found me after the last lecture.She appeared at the door of the lecture hall as students were filing out, which meant she had come specifically to find me rather than just happening to be passing, and her expression had the particular quality of someone who had decided to do something they had been working up to."I am sorry," she said. "For this morning. In the corridor."I looked at her."I should not have walked away like that," she said. "I left you with him and I left Rebecca with a situation that was mine to be part of too." She held my gaze in the direct way she held everything. "That was wrong.""You do not have to—""I know I do not have to," she said. "I am doing it because it is accurate." She paused. "Are we fine?""We are fine," I said.She nodded once. Done. Claire did not extend apologies beyond their necessary length.We found Rebecca at the library exit and the three of us walked out together — Rebecca slightly quieter than normal, the morning
Ember's POVI heard him behind me before the door had fully closed.Not footsteps following me — just his voice, carrying through the gap before the door shut, the last of it reaching me in the corridor."I will destroy it."The door closed.I kept walking."Whatever it is," he said, muffled now through the door, the words reaching me anyway the way sounds reached me differently since the wolf had started waking. "I do not care what it takes. I do not care how long it takes." A pause. "I will destroy it."I turned a corner.The cafeteria was behind me and the corridor ahead was the ordinary busy corridor of a school between periods and I walked through it at a normal pace and told myself the coldness sitting in my chest was just the air conditioning.It was not just the air conditioning.---The facilities office was on the ground floor of the main building.I reported the writing on the cafeteria walls to a man who looked like he had heard many things in this office and was adding th
Ember's POVI was three steps from the cafeteria door when I heard his chair scrape.I did not stop walking."You have made a mistake," Ethan said.His voice carried across the room. Not shouting — he knew better than to shout in a room this full of people with phones. Just loud enough to reach me, loud enough that the people between us could hear it, loud enough to be a public statement rather than a private one.I stopped.Not because I was afraid.Because some conversations needed to be finished properly and walking away from an unfinished one in front of sixty people left the ending to the person who kept talking, and Ethan was not the person I wanted to leave with the ending.I turned around.He was on his feet beside the table we had shared. He had his hands at his sides and his jaw was set and the expression on his face had moved through the devastation and arrived somewhere harder."Rejecting me," he said, "is a mistake."The cafeteria was quiet again. It kept doing that — fin
Ember's POVI looked at him steadily."Leave me alone," I said.Ethan blinked."That is the one thing," I said. "Not a complicated task. Not something that requires resources or planning or any particular skill. Just — leave me alone." I held his gaze. "No calls. No texts. No showing up outside my dormitory. No delivering notes through junior students. No appearing in hallways and cafeterias and corridors and demanding conversations I have not agreed to have." I paused. "Leave me alone. Completely and permanently. That is what I want."He stared at me."You swore," I said. "On your mother."Something moved through his expression. Not anger — the specific devastation of someone who had expected to be asked for the impossible and had been given something worse than impossible. Something simple. Something he could not argue with or negotiate around or find a workaround for."Ember—""There is one more thing," I said.He waited."I was going to keep this between us," I said. "I had decide
Ember's POVRebecca lasted about four minutes.She tried. I could see her trying — eating her food, looking at her phone, finding things to occupy herself while Ethan sat at his table across the cafeteria and the room gradually returned to normal around the name still written on the walls.Then she put her fork down."I cannot," she said.I looked at her."I cannot sit here with him in the room," she said. "I know that is not what you need right now and I am sorry but I cannot do it." She picked up her bag. "I will find you after class.""Rebecca—""I am not angry at you," she said. "I just need to not be in this room." She looked at me with the honest, tired expression she had when she had reached a genuine limit and was not performing it. "Are you going to be okay?""Yes," I said.She nodded once.She left.I sat at the table and did not look at Ethan's side of the cafeteria and ate the rest of my lunch at a pace that said I was not rushing and I was not affected and this was a perf
Knox's POVThe moment the door clicked shut behind her, I lost the fight. I had been holding it back since the second I turned from the window and saw her eyes open in the dark, through all of her questions and all of her anger and all of the things she said that I knew I deserved. I had stood ther
Ember's POV I woke up in the middle of the night and for about three seconds, I didn't know where I was. Then it all came back. The party. Ethan. The key. Knox's apartment and the trophies on every shelf and the way he had looked at me when I told him I had never done this before — not with pity
Knox's POV I almost didn't go to the party. Parties were not really my thing, not in the way people thought they were. Everyone assumed that because I was the team captain and because girls always wanted to talk to me and because I had a reputation that followed me everywhere I went, I must love
Ember's POVTonight was supposed to be the best night of my life.I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and carefully lined my lips, taking my time the way I never usually did. I was the kind of girl who rushed through getting ready because there was always something more important waiting — a le







