LOGINKnox's POVTen minutes.I counted them. Not precisely — I did not look at my phone — but I tracked them the way you tracked time when you were standing outside a closed door with no control over what was happening behind it. The corridor was quiet and the clinic sounds moved around us and Rebecca had stopped trying to get me to talk and was standing with her arms crossed looking at the same door I was looking at.Eight minutes in she shifted her weight from one foot to the other.Nine minutes in I heard the sound of movement inside the room.At ten minutes the door opened.The doctor came out.He looked at me. Then at Rebecca. His face was still in that careful neutral position — not giving anything, not suggesting anything, the face of a man who had received information and was processing it somewhere we could not see.He did not say a word.He walked past us down the corridor toward his office at the other end. His footsteps were even and unhurried and then a door opened and closed
Knox's POVI opened my mouth.She was lying and she knew I knew she was lying and in approximately thirty seconds I needed to tell her what I had told the doctor before the doctor told her himself, because the moment he walked into that room and mentioned a hereditary condition she had apparently described to me in detail, the whole thing collapsed.I needed thirty seconds."Ember," I said. "There is something I need to tell you before—"The door opened.The doctor came in.He had his clipboard and his white coat and the same careful neutral expression he had carried into the lobby two hours ago. He looked at me. He looked at Rebecca. He looked at Ember in the bed."Miss Cole," he said. "How are you feeling?""Better," Ember said. "Thank you.""Good." He moved toward the bed, positioning himself at the side of it with the practiced efficiency of someone comfortable in this space. "I need a few minutes with my patient." He looked at me and Rebecca. "If you would wait outside.""We can
Ember's POVThe first thing I noticed was the ceiling.White and flat and lit from below by the kind of light that had no warmth in it — the specific brightness of a room designed for visibility rather than comfort. I looked at it for a moment without understanding it. Then I understood it and the understanding was not a relief.Clinic.I turned my head slowly.Rebecca was on my left, sitting in the chair pulled close to the bed, and she was already looking at me — had been watching my face, probably, waiting for the exact moment my eyes opened, because that was what Rebecca did when she was frightened. She watched.Knox was on my right.Standing rather than sitting, hands in his jacket pockets, looking at me with an expression that I did not have the energy to read in full yet but that contained something significant."Hey," I said. My voice came out rougher than expected. "Hi."Rebecca made a sound.It was not a word. Just a sound that came from somewhere she had been holding someth
Knox's POVThe doctor's office was small.A desk, two chairs across from it, a filing cabinet, a window that looked out onto the side of the building next door. He sat behind the desk and put the clipboard down and folded his hands on top of it and looked at me with the patient, waiting expression of someone whose job required them to receive difficult information calmly.I sat down.I had built the story on the walk from the lobby to this room. Not a complicated one — complicated stories had more places to go wrong. Simple was better. Simple was harder to pull apart."Her name is Ember Cole," I said. "She is a second year. Pre-med.""I know her name," the doctor said. "Tell me what I do not know.""She has a condition," I said. "Something that runs in her family. Her mother had it. Her mother's mother had it before that. Multiple generations." I kept my voice steady and matter-of-fact, the way you talked about things that were simply true. "She told me about it a few weeks ago. She d
Knox's POVWe were both on our feet before he had crossed half the lobby."How is she?" Rebecca said. "Is she okay? Can we see her?"The doctor stopped in front of us. He had the clipboard against his chest and his expression had not changed from the careful neutral it had carried since the door opened, and that neutrality — held this long, this consistently — was its own kind of unsettling.He did not answer immediately."Please," Rebecca said. "Just tell us if she is alive.""Is she okay?" I said, at the same time.The doctor looked between us. He opened his mouth. He seemed to be choosing his words with more care than the question required, and the gap between the question and the answer stretched out in a way that made my chest go tight."Please," Rebecca said again, quieter now, almost pleading."Is something wrong with her?" I said. "Tell us."The doctor finally spoke."She is stable," he said.The two words landed and the entire lobby seemed to exhale around us — Rebecca's hand
Knox's POVRebecca was watching my face."What?" she said. "Why are you looking at me like that?"I sat with it for a second before I answered. The exact timing — the start of it, the worsening at midnight, the specific alignment with the moon's path through the sky — was not something I could explain to her right now. Not in a fluorescent-lit lobby with a closed door we were both waiting on. Not without context she did not have and was not ready for.But I could not pretend I had not noticed it either."I might know something about what happened to her," I said carefully. "Something about the timing. I am not certain yet. But it matters and I am not going to dismiss it."Rebecca leaned forward. "What do you mean you might know something?""I need to wait and hear what the doctors say first," I said. "Before I tell you anything that might be wrong. If I am right about what I am thinking, it changes things significantly. If I am wrong, I do not want to send you down a path that is not
Ember's POVKnox came to my room the next morning before first class.I had half-expected him to text the information. That was what the previous version of this would have looked like — a message, carefully worded, containing the parts he had decided were relevant, delivered in a way that let him
Ember's POVI was half human and half wolf and I did not know what to do with that information.Not in the sense of rejecting it. Knox had told me it explains everything and he was right — the sounds, the smells, the dreams of running through dark forests on four legs, the desk moving with one hand
Knox's POVI made it in four minutes.The training gear was still in my bag when I knocked on her door. She said come in and I pushed it open and she was sitting on the floor with her back against the bed and her hands pressed over her ears, which was the worst thing she could do for the kind of se
Ember's POVI made the decision at six-thirty in the morning.Not dramatically. Not after a long sleepless night of agonizing over it, which was what I had half-expected to happen. I woke up at six-fifteen, lay in the grey early light for fifteen minutes, and then the answer was just there — clear







