Mag-log inEMBER’S POVWhere we’re going turns out to be a room in the sub level I didn’t know existed, all matted floor and low light and the specific smell of a place where people hurt each other on purpose.It’s cold. I’m still half-asleep. I hate everything.“So how does this—” I start, and he’s already moving.“Stance.” He circles behind me. “Feet apart. Wider. Weight back on your heels, not your toes, or the first person who touches you puts you on the floor.” His hands land on my hips.And my entire brain shorts out.Because his hands are large, and they are warm even through the fabric.They close over the curve of my hips and adjust me, tilting, squaring, and his chest comes up flush against my back, solid and unhurried, and his mouth drops to my ear.“Centre of gravity here,” he says, low, clinical, one hand pressing flat and warm against my lower belly. “You fight from here, not from your shoulders. Feel it?”What I feel is that I have forgotten how lungs work. What I feel is the enti
EMBER’S POV“Up.”The word arrives from somewhere in the dark, attached to a hand that closes around my ankle and pulls.And I go from a warm and blameless sleep to halfway down the bed in the space of a heartbeat, clawing at sheets, making a sound I would describe as dignified and Knox would describe as a goose being stepped on.“Wha—” I flail upright, hair in my face, heart slamming. “What. What’s wrong? Who’s dying? Is it Rafael? Is it—”“Nothing’s wrong.” The lamp clicks on, and there he is, standing at the foot of the bed, fully dressed, arms crossed, looking like a man who has been awake for hours and has opinions about people who aren’t. “Get up. Get dressed. Something you can move in.”I stare at him. I stare at the window, where it is black. Fully, unapologetically black. Not a hint of grey. The kind of black that has never heard of morning.“It’s night,” I inform him.“It’s five am”“That’s night, Knox, that’s the middle of the—” I scrub a hand down my face. “Why are you dre
EMBER’S POV“I need to make calls. If he’s reaching into a public street in daylight, if he’s got people carrying his messages three feet from you, then the perimeter is already compromised. We need to check the street surveillance. Where exactly were you at the time? I want the intersection, the timestamp, everything. Where was your detail? If they were standing more than a foot away from you, I will personally strip them of their rank and throw them in the cells. If he can get a messenger that close, he could have gotten a blade that close. We need to lock down the estate. No one gets in or out. I don’t care if the entire Council is waiting at the gates, I need to—”“Knox.”“—get a team watching the stranger too. I need to run his background check and ensure he is truly clean. Fcuk—” He stops and drags a hand hard through his hair. And when he turns back to me, the King cracks for a second, and the man underneath shows through, raw, all the fear he keeps locked under the crown bleed
EMBER’S POVHe stops.And he’s grinning down at me, both of us breathing hard, my wrists still caught loose and warm in the cage of his hand above my head, my whole body gone soft and shaking with the last aftershocks of the laughter.And something in his face shifts as he looks down at me, the grin easing into something else, something that changes the air in the room, thickens it.“There,” he says, low. “Was that so hard?”“I confessed under torture. It won’t hold up.”“You looked happy under torture.” His thumb strokes once, slowly, over the frantic pulse in my wrist. “You’ve looked happy all day. I noticed the second you walked through that door.” His eyes travel my face — the flush still high in my cheeks, the wreck of my hair fanned across the pillow, the smile I can’t get rid of. “I’ve never seen you like that. Not once, in all the time I’ve known you. You came home lit up. You walked past a council elder laughing so hard you didn’t even see her.” His voice drops another regist
EMBER’S POVKnox finds me a couple of hours later, after Queenie’s left and the light’s gone gold across the mountains.I’m sitting cross-legged in the middle of the enormous bed we share, pretending to sort the day’s spoils and actually just running my palm over the ridiculous soft weight of a coat I absolutely did not need, feeling that dangerous, unfamiliar thing again.The one I keep waiting to be punished for. Peace.He stops in the doorway.“Ember.”“Mm?”“We need to discuss the gate.”“Do we, though?” I don’t look up. “Or could the gate simply be a beautiful, unspoken mystery between us, a thing we never—”“It’s six feet tall.”“It’s abstract.”“Ember.” He comes into the room, and there’s a slow, deliberate danger to the way he moves, and I finally look up, and his face is fighting very hard to be stern and losing at every seam. “A council elder photographed my front gate. She is going to show people. She told me to my face — I want you to understand she said this directly to m
EMBER’S POVKnox goes still. The King comes up behind his eyes.“Catherine.”“You didn’t hear it from me.” She folds her hands. “But you’ve a right to it, and there are those on the council who’d very much prefer you didn’t have it, which is exactly why I’m the one giving it to you.” Her pale gaze locks onto his. “Elder James has been busy.”And just like that, the warmth drains out of the room like water out of a cracked glass, and I feel Knox change beside me.“Busy how?” he asks.“Alphas.” Catherine’s voice has gone flat and precise. “They are moving. Quietly. From packs that have no earthly business speaking to one another — the northern territories, the western coast, and some from a great deal further afield than that. They’ve been coming and going for weeks, meeting in places that appear on no official record, and every one of those meetings has James’s fingerprints somewhere close by, though never quite on it. He’s careful. He’s always been careful, that man. It’s his one real
EMBER’S POVI slump back into my seat unconsciously, not realizing how rigidly I’d been holding myself until the tension drains away.Knox lifts our entwined hands to his lips and presses a kiss to my knuckles, his eyes on me.It slows the tightening in my chest. Loosens the knot that Harrison’s qu
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
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







