KNOX’S POV

“No.”

“He raised you.”

“He saved me.” Nathaniel’s voice is stripped to the bone. “I was eleven. Living in the drainage tunnels under the old industrial district. Eating whatever I could steal. He found me during one of his community rounds — the pack clinics he ran in the low-income districts. I had a fever that should have killed me, and he brought me home and treated me for three weeks, and when the fever broke, he didn’t send me back to the tunnels.” A pause. “He gave me a bed. He gave me books. He gave me a name on medical forms and a place at his...