EMBER’S POV

Because she said it out loud.

The exact thing sitting on my chest like a stone — Rayana upstairs, drowning by the hour — and she said it smugly, dangled it like a worm on a hook over a woman she’s just put on the floor four times, and every ounce of grief and terror and fury I’ve been swallowing since I watched Rayana smile goodbye comes roaring straight up my spine—

“Never,” I snarl, and I come up off that mat with everything I have.

And I put it all into one clean brutal uppercut, exactly where Knox showed me the soft place under the jaw —...