KNOX’S POV
“Leave?”
“Tonight.” I wave a wet hand toward the door. “We take Silas’s ridiculous box of food, steal a car, and drive to the southern packs where nobody knows my face. We buy an ugly little house near the sea. You get a garden. I grow a beard, get fat, and tell everybody I used to fish for a living. The East would never find us there. Case closed.”
Ember laughs against my chest.
“And the North? What happens to your people?”
“What about them?”
“Knox!” She smacks my bare shoulder, splashing water right into my face.
“Fine. Fine.” I shrug one shoulder. “Apparently they still require a King. Deeply inconvenient. But I’m allowed to fantasise about running away with my wife for thirty seconds.”
She turns and swats my chest with the flat of her hand again.
“That is incredibly
