habits and attitudes and memories you always had. I guess—well, I had a lot on my plate just trying to figure out what it all meant for me, but it's not like I suddenly had a desire to lie about who I was or bend over backward trying to please anyone. But to everyone else, it was like I was a whole new thing. Someone they didn't even recognize."
"Wow…" Josie stretched out the word, exhaling a long breath. "I'm sorry."
Instantly, the wall came back up, and the note of sadness disappeared from Knox's voice. "Don't be. I wasn't fishing for pity. I just haven't thought about it in a long time."
Not surprising, Josie thought. She wouldn't want to think about something like that either. But as with her own deep-buried longing for a father who loved her exactly as she was, Josie had a feeling that Knox's own emotions were no less powerful for being hidden away from the outside.
"I mean, I'm sorry," she said quietly. She, of all people, should have seen through all the government's bullshit propaganda about alphas. "Me personally. For believing everything I heard about alphas, for being afraid because I didn't understand.
Alphas are violent. Alphas aren't even human. Alphas only want our women.
The same kind of lies they peddled about women's rights activists like her.
Women are weak. Women are too emotional to be trusted. Women can't survive on their own.
Knox watched her with narrowed eyes. "Did you know someone whose nature changed?"
Not before you. Josie didn't dare say the words; somehow, they seemed too intimate. Yes, a bond had formed between her and Knox over the past few days, but it was a friendly one, nothing more. It was what they had both agreed to.
"Not until I came here," she settled for. "But that doesn't matter. I should have done better. I mean, I fought like hell when the government started cracking down on women's rights, but it never crossed my mind to fight for you."
One corner of Knox's mouth quirked up. "Don't beat yourself up, sugar. We don't need anyone's help fighting."
Sugar. Josie blushed slightly every time he said it. She wasn't sure why Knox had taken to calling her that, but it always caught her off guard. She knew it shouldn't—it was just a random, friendly endearment, something friends called each other all the time.
"Not here, maybe," she conceded. "Not in the Boundarylands. But out in the beta world, you could use an advocate, you know, given all the shit that's going on. Someone who can share what you're really like."
Knox stilled, his jaw tightening. A shiver of warning shot up Josie's spine, and she froze too, like a rabbit in the path of a wolf.
The change in Knox was instantaneous. When he spoke, his voice was devoid of all its warmth, its easy drawl. "You may have spent a week sleeping in my house, but don't fool yourself. You have no idea what I'm really like."
"Knox, I'm sorry." The words tumbled over themselves, even though Josie didn't know what she was apologizing for. "I didn't mean to presume—"
"Of course you did." Josie could feel the rumble of his voice through the floor. "You think you'd be helping by telling the world all about your adventure in the Boundarylands? That alphas aren't all that bad? That we don't snarl and drool and rip women apart at first sight?"
"But—it's true. You're nothing like what I was taught alphas were like. What the government is telling everyone about you."
Knox only seemed to grow angrier, his muscles rigid as he sat up straighter. "That's because you've known me for a week, and we've been snowed in the whole time with nothing to do but talk. You haven't known me in any other season when I'm covered in blood and gore from hunting and skinning. You've never seen me hit a man so hard he goes flying. You've never caught me pounding a whore so long that she has to be carried home."
Josie drew back as though she’d been slapped. Knox was right. She hadn't seen any of that. And she wasn't sure if the heat rising in her face was a sign that she never wanted to…or that she wanted to know more.
"Do you really want me to believe that everything I've heard about alphas is true?" she challenged him. "That you're a mindless killing machine?"
"Mindless? No."
Knox was glaring at her without blinking, and Josie forced herself to hold his gaze despite the pounding of her