MasukJASPER'S POV I gripped my hockey stick tightly, taping the handle while sitting on the wooden bench inside the locker room. My muscles ached from head to toe, and my mind felt completely fried. The tape was going on crooked. I ripped it off and started again, winding it tighter this time, focusing on the small, mechanical motion because it was one of the only things I could control right now. Between hockey, family responsibilities, protecting Aria, and the growing mystery surrounding her past, it felt like there weren't enough hours in the day. Every time I thought things were finally calming down, something new happened. One minute we were celebrating a championship win, and the next Cole was finding altered birth registries, Zane was digging into international syndicates, and Aria was being followed by strange men outside campus. My brain felt like a browser with too many tabs open, each one loading something worse than the last. The only thing keeping me sane was hockey. Wh
COLE'S POV "You need to stop, Cole. You look like a ghost." Kai was standing in my doorway with a bottle of water in one hand and a look on his face that sat somewhere between concern and frustration. He tossed the water onto my desk. It landed between two stacks of printed documents and almost knocked over my cold cup of coffee. "I'll stop when I find what I'm looking for," I muttered, not looking up from the screen. My eyes burned from staring at this laptop for six straight hours. The blue light felt like it was carving grooves into my retinas. But every time I thought about closing the lid, something pulled me back in. The old wolf's words from the diner had been sitting in my brain like a splinter I couldn't reach. Stop searching before somebody notices what you are doing. That warning was supposed to scare me off. Instead, it did the opposite. Because people don't threaten you over nothing. People don't shake and sweat and beg you to walk away unless the thing you're walking
ARIA’S POVI stared out the classroom window, my fingers tapping a nervous, erratic rhythm against the wooden desk. Aria couldn't stop thinking about the stranger she saw after school. Even though she managed to get away safely and the brothers came when she called them, she couldn't shake the uncomfortable feeling from her mind.Every time she walked through the school hallways, she found herself looking around more than usual. Whenever she heard footsteps behind her, she automatically turned around, half expecting to see that man in the grey jacket staring right back at her.It annoyed her because she had worked so hard to stop living in fear after Bianca's attack. I had spent weeks sweating in the gym, learning how to throw a proper punch, building up my confidence, and trying to feel safe in my own skin.She hated feeling weak again. She hated feeling like someone could be watching her at any moment."Aria? Are you listening?" Professor Vance asked, tapping his dry-erase marker ag
ARIA'S POV The glow of my laptop screen was the only light in my room as the clock blinked past midnight. I had the faded paper pulled out right beside my keyboard, the name Valerie Vance staring back at me like it was waiting for me to crack the code. I traced the ink with my fingertip for the hundredth time, feeling the slight indent of the pen strokes against the old paper. For days I had been carrying this document around like a weapon I didn't know how to use. Pulling it out during study hall. Reading it in bathroom stalls between classes. Holding it under my blanket at night, whispering the name to myself like it might suddenly mean something if I just said it enough times. I couldn't show Cole, Kai, Reed, or Jasper. They were keeping their own massive secrets from me, tracking mysterious people and whispering behind closed doors. If I handed them this paper, they would just take control of the situation and shut me out completely again. And I was so tired of being shut out.
REED’S POVThe heavy oak doors of the athletic office swung open, and I walked out holding a thick, glossy packet of papers in my hand. The hockey team received an invitation to participate in a major inter-school competition that would bring together some of the strongest teams in the region."What's that, Reed?" Kai asked, skating over toward the benches as practice wrapped up for the afternoon."An invitation," I said, flashing a grin as I tossed the papers onto the wooden bench. "The regional championship qualifier. Only the top elite teams in the entire state get an invite."Everyone was excited because winning would bring recognition far beyond their school. The guys swarmed around the bench, shouting and high-fiving each other. This was massive. Winning this tournament meant scouts from national leagues, college recruiters, and elite pack academies would be watching our every move.Normally, I would have been the loudest one in the locker room, screaming about how we were going
BIANCA'S POV I paced back and forth across my bedroom floor, my heels clicking sharply against the hardwood. My phone was gripped so tightly in my hand that my knuckles had turned pure white. The screen had gone dark three minutes ago, but I could still see the text burned into my vision like an afterimage from staring at the sun. She's valuable because of her bloodline. Because of who her family was before the fire wiped them out. The words circled inside my skull like vultures. I couldn't make them stop. Every time I tried to push them away, they came swooping back, lower and closer, until all I could hear was the echo of that man's cold voice telling me something I didn't understand about a girl I despised. Everything I had built, every bit of social standing I possessed, had completely vanished. My reputation was in ruins. Zane wouldn't look at me. The brothers treated me like furniture. Students who used to worship me now crossed to the other side of the hallway when they
ARIA’S POVI opened my eyes slowly, immediately blinded by the harsh, bright fluorescent lights shining directly above my head. I blinked a few times, trying to focus, and the sterile smell of bleach and rubbing alcohol instantly filled my nose. I found myself lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by
ARIA’S POVI sat in the passenger seat of Zane’s car, fingers twisting in my lap, and I still couldn’t believe any of this was real. The guy I used to watch from the bleachers during hockey practice, the one I had dreamed about for so long, was right next to me. Driving. Talking to me like we did
ARIA’S POVThe next few days felt like one long nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. I did everything I could to avoid the brothers, slipping out of rooms the second they walked in, taking different routes to class, even eating lunch in the bathroom stall just to get some peace. But they wouldn’t le
ARIA’S POVI turned my back on the whole mess and just walked out of school alone. Bianca’s screams still echoed in my head, her crazy yelling while Zane dragged her away, but I didn’t look back. I didn’t want anything to do with her anymore. Not today, not ever. My legs felt heavy on the sidewal







