Lahat ng Kabanata ng OFFSIDE MATE: REJECTED BY ONE ALPHA. CLAIMED BY ANOTHER.: Kabanata 21 - Kabanata 30

~Elena~I'd stopped counting days.In the beginning I counted. Scratched marks into the concrete with my broken thumbnail. I got to nineteen before they moved me to a different room where the light didn't change at all.Time became something shapeless.I learned other things instead. The sound of every guard's footsteps. Which ones paused outside my door. The chains were slightly looser on my left wrist if I held my hand at a specific angle. The concrete was warmer near the east wall in the early morning. I pressed my back against it and thought about Edinburgh. My flat on Nicholson Street. Contract law at 9am. Ordinary things. Safe things.About Sloane.Crew said her name often. That specific way — like it was something he owned.He said it on the phone, in the corridor, once with his hand on my jaw. "Tell me where she is and this gets easier."I didn't know where she was.And I wouldn't have told him if I did.But her name in his mouth had become poisoned. Something tha

~KAI~I heard her through the wall.Not words at first. Just muffled sounds.My hand was already on the door handle before I finished identifying what it was.I told myself I was just going to check. …Her door wasn't locked.I pushed it open and the room was dark except for the moonlight cutting through the curtains and I saw her immediately. On the floor beside the bed, half tangled in the sheets she'd dragged down with her, her whole body shaking.My chest seized up completely."Mum… please… I'm sorry—"I crossed the room in four steps."I should have stayed… I should have fought… why didn't I fight—"She was burning. Sweat had soaked through her shirt and her hair was everywhere. Her hands were clutching the carpet like she was trying to hold onto something that kept disappearing. I crouched down.Slid one arm under her knees and one behind her back and lifted her from the floor. She weighed almost nothing.I put her on the bed.Still shaking and murmuring her mother'

~SLOANE~I felt like myself for the first time in weeks when I laced up my skates.Not completely. Not the version of myself from before the coronation and the passage. But the version that existed on ice.I needed that version badly this morning.The dining table was set when I came downstairs. Anton had been and gone — eggs, toast, coffee already poured. I sat down and started eating and two minutes later I heard footsteps from the hallway.Kai.Dark clothes. Always dark clothes. He sat at the far end of the table without looking at me and reached for the coffee. We ate in silence pretending the other wasn't there.His eyes came up.Mine did too.We both looked away at exactly the same moment.This happened three more times before I put my fork down."You invaded my privacy last night," I said."Good morning to you too," he said."You walked into my room without asking.""You were having a nightmare.""That's not an invitation—""You were on the floor," he said

The car ride was the longest twenty minutes of my life.Not because anything happened. Because nothing happened and everything was loud anyway.Kai drove. I sat in the passenger seat and looked out the window and caught him, twice, three times, glancing across at me before looking back at the road. He never said anything about the glances. Neither did I.He was wearing a dark brown suit.Same shade as my dress, which was either Anton's doing or a coincidence and I was not going to think about which.I had never noticed how handsome he actually was.Not the cold surface of it that I'd registered the first time I saw him. The actual thing. The way everything about his face was too sharp to be pretty…I looked back out the window before I finished the thought."You're staring," he said."I have a wide field of vision," I said. "It's a gift."The corner of his mouth moved two millimeters.I looked out the window.…The building was already full when we arrived.We walked in side by side a

"What are you doing in here?"I spun around.Kai stood in the doorway.I had seen him cold and dangerous. Controlled in the way that made dangerous look like a hobby. I had been lifted off the ice by one hand. I had watched him neutralize people through a radio like it was administrative work.None of that had prepared me for this.His face was doing something I had never seen it do. Not anger — underneath anger. Something that lived below it, that had been living below it for a long time before I walked into this room and dragged it to the surface."I was just—" I started."GET OUT."The words didn't come out loud. They came out like something that had been held under pressure for too long and finally gave way — not a shout, worse than a shout.I flinched.My whole body. Involuntary and immediate, one step back before I decided to move."GET OUT OF THIS ROOM." His voice cracked on the last word and that was somehow the worst part. Not the volume. The crack. "RIGHT NOW. GET OUT."I ra