All Chapters of BREAK ME KNOT: An Omegaverse Quarterback Romance: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Maeve’s POV The silence in the apartment after the door closed was a physical weight. It felt like the oxygen had been sucked out of the room, leaving nothing but the lingering scent of my mother’s expensive perfume and the cold, invisible ghost of the folder that had been on the table seconds ago. I couldn't move. I sat on the edge of the couch, my hands clasped so tightly in my lap that my knuckles were white. My mind was a chaotic storm of numbers and faces. One million. The Ashford Foundation. The clerkship. The look on the face of the man my mother wanted me to marry. Everything I had ever been told I was, was tied to the woman who had just walked out that door. Declan hadn't moved. He was still standing by the coffee table, his broad shoulders hunched, his hands balled into fists at his sides. I could feel the heat coming off him, a low, thrumming vibration of anger and hurt that was bleeding through the bond, staining my own emotions until I couldn't tell where I ended and

Maeve’s POV The video came from an unknown number at nine the next morning. I was sitting on the edge of my bed, staring at a cup of cold coffee that Alana had left for me. My phone buzzed on the nightstand, a sharp, intrusive sound in the quiet room. No message. Just a file, forty-three seconds long, clearly taken on a phone held at table level by someone who had been trying very hard not to be seen doing it. The quality was not good, and the image was a blur of mahogany table legs and the hem of a charcoal suit—but the audio was clinical. I pressed play. The lawyer’s voice came through first. Mr. Sterling, one of the primary partners at the firm that handled my mother's private interests. His voice was professional and flat, the sound of a man who moved millions of dollars around as easily as some people moved furniture. "Mr. Hayes. The offer stands as presented," Sterling said. I could hear the rustle of the paper of the contract. "One million dollars, deposited into a private

Maeve’s POV The transformation didn't start in my head; it started in my hands. On Monday morning, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror in the dorm. The lighting was harsh, illuminating the faint blue veins in my wrists and the shadow under my eyes from a weekend of not sleeping. I picked up the foundation stick, the same one I had used every morning since October to hide the truth from the world. I looked at the bond mark. It was vivid today, a deep, bruised violet that seemed to pulse in time with my heart. It was a brand. To my mother, it was a defect. To the law school, it was a distraction. I thought about the six weeks. I thought about the video. I thought about the way Declan’s voice had broken when he said he wanted his mate. I looked at the foundation stick, and for the first time, it didn't look like a tool for survival. It looked like a tool for betrayal. I put it back in the drawer and closed it. Alana noticed at breakfast. We were sitting in the dining hall, the

Declan’s POV The locker room felt like a pressure cooker. The air was thick with the scent of pine-sol, wet equipment, and the sharp, ozone-scented anxiety of twenty young men who realized their captain had just nuked his own social standing in front of the entire student body. I stripped my gear off in silence. Every snap of a strap, every clatter of a pad against the floor, sounded like a gunshot. I could feel the eyes on me—the sideways glances from the freshmen, the worried frowns from the seniors. Nobody knew what to say. In the world of collegiate sports, "low-drama" is the currency of the elite. I had just spent that currency and gone into a massive, unpayable debt. I sat in my stall, my head in my hands, letting the sweat drip onto the rubber mat between my feet. My phone was already vibrating in my bag. I didn't have to look to know who it was. Dan, my agent, would be spiraling. The scouts from the Bruins and the Rangers would be recalibrating their "character" assessm

Declan’s POV The sun was a pale, weak sliver on the horizon when we finally sat down at the small wooden table in my apartment. The air was cold because I hadn't turned the heat up, but the bond was acting like a space heater, a constant, low-frequency thrum of shared warmth that filled the kitchen. Maeve was sitting across from me, her silver hair pulled back in a messy knot, her laptop open. She looked like a general surveying a losing battlefield, her eyes darting across spreadsheets and bank statements with a clinical, terrifying focus. This was the Ashford in her; the part that didn't panic but planned. "Okay," she said, her voice steady now, though the exhaustion was etched into the corners of her mouth. "If we're doing this, we need rules. We can't survive on adrenaline and romance, Declan. Not with my mother holding the deck." "I'm listening," I said. I pushed a mug of coffee toward her. She took it without looking, her fingers brushing mine, sending a jolt of static throu