All Chapters of My Hockey Alpha Deadly Secret : Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

Ember's POVThe inside of the building smelled of concrete and age and something else underneath both of those — something I could not name but that landed in my senses the same way everything had been landing differently for weeks. Sharp and layered and more present than it should have been.Knox had a small torch. He turned it on once we were inside — a narrow beam of light that found the walls and the floor and the door at the back of the ground floor. The building was not large. Not comfortable either. Just a space.He stopped in the middle of the main room and turned to face me."Before I show you anything," he said, "I want to make a deal with you."I looked at him. "What kind of deal.""Simple," he said. "You tell me one thing that proves you have no wolf blood. One thing that explains everything — the sounds, the smells, the dreams, last night, the timing with the full moon. Give me one explanation that covers all of it." He held the torch at his side so the light sat between

Ember's POVThe morning came in slowly through the gaps in the boarded windows.Thin strips of it. Gray first, then warmer. The building around us becoming visible in stages — the concrete walls, the two latches on the door, the floor where we had sat through the night. Everything ordinary and abandoned and not a place two people should have spent the night on a concrete floor.I was stiff everywhere.I shifted and my back protested and my legs protested and everything that had been through last night's pain protested in its own specific way. I pressed my hands flat on the floor and pushed myself upright and sat with my back against the wall and looked at the room in the morning light.Knox was already awake. He was sitting a few feet from me, arms resting on his knees, watching me with the quiet alertness of someone who had not slept much and had been present through all of it and was waiting to see what morning produced."How are you?" he said."Done," I said.He looked at me."I am

Ember's POVI looked at him.He was waiting for the answer — which one is it, what you saw or something else — with the patient, direct expression he had when he had asked the real question and was not going to accept a deflection in place of it.I tried to find the deflection anyway.I looked at the corridor. I looked at the notice board beside us. I looked at the floor.Then I looked at him."I do not believe you," I said.Knox said nothing."Any of it," I said. "The wolf, the hybrid, the — I saw something in that building last night that I cannot explain. I am not disputing that. But the rest of it—" I stopped. "I think you are trying to trick me."He looked at me steadily. "Trick you into what.""Into believing something about myself that is not true," I said. "Into feeling like I need you. Like you are the only person who understands what is happening to me and I have to stay close to you because of it." I kept my voice even. "That is a very convenient story for someone with your

Ember's POVWe sat on the rooftop for a while without speaking.The campus below moved at its after-class pace — students crossing paths, the dining hall beginning to light up for the evening, the ordinary business of a school day winding down. I looked at all of it without seeing much of it.Rebecca's hand was still on mine."You said you do not have the words yet," she said."Yes.""But you have some of them."I looked at her."You always have some of them," she said. "Even when you are not ready. You are the most precise person I know, Ember. You do not go without words. You go without the willingness to use them." She held my gaze. "Those are different things.""Rebecca—""Middle school," she said.I looked away."Seventh grade," she said. "The situation with Marcus and the note he sent you that you told everyone was a joke and told me was nothing." She paused. "I knew it was not nothing. I knew it the same way I know things now." She did not say it with pressure — just the plain

Knox's POVRebecca found me at the library.I was at a table near the back with the chemistry project notes spread out in front of me, not reading them. I had been not reading them for about forty minutes — looking at the page and seeing the abandoned building and the concrete floor and Ember's face in the morning light saying I need you to stay away from me.Rebecca sat down across from me without being invited.I looked up."I spoke to her," she said.I waited."She told me some things," Rebecca said. "Not everything. She was careful about what she gave me and I could see her being careful." She folded her hands on the table. "But she told me enough.""What did she tell you," I said."That the midnight episodes started after the two of you slept together," Rebecca said. "That they are connected to you. That you know what they are and you have explained it to her." She held my gaze. "She said it clearly. She said it started a few days after the night of the party."I looked at the ta