Todos los capítulos de My Hockey Alpha Deadly Secret : Capítulo 181 - Capítulo 190

Knox's POVI had said I needed to tell him something.Then I had stopped.Not because I changed my mind — because I was looking at my father's face and thinking about the conversation I was about to have and understanding that there was an order to it. The hunters first. That was the more immediate problem and the one my father was already oriented toward. Ember could come after, when I had the full picture of what we were dealing with and could present her situation in the right context."The hunters," I said. "The ones moving toward campuses. How close are they to the school?"Marcus looked at me.A brief pause — the specific pause of someone who had noticed a subject change and was deciding whether to address the change or follow it.He followed it."Closer than I would like," he said. "James has tracked three separate incidents in the region over the past two months. Not direct contact with any of our pack. But proximity." He opened a drawer and took out a map — physical, not digi

Ember's POVHome was not what I had left.I had known it would be different — Charlotte in school custody had consequences that extended beyond the school, consequences that would have arrived here before I did. I had prepared myself for a difficult homecoming. I had built a version of it in my head during the journey and had told myself I was ready for it.I was not ready for my father not being there.His car was not in the driveway. The specific absence of it registered before I had fully processed the rest of the house. I stood at the front door with my bag and looked at the empty space where his car should have been and felt something drop in my chest.Rita opened the door.My stepmother. Charlotte's mother. The woman who had been part of my life since I was twelve and who had never, in all of that time, looked at me with anything that could reasonably be called warmth.She looked at me now with something considerably colder than the absence of warmth."Where is Dad?" I said."In

Ember's POV"The park," Knox said. "Saturday. I will find something good.""You do not have to find something good," I said. "You just have to be there.""I am going to find something good," he said. "That is not negotiable.""Knox—""Ember." The specific tone he used when he had decided something and the decision was not going to be reopened. "Saturday. I will text you the time.""Fine," I said."Fine," he said back, and there was something in it that was not actually fine-as-in-resigned — it was fine-as-in-good, the warmth of it underneath the word.We talked for another twenty minutes. He told me about Marcus — not everything, just the shape of the conversation and the weight of what his father had said about the hunters and the mate search. I listened and asked the right questions and did not push past where he was comfortable and he did the same for me and that was what the conversation was — two people in two different houses choosing each other's company over the quiet of a sum

Ember's POVI sat down on the arm of the couch.Not a decision — my legs made it and I went with it. I sat on the arm of the couch and held the cushion beside me and listened to Rita talk to my father.She was good at this.I had always known she was good at this — the specific skill of presenting a version of events that was technically adjacent to the truth while being constructed to produce a particular impression. She did not lie outright. She did not need to. She selected details and arranged them and delivered them in the order that built the picture she wanted built.The picture she was building now was of a daughter who had invited a boy to her father's house while he was away. Who had been conducting herself however she pleased at school all semester. Who was standing in the living room right now showing disrespect and attitude.My father's voice came through the phone.Not the words — Rita had the phone at her ear and his voice was at the distance where I could hear the tone

Ember's POVRita put her phone in her pocket.The call with my father was gone and what was left was the living room with its four occupants and the specific shifted air of a situation that had just reorganized itself around new information.Rita looked at Charlotte.Then at Ethan.Then at me.I watched it happen. The calculation running behind her eyes — the evidence she had, the version she had been building, the new configuration she was deciding how to fit it into. It took approximately four seconds.Then she made her decision."Charlotte," she said. Her voice had changed — the anger from before redirected, the sharp edges of it pointing somewhere new. "Come here."Charlotte crossed to her mother.Rita put her hand on Charlotte's arm. Not possessive — protective. The specific placement of a person drawing a line around what was theirs.She looked at Ethan."You must be tired from the journey," she said. "There is food in the kitchen if you are hungry."Ethan looked at Rita with th