All Chapters of My Hockey Alpha Deadly Secret : Chapter 201 - Chapter 210

Ember's POVThe room was on the second floor at the end of a corridor that had a window at one end looking out over the back of the property — trees at the boundary, the garden lit softly by the lamps along the path below.It was a proper guest room. Not the afterthought kind, not a repurposed space — a room that had been set up with the specific intention of making someone comfortable in it. The bed was large and made properly, with the kind of pillows that were the right density rather than either too flat or too firm. The towels Lauren had mentioned were folded on the end of it, white, the thick kind. There was a lamp on the nightstand already on, and a glass of water beside it.I stood in the doorway for a moment."Okay?" Knox said, behind me."Yes," I said. "More than okay."I went in.I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the room around me and felt something I had not felt since arriving home for the summer — the specific quality of a space that was not waiting to be diffi

Ember's POVThe first thing I did after Knox said goodnight was turn off my location.Not just the general sharing — everything. Every app that had access to it, every setting that might report where I was to anyone who knew where to look. Charlotte had Ethan and Ethan was someone who had found my father's house from memory and had shown up on a Saturday evening without announcement.I was not going to make the next step easy.I went through my phone settings methodically, the way I went through anything that needed to be done correctly. Location services off. Shared location with contacts — off. The app I had once added because Rebecca had asked everyone to so we could find each other at crowded campus events — off.I looked at Rebecca's name in my contacts.Then Claire's.They would ask. Tomorrow, or the day after, or whenever they noticed I had gone quiet. Rebecca especially — Rebecca who had been checking in every day since she left the hospital, the specific checking in of someon

Knox's POVTwo days.It took two days for Lauren to notice and call me into her room.I had known it was coming — not because my mother was intrusive, she was not, she was one of the least intrusive people I knew — but because she was also one of the most observant, and two days of living in the same house as something she had identified as significant was two days longer than she typically waited before she said something about it.She found me in the hallway on the second morning."Come and talk to me," she said.It was not a question.I followed her to her sitting room — the small one off the master bedroom that had been hers specifically since before I was born, the room she used when she wanted a conversation that was not going to be interrupted by Marcus or the general business of the house. It had her books and her plants and the specific low light of a room that had been arranged for comfort rather than efficiency.She sat in the chair by the window.I sat on the small sofa ac

Knox's POVI had taken two steps into the corridor when I heard Lauren get up from her chair."Wait," she said.I turned around.She was on her feet, which was unusual — Lauren completed conversations sitting down as a general rule. Standing meant she had something else and had decided it could not wait until I was further away.She came to the doorway."If she is the one," she said. Her voice had a quality I had not heard in it during the earlier part of the conversation — the careful quality was gone, replaced by something more immediate. "If she is actually the fated mate—" She stopped. She looked at me with the specific expression she had when she had been holding a feeling back and had decided to stop holding it. "Knox. Do you understand what that means for this family?""Yes," I said."The curse broken," she said. "Twenty years of watching you manage it. Twenty years of knowing what it cost you." She shook her head slightly. "I have been waiting for this. I did not know who it w

Knox's POVI held the letter for a moment.Then Lauren reached out and took it back.Not aggressively — the smooth, natural motion of someone who had decided something in the space between handing it over and watching me hold it. She folded it along its original creases and put it in the pocket of her cardigan and looked at me with the specific expression she used when a conversation had reached its endpoint."What is it?" I said."Nothing that concerns you right now," she said.I looked at her."It came from the Lycan world," I said. "The seal—""Old contacts," she said. "From before your father and I were together. I had connections of my own before this pack and some of them still write." She said it evenly, in the voice she used when she had decided on a version and was committing to it. "Personal matters. My parents. Nothing that affects the house."I held her gaze.Lauren held mine back.She was better at this than most people. She had been doing it since before I could read a r