RECLAIMED BY THE ALPHA: THE ALPHA’S HIDDEN HEIR의 모든 챕터: 챕터 71 - 챕터 80

A crack. Loud and close. The pane nearest our table shatters and something small and fast comes through it and I can't move. My body locks. I see the thing coming toward my face and my arms won't lift and my legs won't push and then something slams into me from the side.“Emily watch out!”Arms around my waist. A body pulling me off the chair. My back hits the floor and a chest presses against my face and hands cradle my skull and I hear the thing hit the wall where my head was half a second ago.My ears are ringing. My hands are shaking. I can feel my heartbeat in my temples, behind my eyes. My fingers clutch at the chest above me, clutch and release, clutch and release.Nick is on top of me.I know before I see him. Cedar through the plaster dust. The bond screaming between his chest and mine."Emily." His voice is wrong. Not steady. Not the Alpha. "Emily, are you hurt? Is there glass? Are you cut? Emily, look at me, open your eyes.""I'm okay." I open my eyes. His face is above min

EMILYNick's apartment looks like a war room.Sage is on the couch with a blanket around her shoulders that Cole put there without asking. Cole is standing by the kitchen counter with his arms crossed and a look on his face that I can't read and haven't been able to read since he peeled himself off my sister on the coffee shop floor and stopped making eye contact with everyone. The USB drive is on the table. My tea-stained jacket is on the back of a chair. Nick is pacing.Nick paces when he's furious and trying to turn it into something productive. I've learned the difference between his silences. The one at the kitchen table when he told me about Richard was heavy and sad. This one is sharp at the edges and looking for somewhere to land.He lands on Sage."You hacked the private server of the most dangerous man in the northeast," he says, stopping in front of her. "You extracted twenty years of classified financial records. You carried them around on a USB drive in a bag you can't st

EMILY"Stop fixing your tie."Nick's hands freeze on the knot. He's standing in the courthouse bathroom mirror and this is the fourth time he's pulled the tie loose and retied it and the knot looks exactly the same as it did three adjustments ago."It's crooked," he says."It's perfect." I cross the bathroom and take his hands off the tie and hold them between mine. His fingers are cold. Nick's fingers are never cold. "Look at me."He looks at me in the mirror."Not the mirror. Me."He turns. His grey eyes find mine and whatever he's been holding together behind the navy suit and the combed hair is right there at the surface. His hands are cold and his jaw is tight and he's scared. The quiet kind. The kind that sits in a father's chest when his child is the thing on the table."We have everything," I say. "The footage. The evaluations. The witnesses. Mason is coming home today.""I know.""Then why are your hands cold?""They're not cold.""Nick, I'm holding them. They're freezing."H

EMILYHe walks into his apartment and doesn't turn on the lights.I follow him through the door because he didn't tell me not to. Because the way he moved through the courthouse lobby straight-backed, briefcase in hand, jaw so tight the muscles jumped told me everything his mouth wouldn't. He walked like a man holding a cracked glass with both hands, each step measured to keep the fracture from spreading.He stops in the middle of the living room. Puts his briefcase down. Stands there.Mason's room is down the hallway with the door open, the bed made, the reading corner empty. MASON in blue letters on the wall, lit by the streetlight coming through the window, each letter painted by hand on a Sunday while a five-year-old supervised the brushstrokes with the seriousness of someone who believes his name deserves precision.Nick looks at the name on the wall. His chest rises and falls too fast. His hands hang at his sides, curling into fists, releasing, curling again."Nick.""I walked i

EMILYI wake up in Nick's bed wearing his t-shirt and nothing else. The sheets smell like cedar and skin and sex, and for a long moment I breathe into the pillow, letting my body remember what it feels like to be this sore for this reason.His side of the bed is still warm. The indent of his head is in the pillow beside mine and I press my palm into it because the shape of where he slept is proof that last night happened and this morning I'm still here. I trace the place his shoulder made in the mattress. I pull his pillow toward me and hold it against my chest and let myself miss him even though he's only in the kitchen, even though I can hear the coffee maker and the soft clink of mugs and his bare feet on the floor.My body has marks I didn't have yesterday. The skin on my hips is tender where his hands held me. The inside of my thighs is raw from his jaw. My lips are swollen and my hair is tangled and I can still feel the weight of him between my legs if I press my thighs together