All Chapters of MY BULLY STEPBROTHER IS A HOCKEY ALPHA: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

"You didn't have to knock," Damien always said. "This is basically your second home."I used to love that. The way he said it like I belonged somewhere real. Like out of every girl in school, every wolf girl with her perfect shift and her pack rank and her place in the hierarchy, he had looked at me and decided I was worth choosing.Two years I held onto that.Today was our anniversary. I'd been awake since six, mixing vanilla batter, waiting for the cake to rise, tying the ribbon on the bracelet box until the bow sat exactly right. I even wrote him a card, a full page, front and back, because that was the kind of girl I was. The kind that meant every word.The drive over, I was smiling so hard my cheeks hurt. His front door was unlocked, same as always. I stepped in holding the cake box in both hands, the bracelet tucked into my jacket pocket, already rehearsing the look on his face when he saw it.The house was quiet, too quiet. I told myself that was fine. He was probably napping a

The mansion did not look like something people actually lived in.I stood on the front path with my suitcase and looked up at it. Three stories of stone and glass, the kind of house that wasn't built to impress. It was built to remind. To make sure that anyone who stood where I was standing understood exactly what kind of family lived behind those doors and exactly how far outside of that world they were.I already felt it. That pressure in the air that pack land always carried, that low hum of Alpha territory that made the back of my neck prickle even though I had no wolf to respond to it. I always felt it. I had never understood why, since wolfless girls weren't supposed to be sensitive to those things. I'd stopped mentioning it years ago because nobody had an explanation that made sense.My mother was already at the door. Victor Blackwood opened it before she could knock, and the warmth on his face was immediate and genuine. He was tall and broad with grey at his temples, the kind

By the next morning the story had mutated into something larger than what actually happened..In one version Jaxon had lifted the girl off the ground with one hand while his eyes went fully gold and a growl shook the lockers. In another he had half-shifted in the hallway before his teammates pulled him back. Neither was true. The real version was strange enough that people needed to make it bigger just to make sense of it.What nobody could explain was the last thing he'd said. Nobody touches what's mine.I'd been awake half the night with those words. Turning them over. Looking for the angle that made them mean something other than what they sounded like. He'd given me the angle himself at breakfast, when he said I was a reflection of his family name and nothing more.I wanted to believe that explanation.I mostly didn't.He was already at the counter when I came down, coffee in hand, reading something on his phone. He didn't look up when I walked in, which was normal. What wasn't no

The rumors reached me before I even made it through the front entrance.I heard them the way you heard weather before it arrived. Not words yet, just a shift in the atmosphere. The way conversations paused when I got close and picked back up the moment I passed. The way eyes moved to me and then away, quickly, like looking too long at something bright.I kept walking.By the time I reached my locker, I had collected three different stories of yesterday without asking for any of them.In the first story, Jaxon had used his Alpha command on Damien. A full dominance call, the kind that could bring a weaker wolf to its knees. Damien had apparently crumbled completely and had to be helped out of the building by two of his friends.In the second story, Jaxon and Damien had actually fought. Briefly, brutally, and entirely in Jaxon's favor. Damien had thrown the first punch. Jaxon had thrown the last one. The hallway had needed to be cleared by staff.In the third st

My chest tightened. "I just explained why I'm upset about Cora.""You're upset because of what it looked like." He tilted his head slightly, the way he did when he was recalculating something. "After everything he said to you yesterday. You saw me with her and it looked like the same thing.""Don't do that," I said quietly."Don't do what.""Don't figure me out and then say it out loud like that."Something shifted in his jaw. He looked away for a moment, down the corridor, and when he looked back the thing I'd almost seen was locked back down behind the wall he kept everything behind."Cora doesn't mean anything," he said. His voice was even. Final. The tone of someone closing a door. "She's a pack member and she approached me and I was polite. That's the entirety of it.""You didn't move her hand."The words came out before I finished deciding to say them.The hallway was loud around us. Students passing, lockers slamming, the noise of a sc