All Chapters of FAKING IT WITH THE ALPHA CAPTAIN RIVAL : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

ElenaI knew something was wrong the second I walked through the school doors and felt the hallway go quiet in that particular way it did whenever a new piece of ammunition against me had started circulating overnight.I found out what it was before I even made it to my locker."Have you seen it?" a girl I barely recognized whispered to her friend, phone angled between them, not even bothering to lower her voice. "The clip from the championship game. Someone got the whole thing from the stands."My stomach dropped.I didn't need to ask which clip. I already knew, with a sick, cold certainty, exactly what they were watching.I pulled out my own phone at my locker, hands unsteady, and searched for exactly ten seconds before I found it, already reposted across four different accounts, view counts climbing into the thousands, comment sections exploding beneath each one.The footage was grainy, shot from someone's phone high up in the stands, but it captured everything. Ryder skating strai

ElenaI hadn't told anyone about Martha's dreams. Not Ryder, not Aiden, not even the anonymous number that seemed to know things before I did. Some part of me was still turning the words over, trying to figure out if they meant anything at all or if exhaustion and worry had simply started playing tricks on a woman who'd spent the last few months fighting for her own life.I can't remember which hospital.I'd repeated that sentence to myself so many times on the walk to my shift that I nearly didn't notice Aiden leaning against the diner's front window when I got there, two cups balanced in his hands, no explanation on his face at all."You didn't text," I said, stopping in front of him."I know." He held one of the cups out to me. "I wasn't going to come. Then I did anyway."I took the coffee, mostly because my hands needed something to hold. "No plan tonight?""No plan." He shrugged, almost sheepish, an expression I hadn't seen on him before. "No strategy. No angle. I just wanted to

ElenaI left the estate that afternoon faster than I'd ever moved in my life, Naomi's warning still burning behind my eyes the entire drive home, Marcus's real attacker is still inside those walls, and I have reason to believe they know exactly who you are to this family. I didn't sleep well for two nights after that. I kept waiting for something else to arrive, some new fragment of truth, some explanation for who exactly I needed to fear inside a house I was about to walk straight back into.Nothing came, which somehow made it worse.By the night of the gala, I'd convinced myself the only thing to do was exactly what Victoria demanded, show up, disappear into the wallpaper, survive the evening, and figure out the rest afterward.The chandeliers threw gold light across the ballroom the second I stepped through the doors, warm and beautiful and utterly at odds with how small I felt walking beneath them. The dress Victoria had sent hung plain and gray against my skin, cut simply enough

RyderI'd been counting the minutes since Elena walked back into that ballroom with a tray in her hands, and every single one of them felt like swallowing glass."You're not drinking," Victoria said, appearing at my elbow with a fresh glass of champagne she hadn't asked if I wanted. "People will notice if you don't drink at your own alliance gala.""I'm fine.""You don't look fine." Her eyes followed mine across the room, landing exactly where I hadn't managed to look away from fast enough. "You look like a man about to do something extremely stupid.""I'm not doing anything.""Good," she said. "Keep it that way."She drifted off toward another cluster of guests, and I stood there with a glass I had no intention of finishing, watching Elena get handed an empty tray by an elder's assistant like she existed for exactly that purpose and nothing else.I couldn't cross the room. I understood that with a clarity that made my chest ache every single time I tested the boundary of it in my mi

ElenaThere was another gala two weeks later, smaller this time, some quarterly function for pack finance that Victoria insisted I attend anyway, apparently deciding my presence had become a permanent fixture of Hart family events regardless of scale. I hated every second of it. I suspected, from the tight, weary set of Ryder's jaw across the room most of the night, that he hated it just as much.Neither of us wanted to be there. That much, at least, we had in common.I left before the official end, slipping out a side exit while Victoria was occupied charming a cluster of accountants, desperate for fresh air and distance and five minutes where nobody expected anything from me at all.I found it in a service corridor behind the main hall, dim and quiet, the kind of forgotten hallway meant for staff rather than guests. I leaned against the wall there, eyes closed, just breathing."You took a wrong turn," a voice said.I opened my eyes. Ryder stood a few feet away, hands in his pockets,