All Chapters of A Nerd for the Hockey Alpha Captain : Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

The grey beam didn't disappear.The black one had been violent, drinking light. The white ones were warm. This one... this one was just there. Still. Like a scar in the sky that wasn't bleeding or healing. Just watching."Don't look at it," Elder Nia whispered. She grabbed my wrist, her fingers digging into my new mark. Half white, half black. It pulsed against her palm, grey. "Do not let it see you. If it's The First, if he can see through it—"Kai pulled me behind him, Elara still tucked under his other arm. Elara was staring at the grey beam, her new white mark with its tiny black ring flaring."It's calling me," she whispered. She didn't sound scared. She sounded confused, like hearing a song she almost knew. "Not like the Priest did. Softer. Like... 'come home, little sister.'"Aria stepped in front of her instantly, still weak, still leaning on Luna. "No. No more 'come home.' No one comes home to anyone. We go home. To PackHouse."The wolves were growling, but not at the beam no

"You don't just unmake Viktor," Nia said. "You unmake the Moon itself."The room went dead silent.Even the little ones stopped breathing.Kai was still holding me and Elara and Sparrow and Pip all at once, his arms like a cage around us, his gold eyes locked on the sleeping man on the cellar steps. The man — The First — was breathing so slowly I thought he'd stopped three times."What do you mean unmake the Moon?" Maya asked. She pushed forward, Luna right behind her. Maya hadn't slept since the crater. Her eyes were red. "You mean the actual moon? In the sky?"Nia didn't look away from the bone in my hand. It was warm. Too warm. And it was still humming that sad lullaby, but only Elara and I could hear it. Elara had her hands over her ears now."I mean the magic," Nia said quietly. "All of it. White, black, grey. Packs. Marks. Wolves who shift. Girls who heal. Boys who run fast. The songs we sing to call the pack. All of it came from her." She pointed to the bone. "The First White.

"The Moon didn't go dark," Nia whispered, staring at her blazing staff. "It multiplied."For one second, it was beautiful. The sky clear, full moon white, Pip not coughing, Caelum — no longer The First, just Caelum — standing with a new white mark on his chest like a kid who just got chosen.Then Vex shouted again from the yard: "LILA! THAT'S NOT THE ONLY THING YOU NEED TO SEE!"We ran.PackHouse yard was full of wolves now. All 50 of Kai's pack, back conscious, circling, snarling at the tree line. Not at Caelum. At something beyond him.Maya pushed through, dragging a backpack. Viktor's backpack. The black one he always left in the lab. The one we thought burned when Lila exploded him in Chapter 55."I found it," she panted. "In the crater. Where the Dark Altar was. It didn't burn. It's... humming."She dropped it. It thudded heavy.Kai nudged it with his foot, still half-shifted, claws out. "Don't open it.""We have to," I said. My new stable grey mark was quiet, but it was cold. Wa

We didn't burn Altar 2.We buried it.Fifty wolves, pushing snow and ice with their noses, their paws, until the pit was just a hill again. Caelum stood in his white wolf form on top of it, his new white mark blazing, and howled. Not a pack howl. A mourning howl. For all the Number 12s before Hope that didn't make it.Hope didn't let go of my hand the whole time. 11 years old, white hair like Elara's, but her white mark was on her wrist, not her neck. Small. Like a bracelet. She kept touching it, like she couldn't believe it was clean again."Is it going to crack again?" she whispered to me as we walked back to Vex's truck. Vex had tied Kovac up with his own silver chains and thrown him in the truck bed like a sack of potatoes. "My mark?""No," I said, and squeezed her hand. My grey mark was quiet, tired, but warm where she held me. "Not while I'm here. White stays white when pack protects it. That's the rule now. I made it a rule."Kai walked on her other side, huge black wolf, letti

The war was over for 3 days and PackHouse didn't know how to be quiet.No alarms. No silver chains. No grey beams.Just... dishes. Too many dishes.Maya was in the kitchen trying to teach Hope how to make soup, and Hope kept putting the carrots in whole because she never learned how to cut."Like this, little White," Maya said gently, showing her.Hope's white mark with the tiny grey edge pulsed when she held the knife right. "Like this?""Perfect. Pack chef now."In the living room, Elara had built a nest. Not a wolf nest. A blanket nest. With all 30 little ones from the root cellar plus Pip plus Sparrow all inside it. She was in the middle reading from Nia's old book, the one about Lira, but changing the ending."And then Lira didn't become the sky because she was sad," Elara read, serious. "She became the sky because she wanted to watch all her sisters at once. And now she has two new sisters, so she is extra happy."Hope, from the kitchen, shouted, "THREE SISTERS!"Elara giggled.