Icy Nights: Mated to the Three Alphas의 모든 챕터: 챕터 31 - 챕터 39

JessieMid-sentence in my biology notebook, my pencil stops.The room has gone too quiet. No radiator clank. No Tinsley humming through the cinderblock wall.Only Silas's desk clock ticks, and my breathing fills the gap."Do you ever make a sound in here?" I mutter, not looking up. "Or is that against the rules?""I'm breathing." His voice reaches me level, unchanged."Barely."Welker never stops humming, but this room does. The silence presses thick against my eardrums, deliberate.Black tea steeps in the wood grain. Earth and rain settle into the blanket fibers at the bed's foot. I breathe it before I can stop myself. Shoulders drop.My gaze drifts. Single bed, military corners. Notebooks stacked in descending size. A ceramic mug at the desk edge, tea gone cold, skin forming on the surface.No team gear. No posters. One framed photograph sits face-down on the shelf."You don't have a single hockey thing in here," I say."Hockey's at the rink.""Most guys tape jerseys to the wall.""

JessieMy canvas bag hits the corridor floor. Towels spill halfway out. I reach for them before Martins's voice stops me cold."We don't get to pretend anymore."His words bleed through the two-finger gap where the locker room door sits unlatched, muffled and low. A captain who's run out of plays. My hand locks around the canvas strap, fingers tightening until nails bite.The photograph still burns behind my ribs. I haven't slept.I should walk away. My grip tightens instead.Through the gap I catch a sliver of interior. Martins stands near the whiteboard in his practice jersey, sleeves pushed to elbows. A skate dangles by the laces from his hand. He hasn't sat down.Pine and cold stone drift through the door gap on the ventilation draft, faint, catching the back of my throat."The photo. The bloodline. The scent." He stops. Sets the skate on the wooden bench, and the metallic buckle clacks hard against tile. "All of it points the same direction, and I've been skating circles around i

JessieMy fingernails throb with every step. The ache swells underneath, pressing against bone. I shove both hands deep into my jacket pockets.Crescents form where nails bite through fabric into my palms.I don't look back. Looking back means seeing him. Seeing what happened on that porch. I can't carry that yet.Each breath reaches me too loudly. The paths stretch empty around me. No footsteps but mine. No voices.Two blocks out, the heat starts.Deep under muscle, under bone, my forearms warm from the inside. I stop beneath a streetlamp and pull one hand free. The nail beds look swollen, darker than they should be.I flex my fingers. The tendons rise beneath the skin, sharper than before. I know every bitten nail on that hand. I don't know the shape underneath anymore."It's panic. That's all." My voice sounds scraped, thin. "My body is panicking. Breathe. Count backward from ten."Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. I lose the thread. I restart, forcing each number through my teeth. By

Jessie's POV A boot scrapes salted concrete behind me, half a beat after my own.My fingers tighten on the textbook spine, edge biting my palm. I keep walking.The rhythm is wrong. Too measured. Someone pacing themselves to match my stride.I slow and pretend to check my phone. The footsteps slow a half-second late.I speed up. They speed up.I halt and turn.A figure in a dark maintenance jacket stands twenty feet back, hood up, face swallowed by shadow. His gait is trained, deliberate, nothing casual about the set of his shoulders.His head angles left, the same small check he made when I first turned.Then he speaks one word, low, carried on the evening air."Marlowe."My shoulders lock. Vision tunnels to the lamppost edge, light stretching sideways until I blink it back to one.Nobody uses that name here. I buried it in transfer paperwork. Six hours since Hargrove's office, six hours since I read Solberg's name and walked out without answers.He steps backward into the shadow bet

JessieMy boot catches the door's bottom edge. The handle won't turn. I rattle it twice, harder the second time.Charred wood and tobacco leaf cling to the metal. Faint and stale. Same residue from the folded note.Locked from inside. Marlon never does that.I grip harder. Fingers ache around steel, tendons pulling tight. The tingling won't stop when I release. I shake my hand out.My shoulder hits the door. It gives two inches. Enough to see the fluorescent strip beyond. Enough to hear the wrong note in the buzz.Nine hours since the rink. Three hours since the Duluth crew cleared out. They had time."Door's supposed to be locked, Jessie."Jonah's voice carries through the crack. He isn't turning around. His palms hang open at his sides, fingers spread."Since when does Marlon lock from inside?"He doesn't answer. That silence holds everything.I push through the gap. My boot slips on rubber mat. I steady myself beneath the fluorescent buzz.Martins stands with his back to me. One ha