Novelas de StarsTouch pen

𝐁𝐞𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐭The knock cut me off before I could answer him.Malakai was still perched on the edge of my desk where he'd planted himself the second he walked in, close enough that I'd had to raise my head back just to keep looking at him properly.And for a second neither of us moved, both of us just staring at the door like it might go away if we ignored it long enough.It had been two days since the thirty day thing started, and already I was beginning to see how bad an idea it actually was. Not because it wasn't good. It was, that was the whole problem.The knock came again.I glanced at Malakai, wondering if it'll be weird for the both of us to be seen together this late in my office, but I brushed the thought off the second Malakai slid off the desk and dropped into the seat across from me instead.Arranging himself into something that almost looked like a player waiting on his coach."You gonna get that?" he asked, nodding toward the door, way too calm for someone who'd been

𝐁𝐞𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐭I still wasn't entirely sure how Malakai had talked me into agreeing to any of this, the thirty days, the whole ridiculous arrangement, but I definitely hadn't expected the volume of texts that came with it. Two days in, and my phone had become something closer to a leash than a device I actually controlled.It wasn't just the texting, either. He shown up at my office twice already this week, found excuses to linger after practice longer than necessary, sent me a single flower with no note attached that I still hadn't figured out how he managed to get delivered to a locked building. I kept telling myself this was exactly the kind of complication I'd warned him about that first night, the exact reason I should've said no in the first place.I hadn't said no, though. That was the part I still couldn't fully explain to myself.Part of me wanted to believe this was harmless, that thirty days would come and go and we'd both walk away with some clarity about whatever this

ᴬˡⁱˢᵗᵉʳI had been sitting in my car outside Beckett's apartment for nearly forty minutes, debating whether to actually get out and knock on his door.Every version of the conversation I ran through in my head ended differently. Sometimes he slammed the door in my face before I even finished my sentence. Sometimes he listened, arms crossed, waiting for me to explain myself properly instead of the rushed, half-formed version I'd given him at the rink. Sometimes, in the versions I liked best, he actually softened, just slightly, enough to let me back into whatever space I'd carved out for myself in his life two years ago.I needed him back. That part wasn't complicated, even if everything surrounding it was. The engagement had never been about wanting her. It was never going to be about anyone but Beckett, not really, not since the two of us had spent those years building something I still didn't fully understand how to walk away from, even after I was the one who'd left it behind fi

𝐁𝐞𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐭The wine bottle sat mostly empty on the coffee table, along with the second one Malakai had apparently stashed in his car and brought up halfway through the movie we were supposed to be watching but had mostly stopped paying attention to an hour ago. The television glowed blue against the dark living room, some action sequence playing out that neither of us was actually tracking anymore."That one's obviously the worst character in the whole franchise," Malakai said, gesturing loosely at the screen with his glass. "No redeeming qualities whatsoever.""He's complicated.""He's a coward who blames everyone else for his own decisions.""That's what makes him complicated.""That's what makes him annoying." Malakai leaned back against the couch cushions, close enough that his shoulder pressed against mine, close enough that neither of us moved away from it. "You always defend the worst ones.""I like a redemption arc.""He doesn't get one. He just dies.""Spoilers.""You've

𝐁𝐞𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐭I had barely made it through my apartment door when my phone started ringing. I answered without checking the screen, my mind still tangled up in everything that had happened at the rink, my keys still dangling from the lock behind me, my coat only halfway off my shoulders."Where'd you go?" Malakai's voice came through immediately, no greeting first, a note of something close to worry underneath the usual confidence."I was tired." It wasn't the whole truth, but it wasn't exactly a lie either. "I needed to get home.""You could've told me that instead of just disappearing. I looked for you everywhere after the game, even thought you got kidnapped or something.""I appreciate the concern, I'm fine.""Are you sick or something?""It's nothing. Long night." I kept my voice light, hoping he wouldn't push further, dropping onto the arm of my couch as I talked, still not fully inside my own apartment yet."You sure?""I'm sure. Just tired."For a second, I found myself wonde

𝐁𝐞𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐭"What are you doing here?" I asked it immediately, already turning to leave. Whatever this was, I had no interest in being part of it. My legs carried me toward the exit before my brain had even fully processed that he was standing in front of me."Beckett, wait." Alister moved to block my path, his hand reaching for my arm before I stepped out of his reach. "Can we just talk for a minute?""I don't have anything to say to you." I kept my voice distant, even though my heart was already beating faster than it should have just from seeing him standing there."Please, just a minute. That's all I'm asking, Beckett. One minute out of your whole night."I kept walking. He kept following, matching my pace step for step, refusing to let the distance between us grow, his shoes making noises against the floor just behind mine."I'm serious, Beckett. I flew back early for this. I could be anywhere else right now, and instead I'm here, waiting outside a rink for you like some kin

꧁♡ 𝓣𝓲𝓶♡꧂ “Stop running, Micah!” My voice echoed through the house as the little menace laughed loudly while running down the stairs with one shoe on and the other missing. “I don’t wanna wear it!” he shouted back dramatically. “You said the same thing about the pants!” “Because they’re itchy!” “They are not itchy!” “Yes they are!” I heard Frank snort from the kitchen. Traitor. I glared toward the sound while still trying to chase after a six year old that somehow moved faster than grown adults. This was my life now. And honestly? I loved it. Two years ago, Frank and I had decided to stay in Italy permanently. What started as temporary peace slowly became home before either of us realized it. I resigned from the hospital back in New York, and surprisingly, I didn’t regret it. Italy felt softer. Slower. Like life here gave us permission to breathe. Frank had built a legitimate business here too, and although I knew there were still shadows of his old life hanging arou

꧁♡ 𝓣𝓲𝓶♡꧂The moment we stepped into the room, Sheila immediately wiped her tears away like they had never existed in the first place.It was honestly impressive.One second she looked like she was about to break down in the hallway and the next she had that same cold expression back on her face like emotions personally offended her.Phil noticed too.I could tell from the tiny smile that appeared on his lips before he quickly hid it behind sarcasm. Sheila walked toward the bed slowly, crossing her arms once she stopped beside him.“So,” she said flatly. “You’re still alive.”Phil looked pale as hell against the pillows, but somehow he still managed to smirk. “Disappointed?”“A little.”“Wow,” he muttered dramatically. “And here I thought you’d cry over me.”Sheila rolled her eyes instantly. “Don’t flatter yourself.”“I got shot for this relationship.”“There is no relationship.”“Cold.”She stared down at him for a second longer before muttering quietly, “You look terrible.”Phil g

꧁♡ 𝓣𝓲𝓶♡꧂“Frank.”His name left my mouth immediately the moment I saw him standing there. For one second, I genuinely thought I was hallucinating.Maybe it was the alcohol still sitting in my system. Maybe it was the panic from almost getting assaulted. Maybe my brain had simply missed him too much and decided to create him out of thin air.But no.He was real.Standing under the dim streetlights with murder written all over his face, my breath caught in my throat as I stared at him. The black coat hanging over his shoulders moved slightly with the night breeze, his expression cold enough to freeze the entire damn street.The man pinning me against the wall finally noticed him too. “Who the fu—”Frank moved before he could finish.Everything happened so fast.One second Luca was still holding me and the next Frank had grabbed him violently by the collar and slammed him against the nearby wall so hard the sound echoed.Sheila gasped nearby.Luca barely got the chance to react befor

꧁♡ 𝔉𝔯𝔞𝔫𝔨 ♡꧂The moment the doctor told me Phil was going to be fine, the tightness around my chest finally loosened.“He lost a lot of blood,” the doctor explained while adjusting his gloves, “but the bullet missed anything fatal. He’ll need rest and observation for a few days.”I exhaled slowly, dragging a hand down my face. “Thank you.”The doctor nodded once before walking away down the hallway, leaving me standing there outside the private ward with exhaustion practically hanging off my body.Everything from the last twenty four hours crashed into me all at once. Kagemoto Kazama was dead, Laura was dead, Eric was dead and Tim was somewhere in Italy probably worrying himself sick.I leaned back briefly against the wall and closed my eyes for a second.Just one second.That was all I allowed myself before pushing away and walking toward Phil’s room. The VIP ward was quiet when I stepped inside. Machines beeped softly while Phil laid against the hospital bed looking pale as hell

꧁♡ 𝔉𝔯𝔞𝔫𝔨 ♡꧂“I need to get to Tim.”The words kept leaving my mouth between breaths as I forced myself forward through the smoke. My lungs burned with every inhale, heat clawing at my skin while flames swallowed what used to be Kagemoto Kazama’s estate behind us.The bastard really meant it when he said the building was going down with him.The explosion had thrown both me and Phil across the office. I still couldn’t hear properly from the blast ringing in my ears, but adrenaline kept my body moving even when every muscle screamed at me to stop.“Move,” I coughed out while dragging Phil’s arm over my shoulder.Phil groaned beside me. “You know… this is officially the worst house visit ever.”“Shut up and walk.”“I’m trying.”Another explosion thundered somewhere deeper inside the estate, shaking the entire floor beneath us. Part of the ceiling collapsed behind us with a deafening crash, sparks and debris scattering everywhere.“Jesus Christ,” Phil muttered.Smoke filled the hallw

꧁♡ 𝓣𝓲𝓶♡꧂“Tim, stop worrying. I’m sure he’s fine.”Sheila’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts for barely two seconds before my attention drifted back to my phone again. I stared at the screen, waiting for it to light up, waiting for Frank’s name to appear, waiting for anything.Nothing.I sighed and dropped the phone onto the table for what was probably the fiftieth time that day.“At least that’s what you said thirty minutes ago,” I muttered.Sheila rolled her eyes from where she was stretched across the couch in Frank's Italy Mansion. “Because it’s still true thirty minutes later.”I rubbed a hand down my face tiredly. “You don’t know that.”“And neither do you,” she countered immediately. “If something happened to Frank, Peter would call, that man treats his phone like it’s attached to his soul.”I wanted to argue with her, but deep down I knew she was right. Peter would have said something. He wouldn’t hide it from me if things had gone wrong.At least… I hoped he wouldn’t.S

The camp had gone quiet in a way that felt worse than shouting.Word had reached them before midday—refugees stumbling in from villages Caierre had never heard named, faces gray with exhaustion and fear, carrying stories of Alphas gathering warriors in the north, convinced the old nightmare had finally come home to finish what it started centuries ago. Nobody said the words *Mad Wolf* directly in front of Caierre. They didn't need to. He heard it anyway, threaded through every hushed conversation that stopped a beat too abruptly whenever he walked past.He sat near the edge of camp, alone, listening to two of Morwen's warriors murmur low a short distance off."—not worth it," one of them was saying. "Whatever he is, whatever he carries, if it means war with the north—""Keep your voice down.""I'm only saying what half this camp is already thinking."Caierre didn't argue with them. He didn't have it in him. The trial's memories sat heavy behind his ribs, layered one on top of another—

The black pillar tore across the horizon like a wound the sky couldn't close, and Esmeralda stood at the council balcony watching it with a dread that settled cold and certain into her chest.Herold was right.She'd wanted to believe otherwise, some part of her clinging to the hope that his warnings had been overcautious, a careful man's excessive worry dressed up as certainty. The pillar of light climbing into the night above the northern mountains told her exactly how wrong that hope had been.Within the hour, runners were pounding through every corridor of the council halls, summoning every Elder from bed and hearth alike to an emergency session that no one, watching that black light bleed across the sky, could pretend was unnecessary.The chamber was worse than chaos. It was fracture."Execute them," one Elder was shouting, before the session had even properly opened. "Both of them, the moment they're found, before whatever's spreading through that curse reaches anyone else!""You

The voice froze every living thing in that chamber for exactly as long as it took Grant to realize freezing was going to get them all killed."MOVE!" His own shout tore through the paralysis, rough and desperate. "Whatever that thing is, it's not going to wait for us to admire it! MOVE, NOW!"That broke it. Bodies lurched back into motion all around him, Keepers and wolves and exhausted, half-carried mates alike, and Grant grabbed the nearest shoulder—Morwen's—and pointed hard toward a narrow break in the collapsing wall he'd marked hours ago out of pure habit."Old escape route," he shouted. "Same instinct that kept us alive on the bridge. Move, everyone, follow me!"The Warden reached him a half-second later, face gone bloodless, every trace of his earlier authority replaced by something closer to raw survival instinct."The mission has changed," the Warden said, breathless, already turning to bark orders at his own Keepers. "Forget the boy. Forget the Trial. Whatever slept beneath

The floor split open beneath them like something enormous had exhaled.Alvar caught Caierre before he hit stone, arms locking around him as his knees gave out entirely, dead weight suddenly, breath ragged against Alvar's shoulder. "I've got you. I've got you, stay with me—""I'm here," Caierre managed, though his voice was thin, strained, eyes struggling to focus. "I'm just—everything hurts. Everything at once."And then, for the first time since the crown's light had swallowed him whole, Alvar felt the bond flare open fully between them—not the faint thread he'd been clinging to for hours, not the muffled fragments of grief and fear that had leaked through in pieces. Whole. Clear. He felt Caierre's exhaustion like his own bones ached with it, felt relief and terror and grief tangled together in a current stronger than anything the bond had carried before tonight."It's different," Alvar said, breathless. "The bond—I can feel everything. It's stronger than it was before any of this st

The throne room was gone. What replaced it was smaller, quieter—a chamber deep beneath the palace, torches guttering low, the air thick with grief and the copper smell of a night that had already taken too much.The king's body lay still upon the altar, crown resting beside him where it had fallen from his hand. Fenrir knelt over him, massive body trembling, chains already beginning to coil around his limbs from magic that hadn't finished settling."End it," Fenrir said, and his voice broke in a way Caierre hadn't heard from him yet, not once, not even in the depths of the prison. "Please. I am asking you as the last thing I will ever ask of anyone. End it now, before I hurt one more person who never deserved to suffer for what was done to me."~~The healer knelt beside him, her hands shaking, her own face streaked with tears she hadn't stopped to wipe away. "We cannot.""You can. You have blades enough in this room. One clean strike, and whatever's left of me stops spreading the mom

"That's not me," Caierre said again, though his voice had lost most of its conviction. "It's an illusion. Some trick of the trial, some—I don't know, some test to see if I'll believe something that isn't true.""The mirror has never lied to anyone of royal blood," the hooded figure said, calm, unhurried. "It cannot. That is the nature of what it was made for. If you wish to call this a trick, you will have to explain why your own scar sits on that boy's face in exactly the place it sits on yours."Caierre had no answer for that. He stared at the boy in the black glass, silver eyes bright and untroubled, and felt something in his chest twist tighter with every second he couldn't look away.~~The mirror rippled again, and the image shifted.Gardens now, sun-drenched and green, the boy running through rows of flowering trees with Fenrir bounding beside him—not the massive chained thing Caierre had met in the prison, not even the calm, dignified guardian from the festival memory, but som

Noah’s POVThe cold air hit me the second I stepped out of the small store. I didn’t even bother to put the change into my pocket; it sat crumpled in my palm with the water bottle pressed against it. My only thought was River. He had looked pale when I left him by the car, his hands still trembling after everything that had just happened inside that house.I knew he’d never admit how shaken he was, but I could see it in his eyes. The haunted way he stared at walls, the way his fingers rubbed against his jeans like he was grounding himself. He was strong, stronger than anyone gave him credit for but I still wanted to do something, even if it was just to bring him water.I quickened my steps, my heart lighter at the thought of putting the bottle in his hand, seeing that small, grateful smile he gave me even in the darkest moments. For a second, just a second, life felt normal.Then everything shattered.I heard it before I saw it, the screech of tires, sharp and violent, tearing through

Daniel’s POVThe flashing red and blue lights of the squad car washed over the front of the house, painting everything in hard color. Marcus was in the back seat, still yelling, though the closed door muffled his voice. An officer slammed the door shut and walked around to the driver’s side. Another officer gave me a nod, a silent acknowledgment that they’d take it from here.I watched the car pull away, taillights glowing in the dark. My fists were still clenched. My chest felt tight. I could still see Marcus’s face in my mind, the grin, the way his eyes had locked onto River. Even with his hands cuffed, he’d tried to twist toward River like he couldn’t help himself.I turned to where River stood near the porch steps. His arms were wrapped around himself. He looked small under the flickering light, like he was holding himself together by force.I moved to him slowly, not wanting to startle him. “It’s over,” I said quietly. My voice felt rough in my throat.River nodded, but his eyes

River’s POV The whole ride over felt like I was holding my breath. Christian had gotten the trace back faster than I thought possible, one second he was typing on his laptop, eyes flicking across the screen, and the next he was turning to Daniel and Noah with a location. He didn’t say much, just rattled off an address in a clipped tone, like he’d been waiting for this moment. Daniel had grabbed his coat. Noah had given me a look that said he wasn’t going to let me go alone. And before I could even process it, we were in the car. I sat in the back seat, squeezed between Noah and my own thoughts, staring out at the passing streets. The city lights blurred against the window. I tried not to think about the text still glowing on my phone. I know where you are. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I kept them shoved deep in my jacket pockets so nobody would see. Noah kept glancing at me, his knee bouncing slightly. Daniel was in the front, arms tight across his chest. Christian drove with bo

River’s POVThe air in the cabin was filled with tension after I said yes. Like the walls had shifted closer, sealing me in with a decision I couldn’t take back. My phone sat on the table between us, harmless in appearance, but my entire chest ached looking at it.Christian gave me a slow nod, the kind that carried quiet reassurance. He wasn’t warm exactly, but there was something steady about him, something that made me feel like he wasn’t just here out of duty.“I’ll need your consent in writing,” he said, already pulling a small form from his bag. “It’s just to confirm you’re aware of what I’ll be doing and that you’re authorizing me to monitor incoming activity.”I stared at the paper like it was heavier than stone. Consent. The word made me pause. Because how many times had I felt like my choices weren’t mine anymore? How many times had someone else pushed me into corners until the only answer was yes?But this time was different. I was still scared, but I was choosing it. I had

River’s POVThe morning light pushed through the curtains, soft and hazy, like it was trying not to disturb me. I sat at the edge of the bed with my hands pressed together, staring at the floor. My body felt heavy, but it wasn’t from sleep, it was from everything weighing down my chest. The message. Daniel’s reaction. And now this meeting with Christian.I rubbed my face and let out a breath. My stomach had been twisting since Daniel suggested it yesterday. It wasn’t that I disagreed. I knew he was right. If someone could trace the texts, if someone could finally put an end to this sick game, then I had to allow it. Still, the thought of giving my phone over to someone else, letting them see parts of me I didn’t even share out loud, it made me restless.The sound of water running in the bathroom pulled me back. Noah had insisted on coming with me today. He didn’t say it directly, but I knew why—he didn’t trust Daniel completely, and he didn’t trust me around Daniel either. That jealou

River’s POVI couldn’t keep still.The apartment was too quiet, too tight, too heavy. I sat on the edge of the couch, elbows on my knees, staring at the wall like it had answers. The lamp cast a weak yellow glow over the room, but it felt dim compared to the storm in my head. My fingers kept twitching, opening and closing, as if my body needed to do something, anything, instead of just sitting there.Noah had gone into the bedroom a while ago, maybe to change, maybe to breathe, I didn’t know. He had this way of pulling back when he was too quiet, and I didn’t want to push him, not tonight. I already felt like I was asking too much of him.I kept hearing Daniel’s voice in my head. The way he leaned across the table earlier, telling me we’d meet someone who could help. Someone who could trace the messages, dig into them, and maybe, finally, give me an answer. His confidence had steadied me for a moment, but now that I was alone, the weight of it all came crashing back.Two stalkers. One