Chapter Twenty One

Amelia POVThe paper was older than I expected.The edges had gone soft with handling, the kind of worn that happens when someone has folded and unfolded the same thing too many times in too many dark rooms. Sera smoothed it flat on the table with both hands, careful, like it might come apart if she wasn’t.I made myself look at it.The handwriting was small and precise, the letters slightly tilted to the left like the habit of someone who’d trained themselves to write quickly without being seen. A set of coordinates. A short string of what looked like reference numbers. And at the bottom, three words in a different ink, darker, written later:Don’t come alone.Zane read it over my shoulder. I felt him tense.“These coordinates,” he said. “That’s not Silverfang territory.”“No.” Sera refolded the paper along its original creases. “It’s Ashvale.”Of course it was.I sat back in my chair and let myself feel it for exactly three seconds, the vertigo, the absurdity, the low roar of someth

Chapter Twenty Two

Zane POVI didn’t sleep.I lay in the dark for two hours staring at the ceiling of my room, running logistics through my head the way Coach Darren had taught me to run plays forward, backward, every angle until the gaps showed themselves. Who knew what. Who would move first. What we’d need and what we couldn’t afford to leave behind.At two in the morning I got up, pulled on a hoodie, and went down to the kitchen.Amelia was already there.She was sitting at the island with both hands wrapped around a mug, her hair loose, wearing an oversized sleep shirt that probably belonged to a previous semester’s hockey event pack giveaway. She looked up when I came in and didn’t say anything, which was one of the things about her I’d stopped trying to articulate. The way she never performed surprise. The way she just made room.I pulled out the stool across from her and sat.“Tell me what you’re thinking,” I said.She considered the question seriously, the way she did everything. “I’m thinking a

Chapter Twenty Three

Amelia POVWe crossed into Ashvale at half past ten.I knew the moment we did. Not from the road sign — the green county marker had been knocked sideways by something large and never righted, so it pointed at the tree line like an accusation — but from the feeling. A pressure shift, subtle and specific, the kind that happens when you move through a territorial boundary that’s been held by the same bloodline for a very long time.Old pack land. Old, and watchful, and not particularly interested in being entered.“You felt that,” Zane said. Not a question.“Yes.”He didn’t say anything else, but his hands adjusted on the wheel, and through the bond I caught the edge of his alertness sharpening. He’d felt it too. The territory was reading us.Sera had texted at nine: eastern boundary marker, blue mailbox, pull off before the bridge. I’m already here. Don’t be obvious about stopping.Zane found the bridge. Found the mailbox. Pulled the truck onto a narrow gravel shoulder behind a stand of

All Chapters of Fated To My Hockey Stepbrother : Chapter 21 - Chapter 23

Chapter Twenty One

Chapter Twenty Two

Chapter Twenty Three