Alle Kapitel von My Hockey Alpha Deadly Secret : Kapitel 81 – Kapitel 90

Ember's POV The crying did not last long. It came, it ran its course, and then it was done. I was not the kind of person who cried for extended periods — even when it was justified, even when the reasons were real and significant, my body seemed to have a limit on it and when the limit was reached the thing just stopped and left behind a specific tired clarity that was somehow easier to work with than the feeling that had produced the crying in the first place. I wiped my face with the back of my hand. Rebecca passed me a tissue without commenting on it. I took it. The room was quiet for a moment. Not the heavy kind of quiet — just the settling kind, the kind that came after something had moved through a space and the air was finding its new level. Claire was watching me from the other bed with the expression she had when she was waiting for someone to be ready before she spoke. It was one of the things I valued about Claire — she did not fill silences just to fill them. She sat

Ember's POV The corridor outside the lecture hall was empty. Everyone was in class at this hour, which meant the long hallway with its row of closed doors was quiet in the specific way school buildings were quiet when they were full of people sitting still behind walls. Just the distant sound of a lecturer's voice from one of the rooms further down and the hum of the ventilation and the two of us standing outside my French class. I turned to face Knox. "That was not okay," I said. "I know." "You cannot walk into my lecture like that. In front of everyone. The whole room was—" "I know," he said again. "I am sorry for the way it looked. I needed to talk to you and I could not wait until after class." "You could have texted me." "You have not been responding to my texts." I opened my mouth. Closed it. That was accurate and we both knew it was accurate and there was no version of arguing with it that was going to work. "What is so important that it could not wait forty minutes?"

Knox's POVI moved before I had made a conscious decision to move.One second I was at the boards looking across the rink. The next I was on the ice heading toward the entrance, skates cutting, the specific purposeful movement of someone who has a destination and is going to it."Rivers."Coach Harlan's voice. Sharp.I did not stop."Rivers."Something in the tone made me stop. Not the volume — the quality of it. The specific register that said this is not a suggestion and you know it.I stopped at the center line.Ethan was still at the entrance. He had not come further into the rink. He was standing there in the full training uniform — our uniform, the school's colors, the same kit the rest of the team wore — with his bag on his shoulder and the expression of someone who had calculated exactly how this moment was going to go and had prepared for each version of it.He looked at me.I looked at him.Coach Harlan skated past me to the entrance.I watched him stop in front of Ethan. A

Knox's POVI should have let him walk.I knew that. I knew it the same way I knew all the things I should do in moments like this — the rational, measured knowledge of a person who had been taught from a young age that composure was not optional, that losing it had costs that compounded, that the wolf in you was always looking for a reason and your job was to not give it one.I knew all of that.I called after him anyway."Ethan."He stopped. Turned around slowly, like someone who had expected this and had patience for it.I walked toward him. Not fast. Not with anything in my posture that gave him more than I wanted to give. Just closing the distance between us to the kind that meant a conversation rather than a shout across a path.I stopped four feet from him."If you actually want to come back to this team and have it function," I said, "then there are things that need to happen first."He looked at me. The smile was still there. Patient. Waiting."I am the captain," I said. "The

Knox's POVEthan moved first.Not physically — he had already done that and it had not worked out the way he planned. He moved with his voice, which was the other thing he was good at, the other tool he had when the first one failed."He came at me," Ethan said.He said it to the group. Not to me — to Darius and Marcus and the three others standing at the edge of the path. His voice had recovered its composure with impressive speed, the rawness tucked back somewhere and the managed version back in place, the version that was calm and reasonable and slightly aggrieved."I was walking back from training," he said. "He called me back. He got in my face. I defended myself."Nobody said anything immediately.Ethan looked at Darius specifically. Darius was the one he knew best on the team — they had overlapped for a year before the expulsion and they had been friendly enough. If there was going to be a person willing to hear the version, Darius was the candidate.Darius looked at Ethan's fi