Page 148 of Pucking Feral: Part Two

"Brooding antihero with a dark past."

"That's offensively reductive."

"You snuck into a hospital to threaten another alpha. For me." She glances at me over her phone. Her beautiful eyes are soft, the green in the midst of the blue brighter with amusement. "The shoe fits, Valek."

I look at the wall instead of at her. Wraith shifts in his sleep, his scarred fingers tightening briefly on Ivy's shirt before relaxing again. She adjusts the blanket wrapped around them both like a cocoon without looking away from her screen.

I wish it were me holding her like that.

Gods, I despise myself.

"Thank you," I mutter.

Ivy looks up, frowning. "For what?"

"For what you did. At the arena."

All the amusement drains from her expression. She holds my gaze the same way she held it when she stood in my doorway and said let's start over.

"You earned it," she says simply.

She goes back to her book.

I stay where I am.

The silence returns, and this time, I don't try to escape it.

Whiskey's sharp inhale from the couch yanks me back.

"Is this you?" he asks, holding the phone out to show me the screen. It's another fan thread.

This one's titled: Who IS Valek?

I didn’t want to look at this, but I look anyway.

The top posts are harmless. Stats from my single Demons season. Speculation about my nationality. A blurry candid of me signing a fan's jersey at an airport, looking like I'd rather be anywhere else.

Then a photo I've never seen.

It's from the Northwyke Gazette, scanned and uploaded by someone with too much time. A puff piece about the Carters from a decade ago. The image is grainy, the kind of small-town newspaper photo that no one should have noticed.

I'm sixteen, leaning against the Carters' porch railing in a battered leather jacket with the collar popped and one combat boot braced against the post behind me. My hair is cropped shorter than I wear it now, and I’m sporting a yellow-green fading black eye that hadn't fully healed when the photographer showed up.

The Carters didn't ask me to hide it or cover it with makeup.

David has his hand on my shoulder, firm and squeezing, the way you'd touch a wild animal you were proving you wouldn't hurt. Caleb is on my other side, fourteen and grinning so wide his eyes are practically closed, leaning into me as I lean away.

David and Olivia Carter with their children, including newest family member Valek, 16.

I don't read the piles of fan comments underneath.

"Delete that from your history," I mutter to Whiskey.

He looks at me. Looks at the screen. Back at me.

Then he deletes it without argument.

The next thread is about Wraith. The old Belmont Brothers article has been dredged up and reposted. The backyard rink photo, the two of them as teenagers. I've seen it before. It circulated when I first researched this pack. Wraith in his gaiter, head turned away from the camera, hands shoved in his pockets. Thane beside him, younger, lankier.