My Hockey Alpha novel Chapter 530

Nina

I huffed out a breath as I hoisted the oversized cardboard box higher in my arms, carefully navigating my way through the living room. Strings of fairy lights poked out haphazardly from the top, and I could feel the weight of glass jars and other assorted decor inside shifting precariously with each step.

With my jaw clenched in determination, I made my way toward the patio doors, intent on getting everything set up for tonight’s end-of-summer party. Of course, it would have been easier with a certain someone’s help, but duty had called Enzo away.

Duty.

I hated that the Schreibers were still sending scouts to bother us. I hated that they had slipped through our fingers, always one step ahead. And I hated that I wasn’t any help.

But I could set up a party, at least.

Almost as if on cue, I felt the solid warmth of his body at my back, those familiar calloused hands easily taking the bulk of the box’s weight from me.

“Where do you think you’re going with that?” he chided with a low chuckle, maneuvering around to set the box on the coffee table. “You know you’re not supposed to be carrying too much.”

I rolled my eyes at him, but noticed the way his gaze drifted down to my swöllen belly. At nearly six months pregnant, I was really beginning to show now; but I wasn’t a complete invalid. a

“I’m fine, Enzo. I’m still capable of carrying a box when you’re not around.”

The skeptical quirk of his eyebrow told me he didn’t believe that for a second. “Sure, sure. But now that! m here, at least let me do it for you.”

Pursing my lips to keep from smiling, I gestured vaguely toward the backyard. “Can you start stringing those lights along the fence line? And be careful with those mason jars → want them lining the steps up to the patio.”

Enzo nodded, already getting to work as I stepped back to admire the progress I had made so far in transforming our backyard into a twinkling garden oasis for the night. It was shaping up to be the perfect setting for one last big summer hurrah with our friends before…

Well, before everything changed.

A strange melancholy tugged at my heart as I rested a hand on my belly, feeling the reassuring flutter of movement beneath my palm. In a few short months, everything would be so different. Our little one would finally enter the world, and I’d be finishing up my first semester in medical school proper, all while leading asecret double life as the Alpha Queen of the werewolf realm.

But that wasn’t the most pressing matter on my mind. I couldn’t stop thinking about our little girl who, in eighteen short years, would… change.

If the ritual actually went to plan, on her eighteenth birthday she would lose her personality-her hopes, her dreams, her very essence. All of it would be gone, replaced by everything that had once made Selena.

Selena.

It was a sobering thought, one that I still grappled with daily despite knowing that it had been the only way to save both the baby and myself.

“Hey.” Enzo’s voice dragged me out of my head as he brushed past me, a tangle of fairy lights in his arms.” You’ve got that look on your face again.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but he just tsked lightly and pressed a kiss to my temple. “Don’t try and tell me you weren’t thinking about… you know. After the baby’s born.”

I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose; damn this mate bond of ours. It really did feel as if he were reading my mind a lot of the time.

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