Chapter 133: TELLING PUCK ABOUT BELLA

Mandi gathered the photographs without being asked, squaring the edges before catching Liam’s eye. Something wordless passed between them, a silent agreement born of long practice. She walked to the door with the prints tucked against her chest; Liam followed, pulling the heavy wood shut until the latch clicked, leaving behind a silence that felt almost deliberate, as if the room itself understood what was coming.

Georgia stayed seated. A dull ache flared deep beneath her collarbone, a low, pressurized thrum that made her press both palms flat against her denim to keep her respiration strictly rhythmic. Puck sat three inches away, still throwing off that dry furnace heat she had long since stopped trying to ignore, though tonight it felt different - charged, expectant, like the air before a storm broke. The quiet inside the room settled differently now that they occupied it alone, turning heavier and far more deliberate around them, pressing against her ribs like something alive. She found herself studying the line of his profile, the tension banked in his shoulders, and wondered if he already suspected what she was about to say.

She had spent the entire duration of Mandi’s debriefing cataloging the exact words she needed, fully aware that once spoken, they could never be pulled back. Her pulse ticked against her throat, counting down the seconds she had left to lose her nerve. Every rehearsal in her head had sounded clean and composed; now, faced with the actual weight of him beside her, the words felt flimsy, inadequate for what they were about to unleash.

"There’s more," she said, testing the silence between them. "About the blade?"

Puck did not turn. He kept his attention anchored on the door panel, his teeth clamped tight while running internal calculations she could neither follow nor disrupt. She watched the muscle in his jaw flex, watched him brace for whatever she was about to hand him. There was something almost tender in how still he held himself, as though stillness alone might delay the blow.

"Bella told Mandi something else before she vanished." Georgia kept her delivery flat and clinical, reciting facts the way she used to read placement sheets after a free skate, as though distance from the words might soften what they meant. She hated how practiced her own voice sounded, how easily old habits of control resurfaced now that she needed them most. The sabotage had not been random violence; Darcy Valentine had brokered the hit directly through his alliance with Bella, structuring the entire arrangement to break her off the ice permanently.

Puck’s fist hit the tabletop, a sharp crack of pine that cut through the room like a gunshot. The wood groaned under his knuckles, the grain splintering under the sudden bite of his weight. Georgia flinched but held her seat, refusing to let the violence of the sound unseat her resolve. She noticed, even through her own fear, the way his hand trembled afterward, as if the force of his anger had cost him something.

"Say that again," he rasped, his voice scraping low and raw around the edges, something fractured moving beneath the words.

"Bella confirmed it," Georgia said, holding her ground before the heat radiating off him could knock her back. "Darcy picked the competition date. He ordered your blade hit directly to break you off the ice. It was you, Puck. Targeted, intentional, paid for."

A white-hot spike flared deep under her clavicle, so sharp and violent it drove the air clean out of her lungs. She gasped, one hand flying briefly to her chest, but she did not look away from him. He didn’t answer with words. His chair shrieked back against the floorboards as he surged upright, every line of his frame snapping toward the doorway, fury rolling off him in waves she could almost taste. For one disorienting second she thought of how gentle his hands had been only nights before, and how little that gentleness mattered now against the force barreling toward the door.

Puck took two long, violent strides before she could clear the bench. His hand hit the brass latch, iron momentum driving forward to tear it open.

"Puck!"

Georgia threw herself directly between his chest and the heavy wood. She slammed both hands against his collar, driving her weight straight into his forward drive. The impact hit like stone, jarring through her wrists and rattling the tether beneath her collarbone, but the sheer shock of her body in his path checked his boots an inch from the threshold. Her heart hammered against her ribs, fear and determination tangled together in equal measure. She could feel the frantic rhythm of her own pulse echoing in her palms where they pressed against him, as though her body had become one long nerve exposed to his fury.

Amber flared through his irises, cold and fully dilated, the wolf stripped of every civilized veneer. Beneath her palms, the muscle of his shoulders was locked iron, ready to cast her aside with a twist of his torso. She did not let up. She dug her fingers into the coarse wool of his coat, anchoring herself to his frame, willing him to feel her there instead of the rage consuming him. For one terrifying heartbeat she wondered if this was the moment the man disappeared entirely, leaving only the animal behind.

"Look at me," she said, her voice dropping into a hard, measured command that brooked no retreat. "Look at me, Puck."

His gaze dragged down from the door to lock onto hers, and for a moment she saw the war happening behind his eyes - the wolf against the man, fury against reason. His respiration came fast and searing against her forehead, furnace-hot, his jaw clamped tight enough to crack enamel. She held his stare and refused to blink, refused to give him any reason to believe she doubted him, even as her own knees threatened to buckle beneath her.

"He hurt you on purpose," he growled, the timbre scraping raw, lethal intent vibrating in his chest. "He aimed at you. He broke your blade. He’s paying for that tonight."

"He wants you to walk out that door." She didn’t drop her gaze, nor did she flinch from the gold burning inches from her face, even as her pulse pounded loud enough to drown her own thoughts. "He picked the date, he picked me, and he is waiting for you to walk straight into the kill zone blind with rage. You go out there alone, you hand Darcy Valentine the exact council intervention he set up."

The brutal forward tilt of his weight hesitated. The rage did not recede, but the reckless fury shifted, crystallizing into something colder and far more dangerous. He stayed pinned where she held him, not because her hands could keep him from the hall, but because he was finally calculating the board, the predator in him giving way, however briefly, to the strategist. She watched the shift happen in real time, the fine muscles around his eyes easing by degrees, the breath leaving him in a long, shuddering exhale that she felt against her own skin.

"Darcy Valentine is going to answer for it," he whispered, the words flat, irrevocable, and lethal. "Every single drop."

"Then we make sure he does," Georgia said, her knuckles buried in his coat, refusing to yield an inch of ground. Her voice steadied even as her heart still raced, some quiet certainty rising beneath the fear, settling into her chest like a decision she had already made long before she said it aloud. "Together."