Elliot POV
I stared at the message on my phone: You have ten minutes. Sebastian was still outside, the league already had a file, and I had seventy-two hours left. I put the phone in my pocket, grabbed my jacket, and unlocked the door even though my hands were cold. I didn’t trust him and never had, but staying inside felt worse than whatever waited downstairs.
I went down and found the black SUV still parked across the street with the passenger window down. Sebastian watched me walk over until I stopped a few feet from the car.
“Get in,” he said.
“Why should I?”
“Because the people who sent those messages are already moving. You’re safer with me than you are up there.”
I looked back at my building one last time, then got in. Sebastian pulled away from the curb without another word while the city lights slid past the windows. My phone stayed quiet with no new messages, and that almost made it worse.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“My place. Temporary. No one from the league knows you’re with me yet.”
“Yet.”
He didn’t answer.
I sat stiff in the seat. The extra suppressants I took earlier were still working, but not fully. Every time the car turned, I could smell him more clearly, cedar and smoke, and something underneath that made my skin feel too tight. I hated that my body noticed it at all.
Sebastian glanced at me once. “You’re still shaking.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
I didn’t reply.
He drove into an underground garage under a tall building I didn’t recognize, parked, turned off the engine, and looked at me.
“This is it. Come upstairs.”
I followed him into the elevator. The ride was silent. When the doors opened, he led me into a large, mostly empty apartment that felt clean, modern, and cold. He locked the door behind us.
“Sit down,” he said.
I stayed standing. “Talk. How do you know about the file?”
Sebastian walked to the window, looked out for a second, then turned back.
“Someone on the medical staff flagged you three weeks ago in Vancouver. I have contacts, and I heard about it.
After the game tonight, I saw someone following you, the same people who handled another case three years ago.”
“What happened in that case?”
“The player was gone from the league within days. Quiet, no public statement, contract terminated. I studied the rules after that and found the only real protection that works.”
I already knew where this was going.
“Marriage,” I said.
He nodded. “An Alpha’s bonded mate can’t be forced into a medical review without consent. It’s in the original charter and was never taken out. If the file reaches the commissioner while you’re unprotected, your career is over. If you’re legally my mate, they can’t touch you without going through me.”
I stared at him. “You planned this.”
“I planned the protection. I didn’t plan the rest.”
“What rest?”
He looked at me straight. “The part where my body already decided you were mine the second I smelled you in that locker room.”
I took a step back. “Don’t.”
“I’m not asking you to feel the same. I’m telling you the facts. You have less than seventy-two hours. The agent is already moving, and you need protection now.”
My phone buzzed. I pulled it out and saw another message from an unknown number.
Tick-tock, pretty boy. We know you left the building.
My stomach dropped.
Sebastian saw my face. “They already know.”
I put the phone away.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “We’re not friends. We’re not even on the same team. You broke my stick a few hours ago.”
“I know.”
“Then why?”
He was quiet for a moment. “Because I can’t stand the idea of them taking you. And because something in me stopped seeing you as just a rival the moment I caught your scent.”
I looked away. The apartment felt too quiet.
“I need time to think.”
“You don’t have time,” he said. “You have time to decide.”
I walked to the window and looked out at the city. My own reflection stared back at me in the glass, the same face that had hidden the truth for six years.
If I said no, the file would reach the commissioner, and everything I built would be gone. If I said yes, I would be tied to Sebastian Wolfe legally and publicly.
I turned back to him.
“What exactly do you want from me?”
“Sign the papers. Stay here for now so they can’t claim fraud through separate addresses. Let me deal with the league.”
“And after?”
“We figure that out later.”
I studied his face. He didn’t look like he was lying, but he also didn’t look soft.
My phone buzzed again.
We can do this the easy way or the hard way.
I locked the screen.
“Fine,” I said.
Sebastian’s shoulders dropped a little. “Fine?”
“I’ll sign. But this is a contract. Nothing more. Don’t expect anything else.”
He nodded once. “Understood.”
He went to a desk, pulled out a tablet, unlocked it, and handed it to me.
“Read it. Then sign.”
I scrolled through the document. It was a standard marriage registration with extra clauses about residency and medical consent. Everything he said was there in plain legal language. I pressed my thumb to the screen, and the words flashed green.
MARRIAGE REGISTERED.
Sebastian took the tablet back and checked it. “It’s done.”
I stood there, suddenly aware of how permanent it felt.
“You should sleep,” he said. “The guest room is down the hall and the door on the left.”
I didn’t move right away.
“Elliot.”
I looked at him.
“You’re safe here tonight,” he said. “That’s all that matters right now.”
I nodded once, walked down the hall, found the guest room, and locked the door behind me. I sat on the edge of the bed without taking off my jacket.
Six years of hiding. One night of everything falling apart. And now I was legally married to the one person I had spent years trying to stay away from.
I lay down, but sleep didn’t come easy. When it finally did, I dreamed of the locker room, the broken stick, and Sebastian’s voice saying the same words over and over.
You aren’t a Beta.
I woke before dawn with my heart racing and the clear knowledge that nothing in my life would ever be the same.
