Chapter 4
Elliot POV
I woke in the guest room before the sun had fully climbed over the skyline, and for a few seconds I had no idea where I was. Then it landed all at once: Sebastian’s apartment, the tablet, those green words still burned into the back of my mind: MARRIAGE REGISTERED.
I sat up with my jacket still on and my phone resting on the nightstand, no new messages waiting, which somehow made the quiet feel heavier instead of lighter.
After I used the bathroom and washed my face with cold water, the mirror showed the same face I’d always known, dark hair, freckles, tired eyes, and nothing about it looked married. When I stepped out into the main room, Sebastian was already awake, standing at the kitchen counter with a coffee mug in one hand, wearing a black T-shirt and sweatpants. He looked up the moment he heard me.
“You’re up early,” he said.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
He nodded toward the counter. “Coffee’s there if you want it.”
I stayed where I was. “What happens now?”
“Now we wait. The registration is already in the system. If the league tries to pull you in for a medical, the protection clause activates, and they’ll have to go through me.”
“And if they don’t care about the clause?”
“Then we deal with it. But most of them care about looking clean on paper.”
I finally walked over and poured a cup just to give my hands something to do. The apartment sat quiet around us while I asked, “You really live here alone?”
“Most of the time.”
The coffee was strong and bitter. “I need to get my things from my apartment.”
“Not yet. They’re still watching it. I already had someone check; two cars stayed on your street until almost four in the morning.”
My stomach tightened. “So I’m stuck here.”
“For now. Yes.”
I set the mug down harder than I meant to. “This is temporary. You said that.”
“It is.”
“How temporary?”
He looked at me for a second. “Until the file is handled and the people asking questions back off. Could be days. Could be longer.”
I didn’t like that answer.
He finished his coffee, put the mug in the sink, and said there was food in the fridge if I wanted it, that he had a call in ten minutes with someone who could keep the medical staff quiet for a while, and that I should stay inside and not open the door for anyone. When I asked where he was going, he told me just to the other room, that he wouldn’t leave the apartment, then walked down the hall and closed a door behind him. A minute later I heard his voice, low and serious, though I couldn’t make out the words.
I stood in the kitchen trying to think. Last night I had signed a legal marriage document with Sebastian Wolfe, the same man who’d broken my stick, the one who’d smelled me in the locker room, the one who now knew enough to destroy me if he decided to. Out of habit, I pulled up the league news page on my phone. Nothing about me, nothing about any investigation, which didn’t mean it wasn’t happening.
My phone buzzed with an unknown number.
Cute. Running to Wolfe won’t save you.
I locked the screen. My hands had gone cold again.
A few minutes later Sebastian came back into the main room, took one look at my face, and stopped. “What?”
I showed him the message. He read it, jaw tight. “They’re trying to rattle you.”
“They’re succeeding.”
“Don’t answer it. Don’t engage.”
“Easy for you to say.”
He set his phone on the counter. “I made some calls. The medical officer who flagged you in Vancouver is being told to stand down for now. That buys us time, not a lot, but some.”
“How much time?”
“A few days if we’re lucky. A day if we’re not.”
I walked to the window and looked out at the city waking up, cars moving on the street below, normal people heading to normal jobs, none of them having just married their rival to keep a secret from ending their career. “I need clothes,” I said, “and my suppressants. The real ones, not the backup I keep in my bag.”
Sebastian nodded. “I’ll send someone to get them later today. Write down exactly where they are and what they look like. No one else goes into your apartment.”
I turned around. “You have people who just do what you say?”
“I have people I pay to be careful. There’s a difference.”
I didn’t answer.
He watched me for a moment. “You’re still shaking.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not. When’s the last time you ate?”
“I don’t remember.”
He opened the fridge, pulled out a container, and set it on the counter. “Eat something. Then we need to talk about the public side of this.”
“What public side?”
“The marriage is registered. If anyone in the league looks, they’ll see it. We need a story, quiet one, no big announcement, just enough so it doesn’t look like we did this overnight for protection.”
I stared at him. “You want me to pretend we’re together.”
“I want the league to believe it enough that they don’t dig. That’s all.”
My stomach turned. “I’m not good at pretending.”
“You spent six years pretending to be a Beta. You’ll manage.”
The words landed harder than I wanted them to. I looked away. “Don’t use that against me.”
“I’m not. I’m stating a fact.”
The silence stretched between us until I finally asked, “What do you get out of this? Really.”
Sebastian leaned against the counter. “Time. And the chance to keep them from taking something they don’t have the right to take.”
“That’s not a full answer.”
“It’s the only one I have right now.”
I picked up the container and forced down a few bites that tasted like nothing. After a while, he spoke again. “There’s a spare key on the table by the door. The building has security. You’re listed as a resident as of this morning. Don’t leave without telling me.”
“So I’m a prisoner.”
“You’re protected. There’s a difference.”
I didn’t feel the difference.
My phone buzzed one more time from the same unknown number.
Enjoy your honeymoon while it lasts, pretty boy. The commissioner still gets the file.
I showed it to him. He read it, then looked at me. “They’re not backing off, which means we move faster.”
“How?”
“We make the marriage look real enough that the protection clause becomes too messy for them to fight. That means you stay here. We go to the same places. We’re seen together. Quietly.”
I set the food down. “I didn’t agree to that.”
“You agreed to survive. This is part of it.”
I stared at him, the same man who had stood over me on the ice less than twenty-four hours ago, now telling me how to stay alive, and the worst part was that he was probably right.
