Chapter 4: He Knows

Elliot POV

For a few seconds, I could not move.

I stood behind the curtain with my hand clenched in the fabric, staring down at the black SUV. The city moved around it, a motorbike passing, neon bleeding red across wet pavement. None of it touched the hollow opening in my chest.

Inside that car, like a threat shaped into a man, sat Sebastian Wolfe.

He was not searching for my window. He already knew which one was mine.

That realization hit me the way a bad hit on the ice did, not the pain first, but the understanding that something had just broken. I had never told anyone where I lived. No trails. No teammates over. No pieces of myself left where they could be picked up and used.

Six years of that discipline. And Sebastian Wolfe was sitting outside my building at one in the morning like he had every right to be there.

My phone buzzed.

You should invite me in. It's cold outside.

Every hair on my body lifted. He hadn't moved. He knew I was reading it.

How did you get this number?

His reply was instant: You ask the wrong questions.

Rage cut through fear like a blade. I held onto it with both hands because rage was cleaner than the alternative.

Get away from my building.

A pause. Then: Come downstairs and make me.

I grabbed my jacket.

The smart move was to wait him out. I knew that. But Sebastian Wolfe parked outside at one in the morning was a scene waiting to happen, a neighbor, a dog walker, someone with a phone and a sports account. The last thing I needed was a photo circulating of the league's most recognizable Alpha camped outside my address.

I went downstairs to end it quickly.

I believed that completely, right up until I opened the door and saw him.

Sebastian stepped out of the SUV and the cold air almost stopped me. Broad shoulders filling the night like he had been built to own whatever space he occupied. Streetlight caught the rough line of his jaw, the gold crucifix at his throat, the quality of his attention as his gaze moved over me. Slow. Total. Missing nothing.

"You really came down," he said.

"You need psychiatric help."

One corner of his mouth curved. "You look good when you're furious."

"Stop showing up where you shouldn't be."

He leaned against the car, entirely at ease. "You say that like I'm a stranger."

"You are."

"No." His eyes held mine steadily. "I'm the man who broke your stick and hasn't stopped thinking about you since."

I covered the impact of it with contempt. "Is that supposed to impress me?"

"No. Just honesty."

"Why are you here?"

He was quiet for a moment. Then: "Because something happened in that locker room."

Fear moved through me so fast it nearly showed. I locked it down. "Nothing happened."

He pushed off the car and came toward me, not fast, just steady, with the particular inevitability of something that had already decided to arrive. He stopped close enough that retreat would have looked like exactly what it was.

The Alpha presence of him pressed against my senses like pressure on a fracture , the kind that tells you exactly where the break is. Six years and I had never felt it this clearly. That was the part that scared me most.

"My instincts don't need your permission for the truth," he said quietly.

"What does that mean?"

"It means I've been around enough Betas to know what they smell like."

The city noise fell away. Just the dark street, the cold climbing through my shoes, and my pulse hammering visibly at my throat.

"You're imagining things."

"No." No hesitation. No doubt.

"Then you're insane."

"Possible." His jaw tightened. "But I know what I felt when I touched you. And I know what your body did."

The playboy ease had stripped away completely. What remained was pure Alpha focus, the kind that didn't blink, didn't negotiate, didn't look away from what it had decided to see.

"What do you want from me?"

Softly: "I want to know why your body answered mine."

"Step back."

"That's not an answer, Elliot."

He was close enough now that his scent reached me , that warmer, deeper current my suppressed Omega instincts recognized with a desperation that terrified me.

"You should be more careful," he said.

"Is that a threat?"

"No." Something changed in his face, older suddenly, harder. Then a stillness that had nothing to do with composure, and everything to do with something he was still carrying.

"There are people asking questions about you. Someone followed you after the game tonight."

The text exploded in my memory. Pretty things get stolen. The cold that moved through my chest had nothing to do with the night air.

Sebastian watched my face and saw everything I didn't say. "You got a message," he said. Not a question.

"Why would I tell you anything?"

"Because I've seen this before." His jaw tightened. He stopped there. Just a second, a stillness that had nothing to do with composure and everything to do with something he was still carrying.

Then: "Three years ago. Someone I knew. The league moved quietly and it was over before anyone could stop it. I learned the charter afterward. Every clause. Every protection. Every loophole they left open because they assumed no one would ever need it."

He looked at me steadily. "I've been waiting two years for a reason to use it. And now I have one."

"Your suppressants are failing. Someone on staff has noticed. The questions being asked are not casual." A beat. "You're in real danger."

I stared at him.

Sebastian Wolfe, my rival, the man who had broken my stick four hours ago, was standing outside my apartment in the middle of the night, telling me he wanted to protect me.

"Come somewhere safe," he said. "With me."

"You ambush me and expect me to go anywhere with you?"

"I expect you to survive your own stubbornness."

He stepped closer, too fast, inside my guard before I could rebuild it. The night contracted until there was nothing but him and the warmth of an Alpha whose biology had locked onto mine.

“Tell me what you took.”

I froze.

"Suppressants." Low, certain and devastating. "How many?"

Panic hit white and total. I told him to step back. The words came out wrong, too thin, too late. The voice of someone who had already lost the argument their body was having without them.

Sebastian Wolfe looked at me with absolute conviction.

He knew what I was.

And somewhere across the city, someone else already did too. With a file. A deadline.

Seventy-two hours left to use both.