Chapter 5: Mine

Elliot POV

The world went silent.

Sebastian knew. Maybe not everything, but enough. It was there in the sudden, rigid stillness of his body as he held me against his chest, and in the way the air between us shifted from dangerous curiosity to something stark and unyielding.

He had stopped playing.

I forced my boots to find purchase on the wet pavement, dragging myself out of his grip until my spine hit the cold brick of my building. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You're a bad liar when you're scared."

"I'm not scared."

"That's your biggest lie tonight."

Anger snapped through me fast enough to steady my hands. I stepped into his space, my chest nearly flushing against his. "You don't know a damn thing about me."

"No," he said, his voice dropping an octave as his eyes tracked the frantic pulse jumping in my throat. "But I know this isn't normal. The second I touched you, my whole body recognized something my brain hadn't caught up to. That doesn't happen with Betas."

I said nothing, clamping my teeth together.

Sebastian took one step forward, completely absorbing the small distance I had just fought for. He planted his broad hand beside my shoulder, his massive frame blocking out the streetlights and the dark alleyway. The cedar and smoke of him hit me like a wall I had been walking toward for two years without knowing it.

Six years of triple doses, and six years of perfect discipline, all of it completely useless with him this close.

"Why me?" The words slipped past my lips before I could stop them.

His fingers tightened against the brick, the rough skin of his palm scraping the mortar. "Because I can't stop looking for you. That became my problem a long time ago." His gaze dropped to my throat, his nostrils flaring as he took in the cold air—and whatever my failing suppressants were leaking into it. "What did you take before coming down here?"

I looked away, targeting the dark street where neon bled across the pavement. "Nothing."

He caught my chin. Firm, heavy fingers, his thumb pressing hard against the edge of my jaw, forced my face back to his. My whole body jolted like a live current had found the one wire I forgot to insulate, and a sound broke from my throat that I had not given permission for: small, undone, and honest in a way that terrified me.

Sebastian's eyes went dark instantly, the hazel completely swallowed by black.

"Elliot." Just my name, like something heavy he had been carrying a long time and had finally set down.

I wrapped my fingers around his wrist, trying to pull his hand from my face. "Let go," I whispered.

"Not yet."

I lifted my other hand to push him away. My palm landed flat against the damp fabric of his jersey and stayed, because his heart was slamming, fast and unsteady. He was not calm; his shoulders were rigid, and his eyes were fever-bright.

This was pulling him under too, and that undid me more than anything else.

He leaned lower, his forehead almost touching mine, his breath hot against my mouth. "Tell me what you are."

My chest seized, and he saw the breath lock in my throat the instant it happened.

Panic detonated. I shoved his chest with everything I had left, breaking his grip, and stumbled toward the glass door where my keys scraped uselessly against the brass lock in my shaking hands.

Before I could find the slot, Sebastian closed the distance. His massive chest pressed directly into my back, pinning me against the door, and his voice brushed the shell of my ear, low, certain, and devastating: "You smell like mine."

Every muscle in my body locked.

It didn't sound like a line; it sounded like biology. It was like an Alpha's instinct naming what it had already decided, with the absolute conviction of something that had always been true. I stood there while that landed, the metal keys biting deep into my palm, while his scent moved through me and found every place I had sealed shut.

I turned around within his hold, the wood of the door scraping my jacket as he hovered inches away, the hunger and the war both visible in his face, and he was losing both.

"You're my Omega." The silence between us grew teeth.

"You're wrong," I managed, my voice thin.

"I'm not. I've spent two years trying to explain it away." His chin dropped, his mouth hovering just over my collarbone. "Stop lying. Not to me. Not tonight."

I closed my eyes, letting the keys drop to the pavement with a sharp metal clink.

Six years of suppressants, silence, and a life built so completely around a lie that the lie had become the only self I knew. I had carried it through every game, every medical check, and every grinding moment of survival. I had carried it alone, because there had never been anyone safe enough to set it down in front of.

There still wasn't, except he already knew.

"If anyone finds out, I lose everything," I said, refusing to let my eyes water under the harsh streetlight. "My contract. My career. Six years, gone overnight."

"I know."

"The league doesn't allow Omegas. If that file reaches the commissioner…"

"It won't." Iron entered his voice, his jaw setting into a hard line. "Not if I stop it."

"Why would you?"

He looked away toward the empty main road for just a second, as if the answer cost him something he hadn't planned to spend, before turning back with his gaze locking onto mine with terrifying weight. "We were never just enemies. Marry me."

The words hit the air and stayed.

"An Alpha's bonded mate cannot be compelled to submit to league medical review without consent. It's in the charter, original Omega rights legislation, never repealed. If you're my mate on paper, the file is useless; they cannot touch you without coming through me." His fingers reached past me, grabbing the door frame to stabilize us both. "Nobody in this league is coming at me."

I reached out, bundling the fabric of his jersey in my fist. "You planned this."

"Since I saw the tail on you after the game. Yes." Something tightened in his expression, his shoulders dropping an inch. "The part where you make me feel like this, I did not plan that."

"And what do you get?"

Sebastian looked out toward the dark alleyway, his knuckles white against the wood. "Time to figure out what you already are to me."

I did the only thing I knew how to do with something I couldn't afford to feel: I calculated.

He was right about the clause. I had read the charter the year I went pro, looking for the one sentence that might save me if everything went wrong, and I had found it, filing it away like a fire escape I prayed I'd never need.

If not him, who? The answer had always been no one. For six years I had built my life around that answer, telling myself it was discipline and telling myself the isolation was a choice.

Standing here, wrapped in the warmth of an Alpha who refused to blink, I understood it had never been a choice; it had been the loneliest thing I had ever survived.

I lifted my chin, letting go of his jersey. "Agreed."

He held out his hand.

I looked at the broad, bare palm for one second and then shook it, firm, brief, and the most irreversible thing I had ever done. His fingers held mine a half-second too long before I pulled away first.

I turned to grab my keys from the ground, but headlight beams suddenly swept across the brick walls as two dark league sedans screeched around the corner, their sirens cutting the night as they boxed in the street.

Sebastian didn't hesitate. He grabbed my wrist, yanking me back toward the idling SUV where he threw open the passenger door, shoved me inside, and slammed it shut. By the time he jumped behind the wheel, the car was already rolling. He threw a digital tablet onto my lap and stomped on the gas.

"Sign it now." He spun the wheel, tearing down the alleyway just as the league officers flooded my lobby.

I pressed my thumb hard against the glass screen, watching the legal authorization flash green: MARRIAGE REGISTERED.

Sebastian looked over at me, his knuckles white on the steering wheel as the city blurred past. "It's done. But they track fraud through separate residences, Elliot. You're never going back to that apartment. You live with me now."