Get It 11

[Max’s POV]

The training yard is loud and I hear none of it. Instructor Graves is running second-years through grappling rotations, bodies hitting mats in rhythm, and I’m at the east rail with a clipboard I haven’t marked in eleven minutes.

Last night replays in fragments I can’t stop shuffling. Her back arching off the bed, the sound she made when I first pressed inside her—half gasp, half surrender, something I will hear in every quiet room for the rest of my life.

And her scent—wolf scent, full and undeniable, flooding my senses for hours before it dissolved like smoke through my fingers. My wolf paces behind my ribs, not agitated but oriented, swinging toward the west corridor every few seconds like a compass needle finding north.

North is wherever Kylie Donovan is standing in this building. I grip the rail and force my eyes back to the mat where two students are butchering a takedown drill.

She crosses the training yard at nine forty-two. I know because I’ve checked the clock six times in the last hour, and my wolf snaps to attention before my eyes even find her—shoulders drawn in, gaze fixed on the middle distance, small and contained.

I’ve watched that performance before and mistaken it for personality. It’s a costume she puts on every morning, stitched together from years of practice, and something behind my ribs twists because twelve hours ago she took it off and now it’s back on tighter than ever.

She passes within forty feet of the platform and does not look up. Not even the flicker of awareness I’ve learned to read in people who are trying not to look—she simply erases me from her field of vision, surgical and total.

My pen cracks against the clipboard and I ease my grip before the plastic splinters, breathing through the pressure that keeps building behind my ribs.

“Max.” My father’s voice arrives the way weather arrives—you feel the pressure change before the first word said out loud. Richard crosses the platform with his hands clasped behind his back, posture announcing this is alpha business, not family.

“Walk with me.” We take the corridor behind the training hall and he doesn’t waste time. “The choosing ceremony is ten days out—Mina’s father called this morning, the Walkers expect a formal answer by week’s end.”

“They’ll get one when I’m ready to give one.” I keep my stride even, my voice level, and the words taste wrong—like reciting lines from a script someone else wrote.

“Ready isn’t a luxury the pack affords you.” He stops, turning to face me, looking at me with that weight that tells me he loves his son and will overrule him anyway. “The elders are watching, Max—the pack needs to see strength and continuity from its next alpha.”

“Deliberation isn’t hesitation.” My jaw works around the distinction. “The system exists because the bond matters—rushing the choosing undermines the tradition it’s built on.”

“The tradition says if the fated bond hasn’t manifested by twenty-three, the alpha chooses.” Father’s hand lands on my shoulder, heavy with certainty. “You’re past twenty-three, son—the bond didn’t come.”

His grip tightens once before he releases me. “Mina is a strong match, her bloodline is impeccable, and the pack respects her family.”

My wolf slams against my ribs so hard I nearly flinch. The bond didn’t come—except I have the faintest feeling that it did, last night, but I have no way to prove it.

I open my mouth and the words that want to come out would detonate every careful thing Kylie has built to survive. So I swallow them whole and they sit in my chest like broken glass.

“I hear you.” I hold his gaze because looking away is a concession I won’t make. “Ten days is ten days—I’ll have an answer.”

“An answer isn’t a maybe, son.” He studies me the way he studies terrain before a decision, calculating cost. “It’s a name, spoken in front of the pack, with conviction behind it.”

He leaves me in the corridor with the echo of his footsteps and something bitter sitting at the back of my throat. Ten days—and the number should carry urgency, but instead it carries the memory of Kylie’s fingers curling into my shoulders while her body shook apart.

I make it back to the east rail before Mina finds me. She approaches from the left, positioning herself in my peripheral vision so I have to turn toward her—a small exercise in proximity she’s perfected over months.

“You’ve been hard to find today.” She leans against the rail beside me, close enough that her arm brushes mine. “I brought coffee—yours is getting cold at the admin table.”

“I’ll grab it later, thanks.” My eyes track the yard because looking at Mina right now requires a performance I don’t have the energy to mount.

“Max.” Her voice shifts—not softer but more careful, the tone that suggests she’s laying groundwork before she presents her case. “You’ve been distant this week—I notice, even if you think I don’t.”

“Training cycle is heavy.” The lie is efficient and completely transparent. “Nothing personal.”

“The elders notice too.” She turns to face me, arms folded, expression not wounded but strategic. “A future alpha who seems reluctant about his choosing doesn’t project strength—it projects uncertainty, and uncertainty makes people nervous.”

“I’m not uncertain.” My hand tightens on the rail until the metal bites into my palm, and I hold the pressure because it gives me something to feel that isn’t her. “I’m thorough.”

“Thorough looks the same as reluctant from the outside, and the outside is what the pack sees.” She touches my arm—light, deliberate, calibrated for anyone watching. “I’m not pressuring you—I’m reminding you that we’re a strong match, that I’m ready for this.”

She means it. Mina isn’t lying, isn’t manipulating—she believes what she’s saying with the clean certainty—her path has never been obstructed by something she couldn’t name.

She is offering me the simplest version of my future, and my wolf won’t stop turning toward a girl on the other side of the yard who won’t even meet my eyes. The gap between what Mina is and what my wolf demands is a canyon I can’t bridge with ten days and good intentions.

“I know you’re ready.” I give her that much because it’s true, and because the things I can’t give her deserve at least the honesty of what I can.

“Then act like it.” The edge in her voice is brief, quickly smoothed. “Ten days, Max—that’s not a lot of time to look like a man who knows what he wants.”

She pushes off the rail, adjusting her jacket, the conversation closing on her terms. “Oh—I almost forgot.” She pauses, half-turned, voice light and easy—the casual afterthought that isn’t casual at all. “I had the loveliest chat with Hope this morning.”

Her eyes find mine and hold. “Your stepmother is such a sweetheart—so invested in making sure the ceremony goes smoothly.”

She walks away and my hand stays on the rail, knuckles draining white, while my wolf goes very, very still—the kind of still that comes before something breaks.