Get It 21

I run—off the mat and through the training yard door before my brain catches up to tell me it’s already too late.

His footsteps close the gap within seconds, steady where mine are ragged. The corridor dead-ends at a fire door and I’m reaching for the handle when his palm lands on metal above my head.

He doesn’t grab me. His body fills the exit—shoulder to doorframe, chest heaving—and my back meets the cold steel because there’s nowhere left to go.

“Your scent on the mat—my wolf recognized you.” His voice is wrecked, barely holding shape. “Not a guess. A fact that rewrote every question I’ve had since the night of the heat.”

“You’re wrong.” The denial shapes itself on my tongue, muscle memory from thirteen years of practice. “You don’t know what you—”

“Fated mate.” He says it close enough that I feel the word against my temple. “Mine. My wolf has been screaming it since you moved in and I didn’t understand why until sixty seconds ago.”

Three inches of corridor air between us and the bond is a living wire in that gap, vibrating so hard my teeth ache. I have a thousand lies organized by category, and every one dissolves before it reaches my mouth.

“Tell me I’m wrong.” His jaw works, free hand trembling at his side. “Look me in the eyes, say you don’t feel this, and I walk away.”

My mouth opens. Nothing comes out, and the silence answers louder than any word I own. My hands are shaking against the steel at my back.

“Yes.” The word tears free like a bone resetting. “I have a wolf—I’ve been hiding it since I was eight, and yes, we’re fated. You’re not wrong.”

Something recalibrates behind his eyes—I see it happen, his whole body reorganizing around a truth he’s been circling for weeks. His forehead drops to mine and the sound he makes is guttural, shattered.

“Why.” His eyes search my face for the answer his voice can’t demand. His hand above my head is shaking.

“I can’t give you that—not the why, not the how, not yet.” My fingers twist into his shirt until my knuckles ache. “Don’t ask me tonight.”

“Not tonight.” His mouth brushes my forehead, breath unsteady against my skin. “But I need you to hear me—I’m not walking away from this.”

Then he kisses me—nothing like before. Not the blind urgency of the heat, not the slow tenderness of my bedroom. This is a man who finally knows who I am, kissing me like the knowing is what he’s been starving for.

His hand cups the back of my skull and he walks me through the equipment room door. My shoulders meet the wall, his body follows—hips pinning hips, one thigh between my legs—and a sound tears out of me I don’t bother hiding.

“There you are.” He whispers it against my throat, his mouth open on my pulse. “I’ve been looking for you—the real one—every time I touched you.”

He strips my shirt over my head and his mouth drops to my breast, tongue circling the peak. His hand slides beneath my waistband and his fingers find me slick and swollen and the groan that vibrates against my skin nearly buckles my knees.

“Don’t hold back.” His voice is wrecked against my ear. “Not anymore, Kylie—I want to hear all of it.”

I drag my nails down his chest—marking him because I’m allowed to now. He hisses through his teeth and his hips grind forward, hard against my thigh, and my head falls back against the wall.

He lifts me. My legs wrap around his waist and he carries me to the training bench—cool vinyl against my spine, his weight settling between my thighs.

He hooks my leggings off in one motion and his mouth follows—hip, inner thigh, then his tongue is on me and my spine arches off the bench. He works me firm and relentless, holding my hips down when they buck, reading every sound I give him.

I’m loud. So loud the echo comes back off concrete walls, and I don’t care—the girl who muffled herself against her own wrist is gone. His tongue flattens, strokes, circles until my thighs clamp around his head and the orgasm rips through me whole.

He rises over me, shoves his shorts down. When he pushes inside me the stretch is devastating and perfect and I cry out with my fist in his hair. He doesn’t pause—drives deep, then deeper, each thrust a claim.

“Say it.” His voice breaks against my throat, hand gripping my hip hard enough to bruise. “Tell me what we are.”

“Yours.” The word comes from behind a door I’ve kept sealed for thirteen years. “Fated. Yours.”

His pace turns punishing—hips slamming into mine, one hand gripping the bench, the other cupping my breast. I match every thrust, my body answering his with an honesty my mouth spent a lifetime refusing.

I should get an award for worst-kept secret. Instead I get this—him, us, the wreckage and the revelation braided together.

He reaches between us—thumb stroking tight circles where we’re joined while he moves inside me. The dual pressure shatters me and I break around him with a cry that sounds like his name.

He follows—burying himself to the hilt, groaning into my neck. His hand finds mine and pins it against the vinyl, fingers laced, and neither of us moves.

We lie tangled on equipment that was absolutely not designed for this—his heart slamming against mine, my legs still wrapped around him, every nerve humming. I should file an incident report for inappropriate use of training facilities.

His thumb traces my hip and the humor won’t come, because someone finally knows what I am and he’s still here. Still inside me, still touching me like something worth memorizing.

His thumb stops and his whole body goes rigid. When he speaks, his voice has shifted into something quiet and precise. “Kylie—your eyes.”

The room has a gold cast I didn’t notice. His face is lit by something that isn’t the fluorescents—something coming from me.

“Gold.” He cups my face, tilting it toward his. “Wolf gold, bright as anything I’ve ever seen.”

My stomach drops through the bench—the suppression slipped while I wasn’t guarding it, my wolf surfacing during the one moment I forgot to perform human. His expression isn’t shock. It’s confirmation.

The gold fades as my mother’s magic clamps back. My eyes are just eyes again—grey-green, ordinary, lying on her behalf.

He eases out of me gently, pulls his shirt over my shoulders. His thumb traces my cheekbone while his jaw works around something he’s been carrying alone.

“As you know, I’ve been investigating your mother’s records.” His voice is steady now—the future alpha, not the man who just came apart inside me. “Pack registration, origin files, everything.”

My pulse spikes so hard my vision narrows and my fingers grip the edge of the bench. “Max, whatever you found—”

“Silver Creek—the pack she claims to come from—it doesn’t exist, so I thought, maybe there’s an error. So I checked by her maiden name.” His eyes hold mine, and there is nothing in them that will bend. “She still doesn’t exist in any werewolf records. Not in any registry, any database, any continent.”

He lets that land before he finishes. “Your mother’s entire background is fabricated, Kylie.”