Chapter 4 4.

KAYDEN

We'd won the championship and I should have felt on top of the world.

My wolf was losing its mind instead.

The stadium was still roaring behind us as the team made their way back to the locker room. Victory should have tasted sweet. Three college scouts had approached me after the final whistle with offers that would have made my father raise an eyebrow, and my father did not raise his eyebrow for small things.

My future was wrapped up with a bow if I wanted football professionally.

Goddess knew that wasn't really possible while being the alpha heir to the most powerful werewolf pack in existence. But it was nice to be wanted.

My wolf had been restless all week. Since the classroom. Since I'd cornered Honoria and she'd looked at me like I was something she hadn't decided about yet and I'd felt the pull of her even then without understanding what it was.

I'd spent eighteen years learning to control this. Eighteen years of discipline and focus and keeping the wolf side of me exactly where I needed it to be.

So why was it suddenly trying to climb out of my skin every time she crossed my mind.

"Best game of the season, Captain." Reese came up beside me and slammed his hand into my shoulder hard enough that a human would have stumbled. "You absolutely destroyed their defense."

"Good teamwork."

"Sure. Teamwork." He fell into step beside me. "Davies dropped two passes."

"Everyone has bad moments."

"He dropped them both in the same drive."

"Reese."

"I'm just saying it wasn't entirely teamwork."

Davies appeared on my other side, apparently having heard all of that. "I heard my name."

"I was complimenting you," Reese said.

"You absolutely were not."

"I was saying you contributed to the overall game experience."

"That's not a compliment."

"It's not not a compliment."

Davies looked at me. "Was it a compliment?"

"It was not a compliment," I said.

Davies pointed at Reese. "I knew it." He jogged ahead to catch up with the rest of the group, already shouting something to Peterson that I didn't catch.

We pushed through the locker room doors and I stopped.

The space was organized in a way it never was after a game. Equipment sorted by type. Towels in neat stacks. First aid supplies in rows along the back shelf. Someone had gone through the whole room with a level of attention to detail that our usual post-game chaos did not produce.

"Did the cleaning staff actually do something?" Mark asked, pulling open his locker.

"Volunteer committee maybe," someone else said.

My nose caught it before I'd finished looking around.

Vanilla. Something floral underneath it. Light and clean and completely out of place in a room that smelled like effort and grass and whatever spray Peterson used that nobody had ever been able to identify.

Honoria had been here. Recently. That scent was too fresh for her to have left long ago.

My wolf went from restless to alert in about a second.

"Let's celebrate and get out," I said. My voice came out rougher than I wanted. "I need to shower and crash."

The team needed no further encouragement. Music started from somewhere, two different songs from two different phones until someone made a decision. Lockers slammed. Peterson started a story about the third quarter that was already three times more dramatic than it had actually been. Davies climbed onto a bench and began what appeared to be an acceptance speech for an award nobody had given him.

The human teammates were loud and joyful and completely in it.

The wolf teammates were celebrating too, but differently. Miche caught my eye across the room and gave me a nod that said the game was good and we both knew what it meant. Fitzgerald raised his chin at me from near the showers. Adeyemi, lacing his boots on the far bench, looked up and held my gaze for a moment before looking back down. Quiet acknowledgment. Pack acknowledgment. The difference between people who celebrated a win and people who understood what it meant to have their Alpha heir on the field and had been watching his back all night without being asked.

I appreciated both kinds. For different reasons.

Peterson grabbed my arm. "Third quarter. Tell me you saw their defensive end's face when you got past him. Tell me you saw it."

"I saw it."

"It was incredible. It was the face of a man whose entire belief system had been challenged." He shook me slightly. "That was art, Kayden. That was sport as art."

"Let go of my arm, Peterson."

"I'm just saying—"

"Let go."

He let go. He turned to find someone else to tell and immediately found Marty and started the story again from the beginning.

Reese appeared at my shoulder. "He's going to be telling that story at forty."

"Probably."

"The defensive end's face is going to get more dramatic every year."

"By the time he's thirty the man will have been crying."

Reese almost smiled. "You okay? You've been somewhere else since the final whistle."

"I'm fine."

He didn't push it. That was Reese. He made the observation and put it down and waited, and I was grateful for it because I didn't have anything useful to say and we both knew it.

I walked toward the equipment closet at the back of the room. I needed a fresh towel before I showered and that was the only reason I was going in that direction. That was what I told myself.

My hand closed around the handle.

I pulled the door open.

Light filled the small dark space.

Honoria was pressed against the back wall with her eyes wide and her red hair falling loose around her shoulders and that vanilla scent hit me at full force and my wolf went completely still in the way it went still when it had found what it was looking for.

She stared at me.

I stared at her.

"What are you doing in here?" I said.

"Mr. Harrison asked me to organize the equipment." Her voice was defensive, chin already coming up. "I didn't know you'd be back this soon. I was trying to leave before anyone saw me."

I glanced back at my teammates. Peterson was still talking. Davies had progressed to demonstrating something with his arms. Nobody was looking at us.

I stepped into the closet.

She pressed back further against the wall.

"You know what's funny," I said, keeping my voice low. "I've been thinking about those photos all week."

Her eyes went wide. "Kayden—"

"And I realized something." I took another step. She had nowhere to go. "You're actually pretty brave. Most people wouldn't have the guts to come at me like that."

"What are you doing."

"Talking." I smiled. The one I knew made people uncomfortable. "You remember how to do that, right? Or do you only communicate through leaked photos now?"

Her jaw set. Good.

"Let me out."

"In a minute."

She had to tilt her head back to look at me now. Her scent was everywhere and my wolf was doing that thing it did around her, that low demanding attention that I was running out of ways to ignore.

This was probably a terrible idea.

"You want to know what I think?" I said.

"Not particularly."

"I think you're not nearly as tough as you pretend to be."

Her eyes went sharp. "You don't know anything about me."

"I know enough. You act like you don't care what anyone thinks but here you are hiding to avoid my teammates."

"Screw you."

"There it is." I grinned. "That's the one."

"You're an asshole."

"Yeah. I've been told." I straightened up but didn't move back. "At least I'm honest about it. You pretend you don't care when you obviously do. So which one of us is really the coward?"

Her hand came up and she shoved hard at my chest.

I let her move me. One step back.

"Get out of my way."

"Make me."

She tried to duck left. I moved with her. She tried right. I was already there. Her frustration was building and I could see it and I wasn't going to pretend I wasn't enjoying it slightly.

"This isn't funny."

"It's a little funny."

"You're impossible."

"And you're predictable." I leaned against the doorframe. "Come on. Show me that fire you had at the café."

"That girl is about to knee you in the balls if you don't move."

I laughed. Actually laughed. "There she is."

She shoved at my chest again, harder, and I let her push me back, one step and then another, until I was out of the closet and back in the main locker room and she'd followed me out without noticing she'd done it. Her eyes were blazing.

"You're a child," she said.

"And you're fun to mess with."

"I hate you."

"You've mentioned that." I grinned. "But you're not hiding anymore. I'd call that a win."

She opened her mouth and her foot caught the edge of the doorway and she went forward and I reached for her on instinct, hand around her waist, but the angle was wrong and we were both going down and I tried to take the impact and her face came forward and her lips hit mine.

The world stopped.

Goddess.

Heat slammed through me, not warmth, not the usual flush of contact, something that went all the way through every cell at once and rewrote things it had no business rewriting. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. The only thing that existed was that point of contact and what was happening to me because of it.

MATE.

The bond snapped into place like something that had always been there and was only now making itself known. It hummed in my chest, insistent and demanding and completely certain, and I had to squeeze my eyes shut and count to ten just to stay where I was.

I opened my eyes.

Honoria was on the floor. She was staring up at me with wide confused eyes and her hand had come up to touch her lips and she looked like someone who had just walked into a wall she hadn't seen coming.

I got up and held my hand out to help her.

She didn't take it.

The locker room had gone quiet.

Every wolf on the team was looking at me. Not the human teammates. The wolves. Miche. Fitzgerald. Adeyemi. All of them still, all of them with that specific expression that meant they understood exactly what had just happened and were waiting to see what I was going to do about it.

They knew werewolf law. They knew what a kiss meant between a wolf and their mate. They knew what had just formed in this room.

Honoria pushed herself up from the floor.

Her face was pale. She looked at me like I was a stranger. She looked at my teammates and back at me and I could see her working out that something had shifted in the room and not understanding what or why.

Then she turned and walked out.

Fast. Not running. Just gone.

Every instinct I had told me to follow her.

I stood there.

"Kayden." Reese's voice, low and close. "You okay?"

I wasn't okay. My hands were shaking and the bond was pulling at me from the inside and my wolf was furious that I was standing here instead of going after her and I had no idea what to say to any of the people in this room who had just watched that happen.

Because I'd kissed Honoria Greyheart.

And for werewolves, a kiss wasn't just a kiss.

One kiss and the bond sealed. One kiss and she was mine whether either of us wanted it or not.

She had no idea.

That was the worst part. She had walked out of this locker room with no idea that anything had changed, no idea what had just formed between us, no idea that her whole life had just tilted on its axis in a locker room after a football game because she'd tripped over a doorway.

My hands were still shaking.

Honoria Greyheart was my mate.

And she didn't have a clue.