The Alpha who was never mine

Elena Cruz She’d wanted Ravenwood for three years. Not because anyone told her to want it. Because she’d looked it up herself at seventeen, lying on her stomach on her childhood bed in Crescent Ridge with her laptop propped on a pillow, scrolling through campus photos and city streets and buildings that actually had things happening inside them. Crescent Ridge was pack territory and pack rules and everybody knowing your name and your bloodline and your ranking before you even opened your mouth. Ravenwood was something else entirely. Glass and movement and the kind of anonymity that let you become whoever you hadn’t been yet. She’d spent months on that transfer application. Filled it out twice, rewrote her personal statement four times, paid the f*e herself from her waitressing savings. When the acceptance came she’d sat in her car in the parking lot of the diner and cried in a way she didn’t let herself cry at home. She was supposed to move into the dorms in three days. Instead sh

Elena Cruz Elena’s phone sat face-up on her desk, screen dark and silent. She checked it for the fifth time in ten minutes. Still nothing. The professor droned on about creation myths and early pack settlements, but Elena couldn’t focus. Her mom hadn’t returned any of her calls. Her dad hadn’t texted. Nobody was telling her anything about what happened or where they were or if they were even safe even though she couldn’t tell what the whole thing was about she just borrowed her Father’s words. She opened a blank document on her laptop and pretended to take notes. Typed a few words, then stopped. Her eyes drifted back to her phone. Then the memories flashed His back. The water running the full length of his spine. The way those shoulders filled the space like the shower had been built around him. She deleted the three words. Stop it. She’d seen men without shirts before. This was not that. This was her father’s oldest friend who was twenty-seven years older than her and marri

Elena Cruz Elena woke to the sound of tires on gravel. She blinked against the morning light streaming through her window and sat up, disoriented. The house was usually silent this early. But this was different. A car turned into the driveway . Elena pushed back the covers and walked to the window. Down in the driveway, a sleek black sedan had just pulled up near the entrance. The driver’s door opened and a woman stepped out. Even from the second floor, Elena could tell she was striking. Tall, slender, moving with the kind of confidence that turned heads without trying. She wore tailored pants that fit perfectly and a silk blouse that probably cost more than Elena’s entire wardrobe. Dark hair fell in perfect waves past her shoulders. Oversized sunglasses covered half her face. Elena couldn’t see who it was clearly from this angle. A friend of Dr. Alex’s maybe? A colleague? The woman looked strange .She grabbed her designer bag from the passenger seat and walked toward the e

Elena Cruz Elena needed air. She’d been in her room for two hours, staring at the ceiling, trying to make sense of what was happening to her. The scent thing. The way something inside her had reacted to Dr. Alex in the car. None of it made sense. She grabbed a hoodie and headed downstairs. Mrs. Parker was in the kitchen prepping dinner. Vivian’s voice drifted from somewhere deeper in the house, talking on the phone in Elena slipped out the front door before anyone could ask where she was going. The evening air felt cool against her skin. She started walking down the driveway, then turned onto the sidewalk that ran along the estate’s perimeter. There was a small park a few blocks away. She’d seen it on the drive to school. Maybe walking would clear her head. She made it half a block before it started. Voices. Not out loud. They were inside her head. …forgot to pick up milk… …meeting ran late again, she’s going to be pissed… …can’t believe he said that to me… Elena

Elena Cruz Her palms woke her up before her brain did. The throbbing cut through sleep and she sat up fast, disoriented, hands held out in front of her like evidence. Clean bandages. Professionally wrapped. She stared at them and pieced together the night in fragments. The car. The pavement. Blood on her hands and everything inside her body screaming. Alexander finding her. His study. The strange clawing sensation under her skin that had built and built until warmth hit her like a wall and everything went dark. She didn’t remember getting into bed. She peeled the bandages back slowly. The cuts were nearly closed. Pink new skin where last night there had been open wounds. She turned her palms over and stared at them and felt the wrongness of it settle in her stomach. One night. This was one night of healing. Her phone buzzed on the nightstand there were missed calls from her mom. Two texts from Lila. One from a number she didn’t know. She opened Lila’s first. BABE we’re going out