Chapter 2: First morning in Ravenhood

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 she woke up in a guest room in Alexander Hale’s house with her duffel bag half-collapsed on the floor and yesterday’s jeans still on and no memory of actually falling asleep.

She lay there and reconstructed the night. The drive had been two hours. Alexander drove and didn’t talk and she’d asked twice what was happening and both times he’d said her father would explain. She’d watched his hands on the wheel, knuckles still carrying tension from whatever had happened before they left. At some point the highway lights had started spacing further apart and she must have drifted because the next thing she knew he was saying her name quietly and they were parked outside a house that was large and dark and looked like nobody had left a light on for anyone in a long time.

He’d carried her bag. Showed her the room. Said get some sleep and closed the door.

That was the full explanation she’d gotten.

She pulled out her phone. Four missed calls from a number she didn’t know. Nothing from her mom. She typed: Mom please just tell me you’re okay and stared at the screen until it went dark.

Downstairs she found the kitchen twenty minutes after getting lost in every corner. She stood in the doorway in yesterday’s clothes not sure of the protocol for helping herself to someone else’s refrigerator.

“Oh.” A woman came through from the other side, stopping when she saw Elena. Fifties, stout, the kind of face that defaulted to warmth. A dish towel tucked into her apron. She recovered quickly and smiled. “You must be Elena. I’m Mrs. Parker. I run the house.”

“Hi.” Elena stayed in the doorway. “Sorry, I didn’t know if I should just…”

“Sit. I’ll make you something.” She was already moving to the stove. “You’re up earlier than I expected.”

“Is he here?” Elena asked. “Dr. Hale?”

“In his study.” Mrs. Parker didn’t look up from the pan. “He doesn’t eat in the mornings usually. Only when Mrs. Hale is home.”

Elena pulled out a stool at the island and sat down.

His wife.

She’d never actually met Vivian Hale. Not once in all the years Alexander had visited Crescent Ridge. He always came alone, always left before dinner stretched into evening, like he was running away from something in Crescent Ridge. Elena had constructed a version of her from nothing. Some vague impressive woman who matched the expensive watch and the tailored shirts and the way he carried himself like someone who’d never had to explain himself to anyone.

At sixteen Elena had decided, with the complete confidence of someone who should have known better, that she was going to be exactly that woman someday. That one day Alexander Hale was going to look at her and see a grown woman who desired him. She’d been so certain and so stupid about it and the memory of thinking that now made her want to press her face into the counter.

Mrs. Parker set a plate in front of her. Eggs and toast and a coffee she hadn’t asked for.

“Thank you.” Elena wrapped both hands around the mug. “Has he said anything? About why I’m here?”

“Not to me.”Unbothered. “He called ahead last night. Said a young woman would be staying. Didn’t say for how long.”

Elena nodded and ate without tasting much.

After breakfast Mrs. Parker offered the tour and Elena followed her through rooms that were large and expensive and felt like a magazine spread nobody actually lived in. There was a sitting room with furniture that had never held anyone watching television with their feet up. A pantry stocked for emergencies. A back patio with a pool she hadn’t seen in the dark. A library with the books arranged by color instead of title.

“Dr. Hale’s private rooms are on that side,” Mrs. Parker said, gesturing. “His study, his personal library. He prefers not to be disturbed there unless necessary.”

“Understood.”

Mrs. Parker left her there for a while after a knock came through the door

Then she turned a corner and realized she’d gone the wrong way. This was the hallway Mrs. Parker had told her to avoid.

She should turn back. But one of the doors was cracked open, and she heard a voice coming from inside. It was Dr. Hale’s voice.

She stopped walking.

“I can’t do this.” His voice was low but strained. “I know we had an agreement, but I can’t do this.”

He was on the phone , she moved closer to the door trying to eavesdrop.

“You don’t understand what you’re asking. She’s…”He stopped mid-sentence. “No. I don’t care what you said before”

Elena knew she should walk away. Knew she was invading his privacy. But her feet wouldn’t move.

“It’s not about ability. It’s about…” Another pause. “Forget it. I’ll handle it. Just give me time.”

She leaned closer to the door, trying to hear better then the door betrayed her and swung open. Elena stumbled forward, catching herself on the doorframe. Dr. Hale stood on the other side, phone still in his hand, eyes locked on hers.

For a second, neither of them moved. That feeling from last night came back flashing inside her a bit stronger this time. Like something inside her recognized him in a way that made no sense. Her breath caught.

His jaw tightened. His eyes dropped from hers immediately afterwards

“I’ll call you back,” he said into the phone, then hung up without waiting for a response.

The silence stretched.

“I’m sorry,” Elena said quickly. “I was just…Mrs. Parker was showing me around and I got turned around and I heard your voice and I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, I swear…”

“It’s fine.” His voice had gone cold. Nothing like the politeness from when she arrived that night. “You should go back to your room.”

“I really wasn’t trying to…”

“Elena.” He still wouldn’t look at her. “Go back to your room.”

It wasn’t a suggestion but sounded like a command. She backed out of the doorway, her face hot. “I’m sorry.”

He didn’t respond. Just stepped back and closed the door, and she heard the lock click into place. Elena stood there for a second, staring at the closed door, her heart doing something stupid in her chest.

Then she turned and walked back the way she came, faster this time, until she found the stairs and made it back to her room. She closed the door and leaned against it, trying to catch her breath.

What the hell was that? She asked

___

She needed a shower. That much she could control.

The water ran hot for exactly four minutes.

Then it coughed once, spat cold, and died completely.

Elena stood in the bathtub with shampoo still in her hair and soap on her collarbone and stared at the dead showerhead like it had personally betrayed her. She turned the handle twice more. Nothing. She turned it back. A groan from somewhere in the pipes and then silence.

She got out, wrapped the towel around herself, and opened the bathroom door.

The landing was empty. She stood there dripping, hair soaped up and going stiff, and tried to figure out what to do in someone else’s house when the plumbing failed and she didn’t know the rules yet.

Then she heard footsteps on the stairs. Mrs. Parker appeared at the top with a stack of folded linens and stopped when she saw Elena.

“Oh, goodness.” She set the linens down immediately. “The water’s out?”

“Cut off mid-shower.”

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart. They’ve been doing work on the plumbing this week, some of the guest rooms are affected.” Mrs. Parker looked genuinely pained about it. “There’s another bathroom you can use. Better pressure anyway, I always say. Go down the hallway , past the large painting, second door on your right.”

“Second on the right?”

“Past the painting. Yes.”

Elena pulled the towel tighter and went.

The hallway was longer than she remembered. She passed a painting that was large and abstract and told her nothing. She counted the doors. First on the right. Second on the right.

She pushed it open and walked straight to the bathroom inside without stopping because her hair was stiffening and she was cold and she just needed hot water.

She pulled the shower door open.

Alexander Hale was standing under the water with his back to her.

Every thought Elena had ever had left her body simultaneously.

He was built like someone had designed him to be unfair about it. Broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist, water running the full length of his spine, the muscles in his back shifting as he turned at the sound of the door. A tattoo she recognized from childhood covered his neckline , more detailed up close than she’d ever seen it, the ink dark against his skin.

He turned.

Elena screamed.

She spun and slammed back through the bathroom door and kept going, bare feet slipping on the floor, towel clutched to her chest with both fists, soap still in her hair, face so hot she could feel it in her ears.

“Oh my God.” She pressed herself against the wall outside the door. “Oh my God oh my God I’m so sorry I didn’t … Mrs. Parker said second on the right past the painting and I counted and I thought …I’m so sorry…”

The shower cut off. Then his voice came through the door

“Go back to your room, Elena.”

She ran off and didn’t stop moving until she was inside the guest room with the door closed and her back against it, chest heaving, the image of water running down the full length of him burned into the back of her eyes like she’d looked directly at the sun.