Chapter 7: Territorial wife

Elena Cruz

Harper and Lila stopped talking the second Elena walked in. She caught the tail end of it. Hushed and urgent, Lila’s hand flat on the table like she’d been making a point. Then nothing. Both of them just looking at her.

Elena sat down. “What.”

Lila looked at Harper. Harper looked at Elena.

Harper grabbed her arm the second she sat down.

“We need to tell you something.”

Lila was already leaning across the table, voice dropped low. “We heard something about Dr. Hale.”

Elena set her bag down. “What about him.”

“There’s a rumor.” Harper glanced around the library once. “About something that happened before he moved to Ravenwood. Back in Crescent Ridge. At the hospital he used to work at.”

Elena said nothing.

“An omega died,” Lila said. “Under his care. And the story going around is that it wasn’t an accident.”

The words landed flat and heavy. Elena stared at them.

“People say he covered it up,” Harper added. “That’s why he left Crescent Ridge. That’s why he ended up here.”

Elena sat back. Her brain was pulling at something loose from her childhood. Whispers she hadn’t understood at the time. Her parents going quiet when certain names came up. A newspaper left on the kitchen table that her mother had folded and put away too fast when Elena walked in. She’d been maybe twelve. She’d heard the word scandal once and forgotten about it the way kids forgot about things that had nothing to do with them.

She’d never connected it to Alexander.

“How long has this been going around?” Elena asked.

Lila shrugged. “Long enough that people here know it. Someone on campus is from Crescent Ridge apparently. Word travels.”

Harper was watching Elena’s face carefully. “You didn’t know.”

“No.”

Nobody said anything for a moment.

Then Lila picked up her pen and flipped open her notebook. “Anyway. That’s all we know. Could be nothing.”

“Could be nothing,” Harper agreed.

And just like that they moved on, textbooks opening, laptops waking up, the conversation folded away like it had never started. Elena stared at her own screen without seeing it.

The words sat heavy between them. Her phone buzzed. She glanced down. Alexander’s name on the screen.

“I have to go,” Elena said, shoving her things into her bag.

“Elena, wait…” Lila started.

“I’ll see you guys tomorrow.” She didn’t wait for a response. Just grabbed her bag and headed for the exit.

-----

Dr. Alex’s car was parked in the pickup zone. Elena saw it from across the courtyard and started walking faster

Then she saw the passenger seat wasn’t empty, the excitement in her face dropped

Vivian sat there in the front seat. Sunglasses on. Cream blazer. One leg crossed over the other, phone in hand, spine straight. Hair pulled back without a single strand out of place. The window was down and even from this distance Elena could see the precise cut of her jaw and the way she held herself like the whole world was slightly beneath her and she’d made peace with that.

She thought about texting Dr. Alex that she’d find her own ride. Thought about turning around and calling a car. But he’d already seen her. He was watching her through the windshield.

She walked to the car and opened the back door.

“Hi,” she said, climbing in.

“Elena.” Vivian turned slightly in her seat, sunglasses still on. “How was school?”

“It was fine.”

“Good.” Vivian turned back around.

Dr. Alex pulled out of the parking lot without saying anything.

The silence in the car felt suffocating. Elena stared out the window, hyperaware of every sound. Vivian’s perfectly manicured nails tapping against her phone screen. The low hum of the engine. Her own breathing.

Then his scent reached her.

Not cologne or soap. Something underneath all of that, something warm and dark and it filled every inch of the enclosed space and found her in the back seat like it had been looking. It moved through her chest and spread and her hands gripped her bag until her knuckles went white.

She pressed herself into the door.

He was two feet away. Vivian’s shoulder was flush against his arm, her hand resting on the center console with her fingers an inch from his, and she leaned into him .

Elena pressed herself further into the door. She was practically one with the door at this point. She and the door were becoming one entity.

Vivian laughed at something on her phone. Bright and genuine, tilting her head toward Alexander automatically. “Look at this.”

She held the phone up. Alexander looked over obediently and his mouth curved and he said something low that Elena couldn’t catch and Vivian laughed again and put the phone away and her hand came to rest on his thigh.

Elena looked out the window with much focus.

She wasn’t fine.

Vivian’s hand was on his thigh like it lived there and Elena was sitting two feet behind them with her nails cutting into her palm and her back teeth pressed together and something hot and ugly crawling up her throat that she had absolutely no right to feel.

She wanted to reach over the seat and remove that hand finger by finger.

Which was insane. Which was completely insane. Because Vivian was his wife and Elena was twenty years old and sleeping in their guest room and the only thing she should have been feeling in this car was grateful.

In the front seat Alexander kept adjusting his position . He moved his leg slightly, angling his knee toward the door, and Vivian’s hand slid off his thigh. Vivian didn’t seem to notice. She was already back on her phone.

Elena noticed. She stared at the back of his headrest and told herself that meant nothing.

His eyes came up to the rearview mirror again. Found hers immediately like he’d known exactly where she was the whole time. His jaw tightened. He looked back at the road. Elena looked back at the window.

“Alexander, are you listening to me?”

Vivian’s voice cut through Elena’s thoughts.

“Sorry, what?” Dr. Alex said.

“I said we should have dinner at Marcello’s tonight. I’ve been craving their risotto for weeks.”

“I have a surgery scheduled until seven. Maybe tomorrow.”

Vivian’s jaw tightened. “Of course you do.”

The rest of the drive passed in tense silence. When they finally pulled into the driveway, Elena was out of the car before it fully stopped.

“Thanks for the ride,” she said quickly, already heading for the door.

She didn’t wait to see if either of them responded. Inside, Elena went straight to her room and closed the door. She sat on the edge of her bed and pressed her hands against her face.

And the smell thing. What was that?

She walked upstairs, went into her room, and sat on the edge of the bed.

She pressed both hands over her face.

She was jealous of a forty-something woman who had every right to touch her own husband and Elena was the one who needed to get a grip and also possibly a therapist and definitely a better plan for the back seat situation next time because she could not spend every car ride communing with the door like that.