CHAPTER 3.

Ravenna’s POV.

I knew I had made a mistake before I was fully awake.

The bed wasn’t mine. The pillow held warmth that wasn’t my own, and a scent I recognized before I had the context to place it, clean and deep, that same rain-and-forest quality that had been the only steady thing during the worst of the previous night.

That was when the memories arrived. Not gradually. All at once, in a single unordered rush that made me push upright too fast and grip the sheets to keep from pitching sideways.

The room. The rope. The drug. Him.

I had been the one who reached for him. I knew that without being able to deny it. He had caught me when I fell and I had pressed closer, desperate for something to stop the burning, and he had been steady and careful and I had been none of those things.

He was still asleep beside me, lying on his back, face relaxed in a way that made him look entirely different from the controlled, deliberate thing he had been in that room. Like two separate people sharing one body.

I covered my face with both hands.

The shame sat on my chest, thick and airless. Underneath it, quieter and more persistent, a question I couldn’t answer. How had I let this happen? The drug explained part of it. His steadiness in that moment had explained another part. But somewhere beneath the shame, some part of me didn’t entirely regret that he had held me, and I hated that part more than the rest of it combined.

I moved carefully, slipping out of the bed without waking him, keeping each motion slow. My dress was crumpled on the floor, carrying a faint trace of his scent in the fabric. I put it on anyway. Found my shoes near the door. Turned back once.

Still asleep. Unbothered. Completely unaware that I was memorizing the angles of his face without meaning to.

I left.

Outside, the morning air hit cold and sharp and I ran, not caring how I looked, needing the distance between myself and that room to grow until it felt manageable.

By the time I reached my house I was breathing hard and my hands were damp. I stopped outside the door, pressed one palm flat against it, and spent thirty seconds making my face look like nothing had happened.

Then I went in.

My mother was in the hallway, arms crossed, worry and relief working against each other across her face. “Where have you been? You didn’t call. You didn’t come home.”

“I stayed to help clean up the mating hall after the ceremony,” I said, stepping past her before she could read my eyes. “It ran late. Lucas and I spent some time together afterward.”

The lie sat wrong. My mother had a gift for hearing the thing beneath what I said, and I felt her watching me as I moved toward the kitchen.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

“I’m fine. I just need to shower.”

She studied me a beat longer than was comfortable, then glanced at her watch. “It’s your first day at college. Go get ready. I’ll drop you.”

I went to my room and closed the door.

Sat on the edge of the bed.

The full weight of the previous night arrived now that I was alone with it. Lucas’s voice. The wine in my hair. The rogues in the trees. The room with the rope. The man who had come through the door and dismantled four people with what looked like mild inconvenience.

I pressed my face into my pillow and let the feelings run their course. Then I got up, showered, dressed, and went back to the kitchen.

During the drive my mother didn’t push. She knew the difference between silence that needed company and silence that needed to be left alone.

At the college entrance she made me promise twice before she let me out. I watched her drive away and turned toward the building.

The morning felt insultingly ordinary. Students moved in clusters, talking and laughing, completely unaware that I had spent the previous night hanging from a rope in a rogue’s basement.

I had taken three steps when something struck the side of my head.

I flinched, looked down. A small bag on the ground at my feet.

Laughter.

Sandy stood twenty feet away with three other girls, all of them watching me with the particular pleasure of people who had been waiting.

“Did that hurt?” she called. “Good.”

I turned away from her. I had decided somewhere on the drive over that I was not going to give anyone today what they wanted.

“Don’t ignore me.”

Her hand closed around my collar and yanked me back. My heart lurched. I caught my balance and turned, raising my hands to push her off.

“Let go of her.”

The voice landed like a flat stone hitting still water.

Sandy’s hand dropped.

Everyone went quiet.

I turned slowly.

He stood a few feet behind us, hands loose at his sides, expression carrying nothing at all. He looked exactly as he had in that dark room. The same stillness. The same economy of presence, like he had never once needed to raise his voice to fill a space.

He was wearing a jacket and carrying a bag over one shoulder.

He looked like a professor.

Sandy straightened beside me, smoothing her collar, something shifting visibly in her face.

“Good morning, Professor Green,” she said.

The name went through me like cold water poured directly down my spine.

Professor.

I stood there in the ordinary morning noise, students moving around me, Sandy retreating, and worked through what I had just heard.

Professor Green.

The man I had spent the night with, who had saved me was my professor.

My knees nearly gave out before I caught myself.