Chapter 3
Elena's POV
The manor rose out of the pine forest like something from a magazine—three stories of modern architecture, floor-to-ceiling windows glowing warm against the storm. The driveway curved through snow-laden trees, pristine and private.
Caleb pulled up to the entrance. A biometric scanner swept across his face, and the massive front door unlocked with a soft click.
He came around and opened my door, one hand extended. I took it. His palm was so hot it almost burned.
The inside was warmer than outside but still carried a chill. Caleb led me through an enormous entryway into a living room dominated by a fireplace that was already crackling, flames dancing behind glass. Smart home system, I realized. Probably activated when his car turned into the driveway.
The whole place smelled like him. That cedar-and-ice scent, everywhere.
"Sit." He pointed at an armchair near the fire.
I sat.
He disappeared upstairs. I heard doors opening, footsteps moving around. When he came back down, his expression was carefully blank.
"Second floor, first door on the left. Bathroom's attached. Everything you need should be there."
I climbed the stairs on shaky legs, found the room he'd indicated. It was beautiful—soft gray walls, white bedding that looked like clouds, a reading chair by the window.
In the bathroom, I found shampoo and conditioner, body wash, and a set of pajamas that happened to be exactly my size.
My heart was pounding.
Coincidence, I told myself. Just generic guest supplies.
---
When I came back downstairs, Caleb had coffee ready. He handed me a mug without a word, then moved to the fire, putting distance between us.
"You're still wearing my coat," he said.
I looked down. I was. I hadn't even realized.
"Sorry, I'll—" I started to take it off.
"Don't." The word came out sharp. He cleared his throat. "I mean, if you're still cold, keep it. Doesn't matter."
I wrapped it tighter around myself.
We stood there in awkward silence. Caleb stared into the fire. I stared at him—the rigid set of his shoulders, the way his hands were jammed into his pockets, the muscle ticking in his jaw.
Caleb finally turned to look at me. His eyes flashed with color for just a moment. There was something in them I couldn't name.
"Get some sleep," he said quietly. "If you need anything, there's an intercom panel in the room. I'm on the third floor."
Then he left, taking the stairs two at a time like he couldn't get away fast enough.
---
I should have slept. I was exhausted, frozen to the bone, emotionally wrung out. Instead, I lay in the guest bed, wrapped in sheets that smelled like cedar and winter, and stared at the ceiling.
My phone buzzed.
Damon: Elena, you make it back to the dorm okay?
I stared at the message. Thought about the woman in the red car, the way he'd touched her face. The lies he'd told me without hesitation.
I thought about Caleb finding me on that street, carrying me to his car, bringing me here. The guest room stocked with everything I needed. The way he'd looked at me—like I mattered, like I was worth saving.
I turned my phone face-down on the nightstand and pulled the blanket over my head.
Outside, the blizzard raged on.
---
The nightmare came in fragments, sharp-edged and unforgiving.
I was eight years old again, standing in the courtyard of Saint-Helier Academy's elementary division, watching the other wolf pups circle around a boy I barely knew. Caleb Vance had just been brought into the family a week earlier, and the whole school buzzed with speculation about the half-breed bastard Old Alpha Vance had dragged home from who knows where.
The Beta pup next to me shoved something into my hands. A piece of paper, torn from a notebook. Caleb's math homework, covered in his careful, slanted handwriting.
"Rip it up," the Beta girl hissed, her breath hot against my ear. "He's a mongrel. His mother was some filthy rogue who spread her legs for the wrong Alpha. Do it, or we'll tell Damon you're defending him."
The circle of children tightened. Their voices rose in a chant, parroting words they'd heard from their parents at dinner tables, in whispered conversations they weren't supposed to overhear.
"Tainted blood. Defective."
My hands trembled. Something deep in my chest twisted, a sensation I didn't understand then and couldn't name now. My wolf, that hazy, distant presence I'd never fully grasped, whimpered softly in distress. She could sense something the rest of them couldn't, something that made her want to bare her throat in submission rather than tear up this boy's homework.
But I was eight, and I was terrified of being excluded, and I wanted so badly to belong.
So I ripped the paper in half.
The sound was obscenely loud in the sudden silence. I looked up, and my gaze locked with Caleb's across the courtyard. He was ten then, already taller than most of the other kids, already carrying himself with that rigid stillness that made him seem older than his years.
For just a moment, his eyes flashed amber-gold, bright. Like something ancient and predatory lived behind them, seeing through me completely.
Then he blinked, and the color was gone, replaced by that flat, emotionless brown.
I looked away, face burning with shame I didn't have words for.
---
I woke with a gasp, cold sweat soaking the sheets.
The guest room at Caleb's manor was dim and quiet, early morning light filtering through the curtains. My heart hammered against my ribs, pulse erratic and frantic. It took several seconds to remember where I was.
The dream wasn't just a dream. It was a memory. One I'd buried so deep I'd almost convinced myself it never happened.
But my wolf knew. She'd always known. That sensation in my chest fourteen years ago, that instinctive pull toward Caleb even as I participated in his humiliation, had been her trying to tell me something crucial. Something I'd been too young, too scared, too conditioned to understand.
The guilt hit like a physical blow, sharp as silver cutting into skin.
I threw off the covers and stumbled to the bathroom, desperate to wash away the acrid taste of self-loathing coating my tongue.