Alex pushed through the glass door, and the world transford.
The controlled elegance of Thornhaven’s interior gave way to sothing else entirely... expansive, open, designed not to impress visitors but to provide sanctuary for those who belonged here.
Afternoon sunlight hit him imdiately, warm against his skin after the climate-controlled halls. The air shifted, alive with flowering plants and chlorine, the faint sound of water moving sowhere nearby.
His eyes adjusted, taking in the scene with appreciation that had nothing to do with tactical assessnt.
"Woah..."
The word slipped out before he could stop it.
His steps slowed... then stopped entirely... as his gaze swept across the open expanse before him.
"...this is unreal."
A low breath escaped him, part disbelief, part genuine awe.
"This... this is at least three tis bigger than my pool," he murmured under his breath, eyes widening as he took another few steps forward. "No — four. Maybe more."
He wasn’t even trying to exaggerate.
His mind simply couldn’t reconcile what he was seeing with what he expected.
The pool area stretched across at least an acre of carefully landscaped grounds. Not rely a pool... an environnt.
The main pool dominated the space... broad, clear, reflecting sky and garden like glass. Clean slate tiles frad it, with seating arranged in shaded and sunlit clusters.
To the left, a smaller steaming pool sat behind hedges and flowers... clearly ant for relaxation.
Beyond that, gardens spread out in simple, natural lines. Curved paths, shifting colors, soft shade from scattered trees.
A pavilion stood to the right, open-sided and comfortably furnished.
***
Alex stepped onto the terrace path, slate warm beneath his shoes as it curved around the pool area.
The afternoon stillness wrapped around him... bird sounds from distant gardens, the faint rustle of leaves in a breeze he couldn’t quite feel yet, but nothing else.
No voices. No movent.
No Catherine Blackwood waiting at the far end as Amanda had indicated.
He slowed, eyes sweeping across the manicured grounds.
Empty.
Seating areas sat vacant. The pavilion stood silent. Gardens stretched in perfect arrangent without a single person visible among them.
Just stillness. Beauty. Silence.
"Am I being pranked?"
The thought ford with genuine bewildernt.
"What the hell is going on? I waited out there for an hour, put up with that idiot’s drama, and now there’s no one here?"
His irritation spiked hard.
"Is she ssing with ? Does she think I’m a joke?"
A thread of genuine anger cracked through his patience.
He stood there, anger cooling into wary confusion, mind cycling through possibilities that only made less sense the longer he considered them.
Did Amanda give wrong directions?
Impossible... she’d been too precise, too certain.
Did Catherine change her mind about eting? Then why send Amanda at all?
Or worse—
Is this one of Adrian’s plans?
The possibility settled like ice.
Adrian had been furious. Humiliated. Left watching doors close while Alex walked through them.
Had he sohow intercepted Amanda? Arranged for Alex to be sent to empty grounds while Catherine waited elsewhere, growing more annoyed by the minute at his failure to appear?
It would be petty. Desperate. Exactly the kind of thing soone as insecure as Adrian might...
Splash.
The sound cut through his spiraling thoughts.
Small. Quiet. The distinctive noise of water moving against water, disturbed by sothing breaking the surface.
Alex’s attention snapped toward the pool.
The main pool, large and crystal-clear, no longer showed perfect mirror stillness.
Ripples moved across its surface, gentle waves spreading from sowhere near the far end, exactly where his angle from the terrace path hadn’t quite allowed him to see.
Soone was in the pool.
Swimming.
’Who?’
His mind raced through options.
Catherine? Here, swimming, while he stood confused on the pool deck?
Soone else? Security? Household staff?
Should he approach? Call out? Wait?
’What if I’m interrupting? What if soone takes offense at an unknown visitor walking up while they’re swimming?’
The scenarios multiplied with uncomfortable speed.
This could be perfectly innocent... Catherine preferred swimming etings, unconventional but her choice.
Or this could be a disaster waiting to happen—wrong person, wrong timing, wrong interpretation of his presence near soone vulnerable in a pool.
Is this Adrian’s plan? Get close to Catherine while she’s swimming, make it look improper, turn everyone against before the eting even starts?
Too paranoid.
Probably.
Maybe.
Another soft splash reached him, and Alex’s jaw tightened.
’Fuck it.’
If soone had a problem with his presence, they could voice it directly instead of playing gas.
If this was a test, standing here paralyzed by indecision would fail it worse than approaching with confidence.
And if it was Adrian’s trap...
’Then I’ll handle whatever happens. I don’t care.’
Alex moved forward, following the pool’s edge toward where the ripples originated, his steps asured, his expression settling into calm readiness for whatever he was about to find.
Twenty feet.
Fifteen.
Ten.
The angle shifted, and suddenly he could see what the terrace path had hidden.
A figure in the water.
A woman.
Swimming with easy, practiced strokes near the far end of the pool, her form cutting through water with the kind of fluid grace that suggested this wasn’t casual recreation but genuine skill.
Dark hair slicked back. Shoulders breaking the surface with each movent.
’Is it Catherine?’
’But who else could it be?’
This was her private pool. Her estate. Her eting he’d been invited to.
His mind raced through the logic even as his feet kept moving, closing distance, trying to reconcile the situation with what he’d expected.
Just as the question ford fully—who is this?—the woman’s strokes changed.
She stopped swimming.
Turned in the water.
Faced him directly.
And her voice cut across the remaining distance, calm and carrying, with undertone that might have been amusent or challenge or both:
"Took you long enough."
Alex froze mid-step.
The woman was looking directly at him now, water lapping at her shoulders, her gaze steady and unwavering as it locked onto his.
Not shy. Not surprised. Not caught off-guard by his presence.
Expecting him.
Waiting for him.
Testing his composure with the sa kind of deliberate assessnt he’d seen in a thousand political encounters, except this ti it ca from soone treading water in her own pool while a stranger approached.
Catherine Blackwood.
Had to be.
And she was watching him with eyes that suggested she knew exactly how disorienting this entire situation was and found his reaction... interesting.
Then she moved.
Her hands pressed against the pool’s edge, arms flexing as she lifted herself from the water in one smooth, practiced motion.
Water cascaded down her body in streams that caught afternoon sunlight, each droplet glinting like scattered pearls against skin that seed to glow in the natural light.
She was wearing a bikini.
Black. Simple. Expensive in the way that quality always was... minimal fabric, maximum effect, designed not to draw attention through excess but through the confidence of soone who had nothing to prove and everything to show.
The water continued its descent, tracing paths across shoulders, collarbones, the smooth planes of her stomach, down long legs that moved with unconscious grace as she stepped fully onto the pool deck.
Alex’s breath caught.
Not subtly.
Not with any attempt at maintaining the careful composure he’d cultivated through an hour of waiting and Adrian’s posturing and the walk through Thornhaven’s halls.
Just... gone.
His mind blanked completely, tactical assessnt and strategic thinking and every practiced social skill evaporating in the face of what he was seeing.
Catherine Blackwood.
Victoria’s best friend.
Future Head of House Blackwood.
One of the most politically powerful young won in the entire Enhanced community.
Standing ten feet away in a bikini, water still dripping from her body like she’d just erged from so classical painting, looking at him with eyes that were amused and sharp and completely, utterly aware of exactly what effect she was having.
Holy shit.
The thought ford with stunned clarity.
Victoria made her agree to et like THIS?
How?
What did Victoria say to her? What arrangent did they make? What possible argunt convinced Catherine Blackwood that eting like this was acceptable, professional, appropriate for whatever business they were supposedly here to discuss?
The questions tumbled over each other, each more bewildering than the last.
And underneath the confusion and the stunned appreciation and the complete failure of his verbal faculties...
Thrill.
Pure, electric thrill at the sheer audacity of what Victoria had accomplished.
She’s a goddamn genius.
His respect for Victoria, already considerable, multiplied exponentially.
Catherine reached for a towel draped over a nearby lounge chair... one of the lived-in details he’d noticed earlier, now revealed as deliberately placed rather than forgotten.
She didn’t wrap it around herself.
Didn’t cover up or show any hint of self-consciousness about standing before a stranger in a bikini.
Just used it to dry her hair with casual efficiency, the movent causing water to spray in a fine mist that caught the light, while her gaze never left his face.
Catherine’s smile widened fractionally, as if she could read every thought crossing his paralyzed mind.
"So you’re the infamous Alexander Hale," she said, her voice lower now, ant only for the space between them.
"I’ve been hearing about you for quite so ti."
The words carried weight beyond their surface aning.
Infamous.
Not "mysterious." Not "interesting."
Infamous.
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