Finding Aria Cole

Chapter 4: The Unwanted Pull

The air in my office thickened with tension. My jaw clenched as I stared pointedly at the frail girl I had picked up from the woods.

She looked so fragile and broken her bandages wrapped tightly around her legs and arms from the injuries she had sustained.

Most of the marks on her body showed old and untreated wounds that had clothed on their own while the fresh wounds from the rouges sock the bandages. She laid unconscious on the bed across the room, her breathing shallow and quiet. Her skin pale against the dark sheets.

I couldn't look away.

She was weak. Fragile in a way that didn’t make sense. I’d been around wolves my whole life. I could feel them, sense their power. Even the weakest of our kind still had that spark of a wolf inside them—a presence, no matter how small.

But this girl?

Nothing.

No trace of a wolf. No hint of a connection to the beast that should be lurking beneath her skin. She was... hollow. And that bothered me more than I was willing to admit.

I paced the room, my steps heavy against the wooden floor. Every nerve in my body was on edge, my muscles tense, coiled like a spring ready to snap. I didn’t like this feeling. The confusion, the frustration.

The pull.

I should have left her to die in the woods. That’s what any logical Alpha would’ve done. Weakness like hers didn’t belong in my pack. Yet, I couldn’t. Something kept me from walking away when I should’ve.

And that pissed me off.

“Lucien, you’re going to wear a hole in the floor,” Vincent’s voice broke through my thoughts. My Beta, my so-called best friend, leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, his gaze fixed on me with that calm, infuriating look of his.

I glared at him, but it did nothing. He was used to my anger. I’d known Vincent since we were pups—he was the only one who’d survived alongside me. He’d seen me at my worst, seen the darkness I carried, and he was still here. He didn’t flinch, didn’t break under my gaze. Not even now.

“I don’t have time for your commentary,” I growled, stopping my pacing for a moment. My fists clenched at my sides, the tension radiating through my body. “There’s something off about her.”

Vincent’s eyes flicked to the girl. “I’ve noticed. But she’s hurt, Lucien. She probably hasn’t shifted in a long time.”

I shook my head sharply. “No. It’s not that. I can’t sense a wolf at all. Not even a whisper. She might as well be human.”

Vincent raised an eyebrow, pushing off the doorframe and stepping closer. “She’s not human, though. She reeks of wolves, even if her scent is faint. Something happened to her.”

I ground my teeth together, my frustration boiling over. “It doesn’t matter what happened to her. What matters is why the hell I can’t stop thinking about her.”

That’s what bothered me the most. I could deal with the mystery of her condition, her strange emptiness, but the way my body reacted around her, the pull I felt, was something else entirely. It gnawed at me, every second she was near.

I wasn’t supposed to feel like this.

“Maybe it’s a mate bond,” Vincent suggested, too casually, like he was offering a simple solution to a puzzle I’d already worked out. “You felt drawn to her in the woods, didn’t you?”

I turned on him, my eyes narrowed into slits. “No. Absolutely not. Don’t even suggest it.”

Vincent shrugged, unfazed by the venom in my tone. “It’s possible. You know how the Fates work.”

“I don’t give a damn about the Fates,” I snarled, my voice low, dangerous. “This girl is weak. Useless. The Fates wouldn’t dare tie me to someone like her.”

“Yet here she is,” Vincent said, his voice maddeningly calm, as if that explained everything.

My fists itched to hit something. I turned away from him, my gaze burning a hole into the unconscious figure on the bed. The pull was stronger now, stronger than it had been in the woods. Every moment I spent in her presence felt like it dragged me deeper into something I didn’t understand, something I had no control over.

And control was everything to me.

I could still see the blood soaking into her clothes, the way her body trembled from the wounds, the fragility of her bones as I carried her. I hadn’t wanted to care. I’d tried to convince myself that leaving her there, bleeding in the dirt, would have been the right choice. But my feet had moved before my mind had, and now here she was.

Under my roof.

Worse, in my care.

I let out a growl of frustration, the sound rumbling deep in my chest.

Vincent was still watching me, that calm, calculating look in his eyes. “You’re not yourself, Lucien,” he said, his voice softer this time. “This girl is shaking you.”

I turned on him again, my anger barely contained. “She isn’t shaking me. Nothing shakes me.”

“You’re a liar,” Vincent shot back, his voice low but firm. “I’ve known you too long. You’ve felt more in the last twelve hours than you’ve felt since—”

“Don’t,” I cut him off, my voice a sharp blade. I didn’t need to hear it. Not from him. Not from anyone. That night was buried deep in the pit of my mind, locked away where no one could reach it. Where even I barely dared to go.

Vincent fell silent, but the look on his face told me he wasn’t backing down. “You’re not invincible, Lucien,” he said quietly. “You don’t have to be.”

I turned away from him, my eyes fixed on the girl once more. She stirred slightly, a soft moan escaping her lips, but she didn’t wake. Her skin was still pale, her breathing too shallow.

“Get out,” I said, my voice cold, the anger barely concealed. “I need to think.”

Vincent hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Fine. But you can’t ignore this forever.”

He turned and left, the door clicking shut behind him. The silence that followed was heavy, pressing down on me like a weight I didn’t want to carry.

I looked at the girl again. Weak, fragile, but still alive. I hated the way my chest tightened when I looked at her. Hated the way my mind kept drifting back to that moment in the woods when I’d found her, barely holding on.

I should have let her go.

But I didn’t.

And now I couldn’t.

Something about her—something inside me—wouldn’t let me walk away.