Savage Fortune

Chapter 1- The Pulse Beneath the Pavement

Lucien

Lucien Vale didn't usually walk. Not without reason. Not without purpose. The streets of Valebridge were loud, alive, messy-nothing like the curated halls of Vale Tech or the silent woods beyond the city where his instincts breathed easier.

He moved like a precision incardinate, his coat sharp against the drizzle and his phone pressed to his ear. His father's voice echoed in clipped syllables, old-world demands wrapped in royal arrogance.

"You've had years, Lucien. The prophecy doesn't bend for your convenience."

"I won't marry a ghost," Lucien replied, voice low. "I don't care what blood she carried in another life."

The crosswalk light blinked red. Lucien stepped anyway.

The world blurred.

A collision-sharp, sudden. The scent of rosemary and damp canvas.

She hit him like a memory he didn't recognize.

Mira Hart grunted as she tumbled sideways, papers spilling, her elbows scraping wet concrete. Lucien caught her out of reflex, his wolf lunging behind his eyes, thrumming.

"Are you alright?" he asked, kneeling too fast, too close.

Her gaze narrowed. She took his offered hand with suspicion.

"I'm not fragile, if that's what you're asking," she said, brushing soil and water from her jeans. Her voice was steady-annoyed, but calm. Curious.

Lucien blinked, realizing how quickly the tension inside him had shifted. His pulse had slowed. Her scent was everywhere.

The phone buzzed again. His father. He silenced it.

"Let me replace whatever got damaged," he said, nodding to soaked sketches and torn plant clippings. "I'm..... Lucien."

"I know who you are," Mira said with a tight smile. "I just didn't expect you to crash into me like a business merger."

Lucien smirked. For once, not rehearsed.

Somewhere beneath calm exterior, something stirred-a flicker of recognition, of longing, of fate sharpening its claws.

He watched her walk away, the scent of wild herbs lingering in the air like a damp tether. Mira. Her name felt ancient on his tongue, like something he once whispered in another life.

Lucien retrieved his phone without looking at it. His father would call again. He always did.

But Mira cracked something open-something Lucien spent years licking down with strategy and steel. She hadn't recoiled when his touch lingered, hadn't flinched at the weight of his presence. He should've dismissed her, forgotten the incident as quickly as it happened.

Instead he replayed her voice. "You owe me a coffee."

It was audacious. Unfiltered. And it rooted itself like a promise.

His fingers curled. Somewhere beneath the surface, his wolf growled-not in warning, but in want.

**************************************************

Mira

Mira dropped her bag on the kitchen counter, ignoring the soil trail it left on the tile. Her knees still aches, but that was normal. What was normal? The sharp bruise on her elbow....gone.

She blinked, rolled up her sleeve again. Nothing. Just smooth skin where there should have been purple.

"Okay, that's weird," she muttered.

The man unsettled her. Not because he was intimidating-though he absolutely was-but when she looked into his eyes something ancient stirred. Like she had seen them before. In a dream. Or a memory not hers.

She opened her sketchbook, flipping to a page she'd scrawled days ago-a vague outline of a man's silhouette under a crescent moon. Her fingers had drawn it in a trance. She never added a face.

Now she knew exactly whose face fit.

Mira stared out the rain- spattered window, unease prickling her spine.

Something has begun. And she wasn't sure she wanted to know what.

A little bit later, Mira went back out to get more supplies that she had missed from earlier. She still wore the hoodie that still has soil from before. She went to the local cafe near her apartment to grab a coffee since hers was dumped on the ground somewhere. She brought her sketchbook with her in purse. Her mind absently started drawing-Lucien- the stranger who knocked her over. It was the same drawing from earlier except this time, she added more details to it. She drank her coffee to wake her up more so she can do paperwork for her nonprofit. Staring down at her sketchbook, she stared in horror and slammed the book shut. She left the cafe in a hurry and ran back to her apartment.

The elevator creaked as it ascended to her apartment, the scent of damp concrete still lingering to her hoodie. Mira leaned against the wall, cradling her sketchbook like held answers. It didn't. Not yet.

She lifted the sleeve of her hoodie to examine her elbow again. Her elbow should've ached. The impact had been jarring-sharp enough that she winced on the street. But now her skin was smooth, unmarred. She traced the spot again, frowning.

"No bruise. No tenderness. Like nothing never touched me," she muttered aloud, voice barely above the hum of the elevator motor.

But something did touch her.

Lucien Vale.

She hadn't needed him to introduce himself. Everyone in Valebridge knew the name behind ValeTech-the aloof billionaire with the icy stare and midnight suits. But close up, he wasn't ice. He was flint. Sparks waiting for friction. And she'd given him plenty of that in their brief exchange.

Still, something had twisted in her stomach the moment they'd locked eyes. Not nerves. Not attraction. Something older. Primal. Familiar in a way that her chest tightened and her throat dry.

She entered her apartment and kicked off her shoes, the floorboards cold against her bare feet. The rain pattered on the windows like impatient fingers.

Opening her sketchbook again, she flipped past pressed leaves and research notes to reach the page -the one she'd drawn in the middle of night last week. She hadn't remembered doing it until now.

A tall figure beneath a crescent moon, arms outstretched, surrounded by stylized thorns. His face had been blanked out until now.

She grabbed a pencil and sketched the angular jawline, the too-calm eyes. Her hand moved with instinct rather than thought. When she finished, she whispered to the page: "Lucien."

It felt ridiculous. Poetic. Dangerous.

She closed the book slowly and set it aside, resisting the urge to replay their conversation.

The truth was, her life has been quiet. Predictable. Safe. But something about that man-the collision, the calm intensity, the way he looked at her like she was the only moment that mattered-unsettled the quiet. And she wasn't sure wanted it settled again.