Chapter 3- Tethered Pulse
1142 Words
Lucien
Lucien stood in the West atrium of ValeTech's private estate, the glass ceiling stretching wide above him like a dome trapping secrets. The evening air was thick and static, the kind that unusually warned him his wolf was stirring- or prophecy was near.
He hadn't slept.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her- not just Mira. But the echo she carried. A whisper in his blood. A heartbeat that didn't belong to him....but felt like it did.
He turned toward the holographic schematics hovering in his workspace: soil resonance graphs, ley lines maps, and something new- lunar fern bloom cycles. Mira's voice was embedded in the data now, soft from the donor meeting, but steady, challenging. Her research was logical, grounded.
So why did his instincts call her sacred?
A knock at the side entrance. His assistant.
"Sir. She declined your call, but she is in the greenhouse now. Security spotted her arriving alone."
Lucien's didn't reply. He stared at the moss map pulsing faint green on the display, matching the reading from Mira's samples.
"Should I try to reach out again?" the assistant asked.
Lucien turned away, voice low. "No, I will go myself."
The greenhouse looked through the mist like a sanctuary carved from glass and vines. Lucien stepped from his car slowly, the damp air bristling against his skin. His wolf stirred beneath the surface- not agitated, just....aware.
The door was cracked open, the soft hum of plants breathing in the dark pulling him forward. He didn't knock.
Mira was there- back turned, elbows deep in a bed of silver leaf. Her hair was half-tame by a braid, but tendrils curled wild and soft around her neck. She didn't startle when he entered.
"I didn't expect you to show up," she said without turning. "You don't strike me as the kind to make house calls."
Lucien stepped in, hands relaxed but his senses taut.
"Something's happening here. To you. To this place."
"You came to observe me? Or catalog me?" Her voice held challenge, but not disdain.
He paused beside the shelf lined with lunar blossoms. One had bloomed prematurely- the same species her presentation claimed hadn't responded to stimulation in years.
"I came because I couldn't stay away."
Her hands stilled. The air shifted, thickening with something unsaid.
"That's....not answer," she murmured.
"No. It's a confession."
She turned then, and for the first time, Lucien saw the line of tension running through her. Fear wrapped in curiosity. Control laced with restraint.
He approached slowly, not out of caution- but reverence.
"Since our collision, my instincts haven't settled. I've stopped shifting. My dreams.... aren't mine anymore."
She blinked, coloring rising in her cheeks.
"You're saying this is....what? Some kind of supernatural side effect?"
Lucien tilted his head.
"I think we disturbed something old. Something bound."
A gust of wind rattled the window and the silver leaf behind Mira shimmered in response. She turned towards it, visibly unsettled.
Lucien stepped closer.
"Let me help you study it. Whatever this is- it's tethered to both of us."
She met his gaze, uncertain but not afraid.
"I don't want to be your experiment.
"I wouldn't dare," he said softly. "I think you might be mine.
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Mira
She should've asked him to leave.
Lucien Vale filled the greenhouse like a winter storm- quiet, overwhelming, and utterly impossible to ignore. His voice wrapped itself around her instincts, awakening something not just curious but primal.
The plants felt it too.
Lunar fern blossoms twitched subtly towards him. The moss on the wall pulsed in low, rhythmic light. Mira had tracked these reactions before-but not with a human variable. And Lucien didn't feel human. Not exactly.
"You haven't shifted since our encounter?" she asked, studying him.
"Not once," Lucien replied. "And my instincts haven't slept."
Mira's fingers tightened around the soil probe. Science wanted clarity. Emotion wanted distance. But something ancient wanted closer.
She stepped past him, brushing his arm lightly- accidently, deliberately. The moment her skin met his sleeve, the room changed.
The hanging vines over the arch bloomed.
All at once.
Mira staggered back, breath caught. Her pulse raced.
Lucien didn't move. He simply watched her, eyes blazing with something like awe. Or recognition.
"They respond to you," she said softly. "No touched those vines in months."
"Or maybe they responded to us," Lucien murmured.
Her jaw clenched. She hated how right that sounded. How this moment felt less of coincidence more like a memory.
From the back of the greenhouse, a single petal fell from a plant long thought dormant- landing squarely in Mira's palm.
It shimmered. Silver. Familiar.
She looked at Lucien.
He stepped closer, voice reverent.
"This wasn't chance. It never was."
Lucien stood so still she was wondering if he restraining himself. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes- those were loud. They flicked from the blooming vines to her, and held her gaze like a question.
"It's not a coincidence, is it?" she whispered. "They've never responded like this before."
Lucien stepped closer, slowly, as if to afraid to startle the space between them.
"It's not coincidence," he murmured. "It's recognition."
Mira's stomach flipped.
The vines shimmered faintly in low light, the petals glowing around the edges- silver and soft, and impossibly awake. Her hand hovered above them, and with a deep breath, she let herself touch the nearest one.
It was warm.
Not just alive- but warm like blood and breath.
Lucien inhaled sharply.
"I think the plants are resonating with you," he said. "Or with something.....inside you."
She snatched her hand back, the familiar flush of fear rising beneath her ribs. But underneath it was wonder- and something more dangerous.
Desire.
"Nothing about this is normal," she said. "And you show up right after I bloom a dormant species and start sketching people I've never met."
Lucien's gaze soften.
"You've drawn me before?"
"Not you. Not exactly," Mira turned away, walking towards the far shelf. "A man under a crescent moon. Same build. Same look in the eyes. That kind of 'I remember you from somewhere stare but I don't want to admit' stare."
A pause. Then his voice- low reverent.
"You have remember me. Even if you don't know how."
She froze. Every logical bone wanted to shut this down. Dismiss him. Label it stress or coincidence or latent plant pheromones affecting judgement.
But her gut- her gut said she was standing in a moment she would either run from or write for the rest of her life.
Mira turned back to him.
"If I agree to study this with you," she said carefully. "I set the terms. My lab. My pace. No manipulation. No emotional chess games."
Lucien's expression didn't flicker. He simply nodded.
"Then let's start with honesty. Whatever is waking up in you.... it's waking up in me too."
- Writer
