Chapter 146 CHAPTER 147: Closing In

Chapter 146 CHAPTER 147: Closing In


ARIA'S POV

The glow of my laptop screen was the only light in my room as the clock blinked past midnight. I had the faded paper pulled out right beside my keyboard, the name Valerie Vance staring back at me like it was waiting for me to crack the code. I traced the ink with my fingertip for the hundredth time, feeling the slight indent of the pen strokes against the old paper.

For days I had been carrying this document around like a weapon I didn't know how to use. Pulling it out during study hall. Reading it in bathroom stalls between classes. Holding it under my blanket at night, whispering the name to myself like it might suddenly mean something if I just said it enough times.

I couldn't show Cole, Kai, Reed, or Jasper. They were keeping their own massive secrets from me, tracking mysterious people and whispering behind closed doors. If I handed them this paper, they would just take control of the situation and shut me out completely again. And I was so tired of being shut out.

So I searched on my own.

I clicked through encrypted public databases, cross referenced old pack registries, and dug through historical town records during every free period between classes. Most of my searches led nowhere. Dead links. Missing pages. Error messages that felt like doors slamming in my face one after another.

"You look terrible," Maya told me on Thursday afternoon, sliding into the seat across from me in the courtyard. She set a bag of chips between us and stared at me with those sharp, worried eyes. "And I mean that with love. When was the last time you slept more than four hours?"

"I sleep fine, Maya."

"Liar. You've zoned out five times in the last ten minutes. You almost walked into a pole after second period. Literally walked into a pole, Aria."

"It grazed me," I muttered, rubbing the side of my arm where a faint bruise was forming. "I was reading something on my phone."

"Reading what?" Maya leaned forward, lowering her voice. "Is it the Steel brothers? Did one of them do something stupid again?"

"No, it's not them." I pulled my jacket tighter around me, pressing my hand flat against the inner pocket where the envelope rested. "I found something, Maya. Something from my past. A name I've never heard before, and nobody will tell me what it means."

Maya's face softened. She reached across the table and squeezed my wrist. "Then tell me. Maybe I can help."

"Valerie Vance," I whispered. "Have you ever heard that name?"

Maya frowned, thinking for a moment, then shook her head slowly. "No. Never. Who is she?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out. Her signature is on a document connected to my birth. My mom freaked out when I found an old photo, and now this name keeps leading me into places I can't access. It's like someone erased her from every database on purpose."

"That's creepy, Aria."

"I know."

"No, I mean really creepy. People don't get erased unless someone powerful wants them gone."

That was exactly what terrified me. But I kept searching anyway. That night, long after Maya went home and the campus went quiet, I sat alone in my room clicking through one last archive. A digital newspaper collection from fifteen years ago, scanned pages from small town papers that nobody read anymore.

And then I found it.

An old article. Short, barely three paragraphs, buried in the back section of a paper that had gone out of print. The text was grainy and blurred at the edges, but I could read it. And what it said made my hands go cold on the keyboard.

The article connected the name Valerie Vance to a powerful werewolf family. A family that had supposedly disappeared years ago under mysterious circumstances. No explanation. No follow up story. Just a brief mention of a prominent pack bloodline that vanished overnight, and a woman named Valerie Vance listed among the last known members.

My chest felt tight. I read it three times, my eyes moving faster with each pass.

"What the hell," I breathed into the empty room. "Why is my name on papers connected to people like this?"

Powerful pack families didn't just vanish. Not unless something catastrophic happened. And Valerie Vance, whoever she was, had signed her name on my birth documents. My birth. My existence. Tied to a family that disappeared under circumstances nobody wanted to talk about.

The questions pressed against my skull so hard my temples ached. I closed the laptop and sat in the dark, staring at nothing, trying to force the pieces together. They wouldn't fit. Not yet.

The next afternoon changed everything.

I was walking down the busy sidewalk away from campus after my last class, my bag slung over one shoulder and my phone in my hand. The sidewalk was crowded with students and locals heading home for the weekend. Cars passed. People laughed. Everything looked normal.

Then I felt it. A cold prickle on the back of my neck, like someone had pressed an ice cube right between my shoulder blades.

I glanced back casually over my shoulder. Nothing unusual. Just a sea of faces and backpacks and coffee cups.

But then I saw him. A tall man in a dark cap and a heavy grey jacket. Walking fifty feet behind me. Matching my pace step for step.

I had seen him before. Near the library steps during lunch. By the bus stop after my history lecture. And now here, on this sidewalk, following me with the kind of steady, unhurried patience that made my blood turn cold.

The warehouse came flooding back. The hands grabbing me. The darkness. The helplessness. My breathing turned shallow and fast. My fingers started shaking so badly I almost dropped my phone.

I veered off the main sidewalk into a narrow alley between two brick buildings, fumbling for Cole's number. My thumb kept slipping on the screen.

"Pick up, pick up, pick up," I whispered frantically, pressing the phone to my ear.

"Aria? Where are you?" Cole's voice came through sharp and immediate.

"Cole, listen to me," I gasped. "Someone's following me. A man in a grey jacket. I've seen him three times today. He's right behind me."

"Where are you right now? Tell me exactly."

"I'm cutting through the side street near Elm. The alley behind the old bookstore."

"Don't stop moving," Cole growled, his voice vibrating with that low, dangerous alpha authority that usually annoyed me but right now felt like a lifeline. "Reed is already in his car. Kai is leaving the gym now. Keep walking toward the main square where the security booth is. Do not hang up."

"Cole, what if he grabs me?"

"He won't. We're coming. Keep talking to me. How far is the main square?"

"Two blocks. Maybe less." I was practically jogging now, my bag bouncing against my hip, my sneakers slapping against the wet pavement. "I can see the lights from the security booth."

"Good. Keep moving. Don't look back."

"Too late," I breathed. "I already looked. He's gone."

"What do you mean gone?"

I burst out of the alleyway onto the main square where the campus security booth stood bright and lit up under the streetlamps. I leaned against the brick wall, gasping for air, my chest heaving up and down as I looked wildly back down the empty lane.

The man in the grey jacket was nowhere. Vanished, like smoke dissolving into evening air.

"He's not there anymore, Cole. The alley is empty."

"Stay where you are. Reed is pulling up in thirty seconds."

"I'm at the security booth." My voice cracked. "I'm okay. I think."

"You're not okay. You're shaking. I can hear it in your voice."

He was right. My whole body was trembling. Not the dramatic, movie kind of shaking. The small, terrible kind. The kind that starts deep inside your bones and works its way outward until even your teeth feel loose.

Reed's black car screeched to the curb forty seconds later. Kai was in the passenger seat. The door flew open before the car fully stopped.

"Get in," Reed ordered, his eyes scanning the street behind me with that hard, furious look I had come to recognize as his version of fear.

I climbed in and slammed the door shut. The locks clicked automatically.

"Did you see his face?" Kai turned around from the front seat, his jaw tight.

"No. Just the jacket and the cap. But it was the same guy, Kai. Three times in one day. He was following my exact route."

"We're doubling the security detail tomorrow," Reed muttered, gripping the steering wheel. "No arguments."

"I'm not arguing," I whispered, pressing my forehead against the cold window. My breath fogged the glass. "I just want to know why."

Nobody answered. The car turned onto the highway toward the estate, and the streetlights blurred into long golden streaks outside the window.

Whoever was interested in me hadn't disappeared. They hadn't given up after the warehouse. They hadn't been scared off by the brothers or the campus security or any of the walls everyone kept building around me.

They were getting closer. Matching my schedule. Learning my routes. Watching me from distances that were shrinking by the day.

Whatever secret surrounded my life was no longer something buried in old newspapers and faded documents. It was here. Walking behind me on public sidewalks. Breathing the same air.

I pressed my hand against the inner pocket of my jacket, feeling the sharp edge of the envelope against my chest. Valerie Vance. The disappeared family. The altered records. The men in grey jackets.

Everything was connected. I just couldn't see the shape of it yet.

But I was going to. Because I was done waiting for other people to hand me the truth in small, careful pieces. I was going to tear it out of the ground myself, roots and all, no matter what I found underneath.