Chapter 40: His

**ARIA** 

I stir awake in a warm bed. The sheets smell unfamiliar, and it takes me only a second to notice they're not mine. I jolt at the feeling, and in that moment, the door clicks open, and a woman walks inside. 

The way I sit up too fast spins my head. 

"What—" My voice cuts out when I see her. 

"I'm glad you're finally awake," her lips curl to a smile. She places a tray on a nightstand by the bed before moving the stand closer to me and laying it across my legs on the bed. "I'm Anna. If you need anything, you can call me." She introduces herself.

It doesn't really take me any effort to recognise where I am. Lucian's place. I'm not back home, not back where I thought he'd take me. 

"Where's Lucian?" I ask quickly, my chest rising and dropping with heavy breaths. 

"I'll call for him." She nods before leaving out the way same way she came inside. The door remains open as she walks away.

I quickly move the tray away from myself and onto the table. 

What am I doing here? Why am I here?

Footsteps return, and my attention shifts. It's Lucian, approaching quickly, with a firm face and worry gleaming in his eyes. 

"You're awake." It comes out more in shock as he says it.

I push myself up to a seated position. He looks different—no coat or vest over, and his hair isn't in his usual combed-back fashion, but instead it falls loosely in his face, and he looks a thousand times softer than usual.

"What am I doing here?" I ask, confused about my surroundings and the suddenness of the change of the situation I've found myself in. "And how—why am I here?"

Lucian closes the distance between the doorway and the bed. "You're safe."

"I... I thought you were going to take me home."

He comes even closer. 

"You'll be fine here." He answers. "And it's far safer if you're here for now. That way I'll be able to ensure you are not...being targeted." 

"But I've to get home—"

I press my palms against the soft sheets and push, trying to get off of them, and the moment I put a slight bit of weight, my arm begins to ache again, and a muffled whimper leaves my lips.

Lucian instantly grips around my shoulders and eases me back to the bed again.

"You're not going anywhere."

"It still hurts?" My brows furrow. "It's not supposed to." 

My arm, it hasn't healed. Which means that my wolf hasn't surfaced until now.

"She will come around. Give it some time," Lucian's palm soothes down my shoulder.

The worry that washes over me is instant, and it feels like something is sitting over my chest, crushing me.

He notices it.

"You'll be fine, Aria." his words try to offer me some sort of comfort, a sense of relief, but right now it feels impossible. 

It has been hours. Where is she? 

My back presses against the bed once more, and I take another deep breath, feeling helpless and vulnerable, with not having my wolf, feeling safe. I know this is a bad sign.

"Why did you bring me here?"

He's quiet for a moment. There's something he doesn't say, and I can clearly read that through his eyes. 

But then, he exhales. "Because I needed you close." 

"That's not a reason." 

"It is to me," his gaze finds mine. "Right now, the safest place, for me to ensure that no one is coming after you, is here. Where I can see you, keep an eye on you. You're still hurt." 

I am.

"You should've taken me home. I would've been fine there." 

"You would've." He nods, agreeing with me. 

He knows. 

A moment of silence slips by. I take a deep inhale and press my hand across my forehead before sliding it down my face and then finally speaking again.

"You rejected me. You made it very clear what we weren't. And now, all these days, you've been acting as if I'm yours again." My voice lowers, and I shake my head. "You don't get to do that."

He leans closer, and I can't help the urge that surges inside to pull myself as far as possible.

"I know."

His hand comes up to my arm, and his fingertips softly graze against my palm before he slides them up the side of my arm and stops right at where my injury is and the pain still remains.

"You're right. I don't. But I am. I'm acting like you're mine because you are. I made a mistake, one that I can't undo. And I hurt you. That's a fact."

He pauses. I listen.

"I've done all the things that should've turned you away from me for good, but even so, I can't...keep myself away from you." 

"Then, if that is how you feel, why did you reject me back then? You didn't even try." It sounds like I'm begging for him to explain the reasons and make me understand, and a part of me is. I need this, I need to know. 

Lucian looks away and his jaw clenches. He's quiet and his silence makes my chest twist. When I don't think he'll answer, that is when his lips open.

"My entire life, I've always done what everyone else wanted of me, lived up to their expectations. It's been about duty, honour and responsibility. That's the life I've always known. And I knew that you wouldn't fit into it. So, I thought that freeing you and myself from the bond was the best thing I could do."

My throat closes at his confession.

"But now it doesn't matter?" I ask him, "The responsibility, or your duty?"

"It's a different time now."

I lean up a little closer toward him and watch him. There's no lie, not a flicker of one. He is saying nothing but the truth.

"I don't believe you," I whisper. 

He raises a brow at my words, his lips tugging into a smile. "I didn't expect you to." He tells me, "But regardless of it, I'm going to do whatever I must to have you again."

A lump catches in my throat as I stare into his gaze.

"You can fight it, you can reject me again. And I will try again."