Somewhere in the haze a voice cracked — Chief Tyson's, enormous and furious. "What the hell is going on in my station?" He thundered as he pounded through the entrance, face red, blazer unbuttoned, a senator's veneer gone nervous. Reporters snapped a dozen live frames as he surveyed the scene and registered the primal display with an expression that flickered between terror and command.
"Stand down!" Tyson barked at everyone, and officers reacted. Some reached for their radios, some for handcuffs, but all of them felt the gravity of his order.
Robert's voice cut through the static. He moved in like a paddler riding a storm, not with heat but with steadiness. He stepped up to Brendon's flank, hand on the shoulder, and said, quietly, almost like a prayer, "Brendon. Calm down, buddy. Breathe. We've got this. You okay? We HAVE got this."
The animal inside Brendon wanted to answer by tearing the cameras out of hands. But the civilized part of him took Robert's palm instead and let a sliver of control slide back into his fingers. The amber of his eyes began to soften. The claws retreated with a wet, reluctant sound. The fur at his neck lay flatter. The howl had done its work: it had rearranged the room's energy, redirected it into a sphere of silence.
He inhaled, ragged and long, letting Robert's steadying presence anchor him back into the skin and posture of the sheriff. The lobby slowly returned to a twelve-minute war zone where everyone tried to pretend they were not shaking.
Tyson's face was looking like a person who lost in a war. He looked at Brendon not as an inferior but as a liability that needed to be contained — and, for reasons the chief would not say, protected. "Wolf," he said tightly, and the bark of his voice had the weight of a man who could see both headlines and lawsuits in his future. "Outside. NOW."
Brendon nodded. It took a moment to stand without baring teeth when the body wanted to bow with the wolf's posture. The reporters clustered, a scrap of human curiosity. Phones buzzed. Social feeds would explode with this — with audio and video and twelve frame-by-frame threads analyzing the shape of his ears. He'd already seen the viral reach of the ritual clip; and now the town would have to deal with it's sheriff who could become a centre of controversy.
He moved to the door with Robert at his side. Outside, the afternoon air was raw and smelled of rain on hot asphalt. A crowd had gathered on the steps and beyond, like a tide hemmed in by concrete. They parted for him, some in fear, some in worship, some in just the animal curiosity of spectators.
Rosa sat on one of the reception chairs, head in hands, finally emptied of words. A reporter slid closer, notebook thrust out like a talon. Brendon didn't look at her. He looked at Chief Tyson.
"You okay?" Tyson asked once they were out of the line of cameras, too close for theater, speaking low and fast.
"Mostly," Brendon lied. "Sometimes I totally loose my sh!t."
Tyson's jaw worked. "Yeah... that happens to all of us. But that's okay. You need to dispose off that frustration and anguish at some point, right? But... it was your timing that caused the problem here (haha... hah). You're still going to need a statement though. You know what this means for the mayor, for the council. The optics are—"
"Bad," Brendon supplied.
"Bad and expensive." Tyson's voice came from behind in a way that had nothing to do with warmth. "We need to control the narrative. We need to—"
Robert cut in, practical. "We should secure Rosa first, then secure the rookies and theeen shut down the feeds. Forensics needs to sweep. Jason and Sofie needs to start the PR game. Sofie also needs to scrub the upload origins. Maybe get IT on every node?"
Tyson's shoulders dipped, then squared. "Good. Do it then. Brendon—" He paused. He takes a deep breath. "And Wolf?"
"Hm?"
"Don't go off script next time."
Brendon smiled without humor. "Noted boss."
The station would bruise from this for a long time. The mayor would call. The press would demand an apology and get a thousands of alternatives for it. The social feeds would be merciless and nuanced all at once: clips of the wolf, frames of amber eyes, hot takes about the "monstrous sheriff." Some would cheer; some would call for his decapitation in the public trust.
Inside the lobby, Rosa had been coaxed by Jason into a nearby interview room. Robert had escorted the rookies off the floor to write statements. Officers in plain clothes pulled the cameras' batterypacks and took them to be catalogued as evidence. Tyson's men already had directives out, hands moving to contain the spill of this particular catastrophe.
Brendon stood a moment on the threshold, watching staff do their jobs like medics after a bombing. He felt raw and exposed. He felt the afterheat of that primal roar sitting in his throat. The animal inside him had not been ashamed; it had been pure, and it had done what it saw as necessary: to draw a line. The man inside him carried the guilt and the context and the knowledge of consequences.
He had to live with both.
A uniformed sergeant touched his elbow. "Chief wants you in his office. Now."
Brendon nodded and followed. The chief's office smelled of overbrewed coffee and old paper. Tyson closed the door and let it click with that finality that made men feel judged.
"This is bad," Tyson said simply.
Brendon had expected the fulsome fury — the spectacle would cost them — but the chief's words carried more complexity. He wasn't only angry at optics. There was worry wrapped inside it, for the town and for the man standing before him.
"The mayor will want a statement," Tyson continued. "He'll want reassurances that the force is stable. He'll want containment. He'll want…" Tyson's voice trailed, softening, "to avoid the hearings. Brendon, if this goes to federal it's not just the mayor who will suffer. It will sink us too. The while damn department."
"Yeah... I can understand," Brendon said.
Tyson's jaw worked like a piston. "This town is fragile. After Perseus it's a hairline in the ground. We can't have more things break our image. We have to patch it up before it tears more."
"Uhh... do you want me to apologize?" Brendon asked.
"No." The chief's voice was blunt. "You can't apologize for being an anthro. You can apologize for the disturbance. But more importantly—" Tyson leaned forward, hands flat on his desk, "—you need to help us control the follow-up. We can spin containment but not the spectacle. You have to co-operate. You will do public interviews — those will be scripted for sure. You will be the face of control, not hand-to-hand conflict. Can you do that?"
Brendon looked at the man who had spent decades shaping himself into a public engine. He nodded. "O...okay, at least I can try."
Tyson allowed a thin thing like relief to pass his face. "Good." He stood then, picked up the phone and barked orders to a officer.