By the time Amara made it back to her building, her legs felt like they belonged to someone else.
The walk from the bus stop was only three blocks, but each step seemed to land in a different version of her life—before the email, after the email, before Lucian Valtor's eyes, after.
The stairwell smelled like overcooked onions and someone's cologne. She climbed anyway, fingers sliding on the chipped railing. Her key jammed twice before she remembered to pull the door toward her while turning it.
Her tiny apartment greeted her with its usual clutter: sketchbooks on the bed, dishes in the sink, the hum of her old fridge. It should have been comforting. Instead, the room felt like a set, too small to hold what had just happened.
She shut the door, slid the chain across, and leaned her forehead against the peeling paint.
Her phone buzzed in her hand.
She stared at the name on the screen: Leah 💀
Her best friend had a talent for calling exactly when Amara was least capable of sounding normal.
She picked up anyway. "Hey."
"Wow." Leah's voice crackled through, bright and sharp. "That was an exhausted corpse 'hey.' Rate your day one to it-was-a-mistake-being-born."
Amara laughed, but it came out broken. "Somewhere around 'the gods are petty.'"
"Ah," Leah said. "So… the meeting."
Amara pushed away from the door and headed for the chair in front of her desk. "He was there," she said, dropping into it. "Lucian Valtor in the flesh. Attached to a suit and an opinion about my existence."
"You're kidding," Leah wheezed. "I thought it would just be his lawyer squad."
"Oh, they were there too." Amara poked her trackpad to wake the laptop. The screen blinked to life, greeting her with the last open tab: her dashboard. The view counter had ticked up again. "But no. Mr. Corporate Wolf himself decided to look me in the eye while accusing me of stalking him with my art."
"That's…" Leah searched for a word. "Horrifyingly on brand. How bad was it?"
"On a scale from 'mildly uncomfortable' to 'I could feel my soul leaving my body,' somewhere around 'don't drop the soap in hell,'" Amara said. Her mouth tasted like she'd bitten into a battery. "He thinks I did it on purpose. Used his face to get clout. I tried to explain that my subconscious is a thief but not a criminal mastermind. I don't think he believed me."
"Well, your subconscious does have weird taste in men," Leah said. "I've read your drafts."
"Rude," Amara muttered automatically.
"What did they actually say," Leah pressed. "Like, consequences-wise."
She swallowed. "They want me to take the comic down. All the episodes with him in it. No new content until they decide what to do. Maybe a public statement. And if I don't play nice…" Her throat closed around the rest. She forced it open. "He said he's very good at making problems disappear."
"Yikes," Leah said softly. "That's not even subtle villain talk. Did he swirl red wine while saying it?"
"No, but his eyes did a thing," Amara said before she could stop herself.
"A thing?"
"I don't—" She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Doesn't matter. It was probably the lighting. Or my brain having a full meltdown. Point is, he could definitely ruin me. Legally, not just with cheekbones."
"Did your lawyer say anything?" Leah asked. "You called him, right?"
"Yeah. Patel emailed me a script before I went in, and now I've got a new one full of scary terms like 'position' and 'escalation,'" Amara said. Her email icon blinked accusingly in the corner of the screen. "He says don't agree to anything yet. Let him respond. But he also said if this goes to court, I'm dead money-wise."
Leah sighed. "I hate capitalism. And wolves. And men in suits. And any combination of those three."
Amara huffed out a laugh that turned into a shaky exhale. "Same."
"Okay," Leah said, switching into her problem-solving voice. "Practical question: can you take it down for now? Just temporarily. Let the dust settle."
The thought sent a pang through Amara's chest, sharp and unexpected. "I… don't know if I can just yank it," she said. "It's not just me anymore. There are… people in there." She gestured vaguely at her screen, even though Leah couldn't see. "Readers. Comments. Dumb memes. It's their thing as much as mine now."
"Girl, it was your thing before any of them showed up," Leah said gently. "And it will still be your thing if it has to live on a hard drive for a while. Survival first."
Amara stared at the cursor blinking on the dashboard button that would let her unpublish episodes.
Her thumbnail for Episode 67—Alpha in fire—glowed like a taunt.
"I just…" She swallowed. "I finally got seen, you know? Not just three people and a bot. And now the first time the world looks at me, it's like, 'Hey, congrats, that face belongs to someone who can sue you.'"
Leah was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. "You got seen because you're good," she said. "Not because of his stupid jawline. That doesn't disappear if the comic comes down. But also… I get it. I'd be clinging to it like a raccoon with a shiny thing too."
On the laptop, a small notification popped up in the corner.
#AlphaOfTheBoardroom is now trending.
Her stomach dropped. "Oh no."
"What?" Leah asked. "What happened?"
Amara clicked.
The platform's social tab opened to a flood of posts.
People had screenshotted her panels, zoomed in on scars and rings, circled them with big red arrows. They'd placed them next to Lucian Valtor photos, circling the same angles, the same scar.
One post had both her panel and his press photo under a caption:
"HELLO? @WebVerseComix explain yourself 😭😭 #AlphaOfTheBoardroom #LucianValtor"
The tags repeated below, multiplied: #AlphaOfTheBoardroom and #LucianValtor, side by side, in thousands of posts.
"They're trending together," she said numbly. "My dumb title and his name. Like a ship name from hell."
"Oh, shit," Leah breathed. "Send me."
Amara screenshotted and sent. Leah's typing bubbles appeared almost immediately.
He really—wow. Okay, yeah, I can't even pretend there isn't a resemblance. Your brain is a criminal but I love her.
There's a fancam Leah wrote next. People made a fancam. Of him. With your art. To some unholy pop song.
Amara clicked the link Leah sent back.
A video played: quick cuts of Lucian at events—stepping out of cars, shaking hands, nodding in boardrooms—intercut with her panels of the Alpha smirking, bleeding, howling at the moon. The edit was disturbingly well done. The beat drops lined up with her speech bubbles exploding, with his tie flicking, with the glint of his ring.
The caption read: "Corporate Wolf in 4K 🐺💼 #AlphaOfTheBoardroom #LucianValtor"
"I'm going to throw up," Amara whispered.
"Don't read the comments," Leah said.
"I already read the comments," Amara croaked, scrolling down.
If I were him I'd be honored tbh
if I were him I'd be calling my lawyers
imagine being drawn as a hot monster without consent 😭
this is the best free marketing campaign he never asked for
if he sues her we riot
if he sues her I'm gonna read it twice out of spite
Her head spun.
Another notification pinged from the comic app itself.
New comments on Episode 68 – draft ready to publish.
Right. She'd finished the next episode in a haze before the meeting, because schedules and money and habit had all ganged up on her.
"And in today's terrible decisions," she muttered, "I was supposed to upload a new chapter twelve minutes ago."
"You're not seriously posting after that meeting," Leah said.
"I… I don't know," Amara admitted. "If I don't update, people will notice. They'll ask why. They'll dig harder. If I do update, I'm feeding the bonfire."
"Babe, that bonfire is already halfway to the moon," Leah said. "One more log won't be the difference between 'warm' and 'oh look, my house is gone.'"
Amara huffed. "You're very soothing."
"Shut up and make your own decision," Leah replied. "Whatever you do, I'm on your side. Even if that side is 'reckless goblin who posts anyway.'"
Amara stared at the upload button.
Episode 68 wasn't even one of the big ones. It was fallout. Boardroom politics, emotional damage for her assistant character, a glimpse of the Alpha on a rooftop under rain. She'd tweaked his features last night, made the scar shallower, the ring different. Cosmetic guilt adjustments.
Her rent reminder flashed through her mind. Patel's warning about not feeding the fire. Lucian's eyes when he'd said problems disappear.
Against all of that, the small, stubborn part of her that had drawn the first panel months ago flared.
"This story is mine," she whispered.
"Amara," Leah said slowly.
"I'm not agreeing to their conditions yet," Amara said. "Patel hasn't even replied. They can't expect me to vanish on command before my own lawyer has a say. One more episode won't kill anything that isn't already dying."
"That is… exactly the kind of logic you write into your characters right before you hurt them," Leah pointed out.
"Then at least I'm consistent," Amara said.
She hovered her cursor over the upload button.
Her heart hammered.
"Three," she said under her breath. "Two. One."
She clicked.
A progress bar appeared. The world did not end in the two seconds it took to hit 100%.
Episode 68: The City Still Burns
Status: Live.
Her stomach swooped. She hit refresh on the chapter page.
The view counter stayed at zero for half a second.
Then: 192. 803. 2.4k.
"Okay," she whispered. "Okay alright, that's—"
A new comment popped into existence, appearing at the very top, even before the flood of usual usernames could arrive.
Subscriber000:You drew too close to the truth.
The words sat there, plain black on white.
No emojis. No punctuation except the period.
Amara's skin prickled.
"Leah," she said. "Do you remember that user I told you about? The one who said 'this is literally Lucian Valtor' on day one?"
"Yeah?"
"There's another one," Amara said, throat dry. "Or the same creep under a different mask. They just commented on the new episode before anyone else. 'You drew too close to the truth.'"
She read it out loud. The phrase felt wrong in her mouth, like it belonged to a different genre of conversation.
Leah exhaled. "Gross. Okay, edgy edgelord alert."
"I mean, yeah, probably," Amara said, eyes glued to the line. Something about it felt too… deliberate. Not haha you're getting sued, not lol you messed up, but like a judgment. "But how are they that fast? I literally just hit upload."
"Some people live in the app," Leah said. "You do. Maybe you've discovered your evil twin."
The comment already had five replies.
FIRST LMAO
what truth?? spill 👀
@Subscriber000 are you in his walls or something
bestie you're scaring me stop
context pls??
Amara clicked the username.
Profile: blank. No avatar, no bio. Comment history: all on her comic, starting with Episode 67. Always first or nearly first. Short sentences. Vague, unsettling.
She scrolled back.
On Episode 67: "You finally opened the door."
On an older, earlier chapter she'd barely remembered: a note from days ago that had somehow blended into the chaos—"You drew it right this time."
"How did I miss these?" she whispered.
"Because you got buried under ten thousand people thirsting for your villain?" Leah said. "Creeps get camouflaged by the crowd. Classic."
Amara stared at the screen.
The unease that had been sitting under her skin since the meeting—cold, slow, like melting ice—spread.
"'Too close to the truth'," she repeated. "What truth? That billionaires exist? That men in suits are wolves? That I'm an idiot with a stylus?"
"Probably they mean 'truth' as in 'they also have a Google account and can see how much you've accidentally based this guy on Daddy Valtor,'" Leah said. "It's trolling with extra seasoning. Block and move on."
"Can't block specific readers on this app," Amara murmured. "Only report if it's harassment. And technically, it's not. It's just creepy."
"Then put them in the mental bin labeled 'Do Not Engage' and go drink water," Leah said. "And maybe sign out of literally every social platform for an hour. Touch grass. Touch your pillow. Touch anything that is not your anxiety."
Amara finally tore her eyes away from the comment and closed the tab.
The quiet of her apartment rushed in: the fridge, the faint traffic outside, the neighbor's TV through the wall.
Her phone buzzed again. A text from Patel.
Got their follow-up email. Do NOT remove anything or make any statements yet. We'll discuss options this evening. In the meantime, no responses to them directly.
Too late for the first-half of that instruction. Her hand tightened around the phone.
"Leah," she said. "Remind me to never draw anything again."
"Absolutely not," Leah said. "If you stop drawing, the world gets worse. And also I'll be bored."
"I nearly got eaten by a CEO today," Amara pointed out.
"Emotionally, spiritually, and financially," Leah agreed. "But hey, you also got a trending tag. That's like half a Webnovel dream right there."
Amara snorted.
Her gaze flicked back to the laptop, to the minimized comic app. The phantom of the comment lingered in her mind.
You drew too close to the truth.
"You're right," she said finally. "It's probably just some drama gremlin with too much time and not enough therapy."
"Obviously," Leah said. "Now go eat something. I can hear your blood sugar crying from here."
They hung up after a few more bad jokes and one promise from Leah to come over with ice cream if things got worse.
Alone again, Amara padded to the kitchen strip, opened a cupboard, and stared at the options: noodles, noodles, and cereal that had crossed the line into existential.
She grabbed a noodle packet on autopilot, filled a pot with water, and set it on the stove.
Behind her, the laptop screen dimmed, then brightened as a new notification popped up.
Episode 68 – 12,047 comments.
She didn't click.
The water boiled. The noodles softened. The apartment filled with steam and the weak, nostalgic smell of chicken flavoring.
She ate leaning against the counter, bowl warm in her hands, staring at nothing.
Outside her window, the city lights blinked on one by one as dusk crawled up the sky. Somewhere out there, in a tower of glass she'd drawn burning, a man with her monster's face might be checking the internet, seeing his name chained to a werewolf.
Somewhere on a server, code was counting views, pushing her chapter in front of more strangers, feeding the trend.
And somewhere behind a blank username and an empty profile, someone was watching more closely than everyone else.
Amara washed her bowl, set it upside down to dry, and made herself go back to the desk. She opened a new canvas.
The blank white rectangle stared back.
Her hand hovered over the tablet.
For the first time since Alpha of the Boardroom had been born, the empty page didn't feel like possibility.
It felt like a glass surface.
And when she looked closely, she could almost see eyes on the other side, waiting to see what she would draw next.