They gave her until the end of the day.
Which was funny, in a sick way, because the end of the day had stopped meaning anything since the lawsuit began. Time was just a series of fluorescent-lit rooms and signatures threatening to happen.
Patel took the folder home with him. "I'll mark it up," he'd said. "Call me tonight. Sleep on it before you make any decision."
Sleep. Right.
Leah walked her to the bus stop, rattling off increasingly elaborate fantasies of burning down billionaires' boardrooms in fiction. None of it stuck. The folder's ghost weighed against Amara's ribs even without its physical presence.
By the time she got back to her apartment, the air felt wrong. Too small. Every unpaid bill on the table screamed. Her tablet, dark and silent, looked like an accusation.
You did this, it seemed to say. You drew the wrong man. Or the right monster.
She stared at the cracked ceiling for five minutes.
Then she grabbed her phone and did the thing Patel had specifically told her not to do without him.
She texted Adrien.
Amara:I want to talk to him. Alone.
The dots appeared almost immediately.
Adrien:Clarify "him."
She almost typed your wolf.
Deleted it.
Amara:Lucian.
There was a longer pause. She paced the length of her living room, bare feet catching on a frayed rug corner, stomach knotted so tight it hurt.
Adrien:Not wise.
Adrien:But possibly efficient.
Adrien:Come to 24th floor, Valtor Tower, tomorrow 8 a.m. Use side entrance. I'll have your name cleared with security.
She stared.
Amara:No lawyers.
The dots blinked. Stopped. Started again.
Adrien:You realize how many ethics alarms that sets off for me.
Amara:You'll survive.
Another pause.
Adrien:He insists on counsel present for any formal negotiations. But an "informal conversation" in a public space is… flexible.
Adrien:I'll arrange something. Don't tell your lawyer I helped.
Too late for that.
She threw the phone onto the couch and pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes until stars bloomed there.
"Great," she muttered. "New life goal: make my own representation mad and my opponent's representation nervous. Truly thriving."
Sleep was a collection of jagged shards that cut when she touched them.
She saw the corridor again. The wall. The gouges. His mouth near her neck, the way he'd inhaled like she was oxygen.
In one fragment of dream, his ring slid onto her finger instead of his, too heavy, too hot. Letters etched themselves around her wrist in lines of light, curling like ink. She woke gasping at 3:12 a.m., clutching her hand, skin smooth and bare.
By 7:30 she was standing in front of Valtor Tower in yesterday's coat, coffee acid on her tongue, the city too bright for the fog in her head.
Up close, the building looked even more like the one she'd drawn. Floor-to-ceiling glass, steel ribs gleaming, the whole structure a vertical blade cutting into the sky. Her Alpha's tower had been born here, apparently. She just hadn't known where she was stealing from.
The side entrance was less impressive than the main one, tucked around the corner like a back door for deliveries and people they didn't want in the glossy magazine photos. Still marble, still glass, still security scanners, but smaller. More surgical.
"Name?" the guard asked, scanning her up and down like she might be hiding explosives under Leah's coat.
"Amara Reyes," she said. "There should be a note."
He checked a screen, brows lifting a millimeter. "You're cleared," he said. "Twenty-fourth floor. Use the left elevator."
"How specific," she muttered.
The elevator was all mirrored surfaces and soft music that sounded like it had been harvested from the waiting room of a very expensive dentist. She watched herself rise—a small figure in a big coat, dark circles under her eyes, hair pulled back in a knot that said I tried and not much else.
The doors slid open onto a floor that didn't look like a law firm.
No rows of cubicles. No beige carpet.
This was Valtor's inner world—or one of them. Dark wood, glass walls, abstract art. Long windows spilling early morning light across polished concrete. Plants in corners that somehow looked expensive.
Adrien was leaning against a glass partition, coffee in hand, jacket off, sleeves rolled. He looked annoyingly awake.
"You're early," he said.
"Couldn't sleep," she said.
"Color me shocked," he replied. Then, more serious: "You sure you want to do this without your lawyer?"
"No," she said. "But if Patel is there, this becomes posturing and positioning and 'off the record' that mysteriously finds its way onto the record. I need him to show me the truth, not the performance."
"Everyone always thinks they want the truth," Adrien said. "Until they get it."
He gestured toward a door at the end of the hall. "He's in there," he said. "Technically this is a lounge, not a conference room. No cameras. One door. If you scream, someone will hear. Probably me."
"That's comforting," she said.
"We take client safety seriously," he said.
"I meant mine."
His mouth twitched. "Fair point," he said. "For what it's worth, I don't think he's going to… do whatever you're afraid he's going to do."
"You don't know what I'm afraid he's going to do," she said.
He shrugged. "You're creative," he said. "You've probably imagined worse than reality. That's the curse of your profession."
He knocked once on the door, a light tap. "Reyes is here," he called. Then he stepped back. "I'll be in my office," he added quietly to her. "Try not to punch him. It'll make my life complicated."
"No promises," she said.
He left.
Amara stood in front of the door for three slow breaths.
Then she turned the handle and stepped inside.
The lounge was not the plush den of evil she'd half-expected.
It was simple.
A long, low couch. Two armchairs. A coffee table. Floor-to-ceiling windows showing the city below, just starting to wake properly. A sideboard with a coffee machine that probably cost more than her tablet.
Lucian stood by the window, hands in his pockets, looking out at the skyline.
In daylight, without the courtroom's heavy wood or the hallway's emergency gloom, he looked… human.
Tall, yes. Immaculate, yes. Crisp shirt, dark trousers, jacket off, tie loosened a fraction in that deliberate way that said I am relaxed because I choose to be, not because I forgot. But human.
No golden eyes. No visible claws.
When the door clicked shut behind her, he turned.
"Ms. Reyes," he said. "Punctual."
"Insomnia helps," she said.
A hint of something—humor?—flickered at the corner of his mouth. Then his face smoothed.
He gestured toward the seating area. "Sit," he said.
She bristled automatically. "I'm not a dog."
"Nor am I," he said mildly. "Despite what your work would suggest."
Touché.
She moved to one of the armchairs, sinking into leather that felt too soft for this conversation. He took the other, leaving the couch between them like neutral territory.
For a moment they just… sat.
The city murmured beyond the glass. A plane crawled across the sky. Somewhere down there, a bus honked, distant.
"You wanted to speak to me," he said at last. "Directly."
"Yes," she said. "Your… proposal."
"Our proposal," he corrected. "Adrien did not invent it without my knowledge."
"Your demand, then," she said. "Move into your 'secure residence,' let you supervise my work like I'm some lab experiment. It's absurd."
His gaze didn't waver. "Absurd would be allowing you to continue as you are," he said. "Drawing in your apartment, posting online, pretending this is just entertainment. That would be reckless."
"Reckless for who?" she asked. "You? Your reputation? Your… secret?"
She almost said "nature" and swallowed it.
His jaw tightened a fraction. "For you," he said.
She laughed, sharp and humorless. "Right," she said. "Because offering to lock me in one of your cages is such an act of altruism."
"It isn't a cage," he said. "It's a controlled environment."
"Spoken like a man who has never been controlled in his life," she snapped.
He watched her, expression unreadable. "You're angry," he observed.
"Brilliant observation," she shot back. "Did you notice that before or after you ordered your people to draft a contract that reads like the premise for a kidnap fic?"
His head tilted slightly. "You think I want you in my house because of… attraction?" he asked. The word sounded foreign in his mouth, ill-fitting.
The memory of his breath at her throat flashed, involuntary. Heat rose under her skin.
"I think you want me where you can see me," she said. "Where you can control what I draw, what I say, what I remember. You don't trust me not to—" she faltered "—leak."
"Leak," he repeated slowly. "An interesting choice of word."
He shifted, elbows resting lightly on his knees, fingers steepled. "You are… a problem," he said. "You are also a resource. I would prefer to treat you as the latter while mitigating the former."
"Again with the variables," she muttered. "So kind."
He ignored the jab. "You have no idea," he said quietly, "how dangerous your comic has become."
There was no condescension in his tone. Just flat statement.
"I drew a hot monster CEO," she said. "Welcome to half the romance category."
"You drew a hot monster CEO whose building, office, ring, scar, and behavioral tics match mine," he said. "Then you gave him… traits… that some people are extremely invested in keeping fictional."
She thought of the corridor. The growl in the walls. His pupils narrowing to slits. The claws in the paint.
"You mean like… snarling at opposing counsel," she said. "Very supernatural."
His mouth thinned. "You keep joking," he said. "Perhaps because the alternative is admitting that your subconscious has been feeding you images you cannot explain in a way that will pass a psychiatric evaluation."
Her breath caught.
Gold flickered, just for a heartbeat, at the edge of his irises. Not as bright as in the hallway. A hint. A warning.
She looked away first.
"You think your little comments happen in a vacuum?" he asked. "You think your readers tagging me, making fan edits, speculating about whether I am your 'real Alpha' does nothing? I sit on boards. I negotiate with people whose paranoia exceeds your imagination. They look for leverage. For weaknesses. For… tells."
"I'm making you look bad," she said slowly. "That's what this is about."
"You're making me look… like something I am not supposed to be," he said. "Not in this world. Not on record."
The air in the room seemed to thin.
"What you saw in that hallway," he went on, voice lower now, "should never have been seen. By anyone. Especially not by someone whose default response to reality is to dramatize it in panels and upload it for millions."
Her heart kicked. "So it did happen," she said quietly. "You're not going to gaslight me and say it was stress or low blood sugar."
His eyes sharpened. "Gaslighting is inefficient," he said. "I prefer consent where possible."
She snorted. "Is that what you call this?" she asked. "Consent? Offering me a choice between being destroyed in court or moving into your controlled habitat?"
"I am offering you survival," he said. "You can call it whatever you like."
Silence stretched.
He rose, restless energy hemming in his composure for a moment. He walked toward the window, hands in pockets, and stood looking out over the city, profile etched against glass.
"In your story," he said without turning, "what happens to the human who stumbles into the wolves' territory and draws maps of it?"
She thought of her own Episode 112—a side character, a journalist, who got too close to the pack's secret and paid for it in blood. Her commenters had called it "dark but realistic."
"She gets eaten," Amara said.
"Exactly," he said. "That is the narrative gravity. And yet you assume that in reality, everyone will behave more kindly than your own monsters."
"So you're saying you want to devour me personally," she said. "How flattering."
He turned then, and for a moment she could see the edge of something raw under the cool. "I am saying there are others who would be less… conflicted about it," he said. "And that your work has caught their attention."
Her mouth went dry. "Others," she repeated.
He didn't elaborate. He didn't need to. The implication hung there.
"You think," she said slowly, "that if I leave this building and go back to my little apartment and keep drawing—or even stop drawing—someone's going to… what? Come after me? Because I accidentally got too close to your… reality?"
His silence was answer enough.
"Then why not just kill me yourself and be done with it?" she asked, a wild edge to her voice.
A muscle jumped in his jaw.
"Because I'm not a monster," he said.
She barked a laugh. It came out wrong. "You literally—"
He cut her off with a look. "Because," he repeated, more evenly, "wiping you out creates problems of its own. People notice missing artists. Fans scream. Conspiracy theories multiply. That draws more attention. More scrutiny. That is precisely what we wish to avoid."
"We," she echoed. "You and your… kind?"
He didn't confirm. He didn't deny.
"You are inconvenient," he said instead. "You are also, infuriatingly, talented. You have built something that has… resonance. That is not easy to create from nothing. It is why we are offering you this compromise instead of feeding you to the machine and letting it grind you into legal dust."
"Compromise," she said. "Move into your house, let you watch me like a lab rat, hand over creative control."
"Influence," he corrected. "Not control."
She laughed again, hollow. "You really expect me to believe this is for my protection?" she asked.
He met her gaze. "I expect you to believe that you are the one in danger if you refuse," he said. "From both the mortal and the… less mortal sides of this."
The word hung there.
Less mortal.
He didn't take it back.
Her head spun.
"So my options," she said slowly, ticking them off on her fingers, "are: one, fight you in court until I'm bankrupt and broken and one of your 'others' decides I'm an acceptable snack; or two, move into your corporate safe house and let you… protect me. And my story. Under contract. With cameras."
He inclined his head. "That is a blunt way of phrasing it," he said. "But yes."
"That's not a choice," she said. "That's… two flavors of prison."
"People marry into worse," he said dryly.
"Is that supposed to be comforting?" she asked.
"No," he said. "It's supposed to remind you that humans have always traded autonomy for safety. This is not new. We are just being more explicit about it."
She wanted to argue. To call him arrogant, manipulative, insane.
Instead, she thought of the gouges in the wall. The way the maintenance man had said "wall forgets" like it was a kindness. The way Adrien had said "he rarely offers anyone an alternative to losing."
She thought of her bank balance, a number that looked more like a countdown than a resource.
She thought of the comments he'd shown her, strangers wanting her destroyed for daring to draw him at all.
And then she thought of her readers.
The ones who had sent screenshots of her panels with messages like your story saved me this week or I haven't felt this seen in years. The ones who had made fanart, playlists, entire Tumblr blogs dedicated to her fictional wolf.
She'd built something.
She'd also lit a signal fire she hadn't understood.
"Why me?" she asked quietly. "You could have settled with a gag order and crushed me quietly. Why go to all this trouble? Why bring me into your world at all?"
He was very still for a moment.
"When someone outside the pack can predict your moves without access to your inner circle," he said, "you either eliminate them… or you bring them inside and learn why."
The word pack was a shard of glass in the room.
"You think I'm… what, a seer?" she demanded. "A spy? I'm just a girl with bad sleep and a tablet."
"People with 'just a tablet' have toppled governments," he said. "Your dreams put scars on men you've never met. I am… curious."
"Curiosity," she said. "That's what this is."
"And risk," he said. "And opportunity. I will not pretend otherwise."
The honesty knocked something loose in her.
She slumped back in the chair, suddenly exhausted. "I hate this," she said. "All of it. You. Your lawsuit. My own stupid art for pulling me into your orbit."
"That makes two of us," he said.
She looked up sharply. "You hate it too?" she asked.
His expression didn't change, but she felt a tiny shift in the room, like the air had moved. "I hate variables," he said. "I hate… losing control."
He didn't have to specify of what.
She remembered his face against the wall, veins standing out, eyes burning.
She remembered his voice, frayed around "please."
He was offering her a deal with the devil not because he enjoyed the theater, but because something about her existence felt like his loss of control waiting to happen again.
Fantastic.
"So," she said. "What happens if I sign and I hate it and I want out?"
"There are termination clauses," he said. "You and Mr. Patel will no doubt refine them. Twelve weeks initial term. Not a lifetime."
"Feels like one," she muttered.
"It isn't," he said. "You can walk away. After. If you're still alive and inclined to."
The casual inclusion of alive made her skin crawl.
"You're very reassuring," she said.
"I'm very honest," he said. "That is rarer."
Silence settled again.
Outside, a cloud moved over the sun, dimming the room. For a moment, the lighting looked like the corridor's emergency glow again. Her stomach clenched.
When she spoke, her voice sounded far away, like it belonged to someone else.
"If I do this," she said, "you back off in court. No crushing damages. No character theft. No dragging this out for years."
"Yes," he said.
"And you keep your… friends… off my back."
"Yes."
"And you don't—" she faltered "—hurt me."
His gaze sharpened. "I have no desire to harm you," he said. "You complicate my life. I prefer my assets functional."
"You just called me an asset," she said.
"A variable, a resource, an asset," he said. "Pick your poison."
She swallowed hard.
"I want that in writing," she said. "All of it."
"You will have it," he said.
She exhaled, long and shaky.
"This feels like a bad decision," she whispered.
"It is a constrained one," he said. "There is a difference."
She laughed once, incredulous.
"Do you always talk like a board memo?" she asked.
"Habit," he said.
She stood.
Her legs wobbled, but they held. She walked to the coffee table, where a pen and a fresh copy of the term sheet sat waiting, as if this had always been the endpoint of the conversation.
"You had this ready," she said.
"I was optimistic," he said.
"Or arrogant," she said.
"Those are not mutually exclusive," he replied.
She picked up the pen.
It felt heavier than it looked.
"This doesn't mean I forgive you," she said.
"I'm not asking for forgiveness," he said. "I'm asking for an agreement."
She stared at the lines of text. Words blurred for a second, then sharpened. Patel's notes were already in the margins in neat, cramped handwriting; he must have stayed up late. Add this. Strike that. Protect her here.
Her chest hurt.
"Patel's going to kill me," she murmured.
"He'll bill you first," Lucian said dryly. "Then kill you."
She huffed a weak laugh.
Her hand hovered over the signature line.
She thought of walking away. Of saying no, tearing the paper, telling him to take his cage and shove it. Of taking her chances with the court, the press, the "others" he wouldn't name.
She thought of Leah's face when she'd said, "We'll figure it out," but her eyes had been worried.
She thought of that warmth in the hallway, the way his proximity had triggered something visceral and terrifying in both of them.
She did not want to be owned.
She also did not want to be dead.
"Deal with the devil," she said under her breath. "Classic heroine mistake."
"You're not a heroine," he said. "You're an artist who picked a fight with the wrong wolf."
The honesty of it made her hand stop shaking.
She pressed the pen to the paper and signed.
Her name looked small.
The moment the last stroke left the page, something strange happened.
Warmth crawled up the pen.
It started at her fingertips, subtle at first—a faint heat, like touching a mug that's been sitting a bit too long but is still warm. It seeped into her hand, up the tendons crossing the back, slid around her wrist like a ring of liquid.
She gasped.
The sensation wasn't painful. It was… intrusive. Intimate. Like ink soaking into paper. Like a thread being drawn under her skin.
For a heartbeat, she saw something that wasn't there:
Fine, faint lines of light circling her wrist, delicate as calligraphy strokes. They traced symbols she didn't recognize, curling around bone, sinking inward.
Her vision blinked.
The lines vanished.
Her wrist was bare. No mark. No ink. Just skin, goosebumped and buzzing.
She jerked her hand back, staring.
"What was that?" she demanded.
Lucian's expression didn't change, but his pupils dilated a fraction. His gaze flicked to her wrist, then away, like he knew better than to stare.
"Paperwork," he said.
"That wasn't paperwork," she snapped. "That was—"
"Binding," he said quietly. "Of a sort."
Fear and anger warred in her chest. "You didn't say there'd be a… a magical tattoo clause," she hissed.
"If I had, would you have signed?" he asked.
"Maybe!" she shot back. "If you'd explained what the hell it is."
He studied her face. "It's a… safeguard," he said. "For both of us. A very old form. It ensures… compliance. With the terms."
"Compliance," she echoed. "Like a shock collar."
"No shocks," he said. "Nothing that will hurt you unless you actively attempt to break the agreement in ways that endanger us both."
"That is not comforting," she said, voice rising. "You put something on me. In me. Without my informed consent."
"There is no such thing as fully informed consent where my world is concerned," he said sharply. "Your mind does not yet have the categories to hold it. You would call everything hallucination or horror. I gave you as much as I could, given the constraints."
She stared at him, heart racing, wrist tingling faintly like a limb coming back from being asleep.
"You really are the villain," she said. "You know that?"
"I am the one who keeps worse monsters away," he said. "From people who accidentally shine flashlights into places they shouldn't."
"While putting a leash on them," she said.
"Leashes can be removed," he said. "Graves cannot."
Silence fell, thick.
Her whole body felt off—like a cord she hadn't known existed had been plucked and was still vibrating. She flexed her fingers. The warmth was fading now, leaving a ghost sensation.
"How long does this… binding… last?" she asked.
"Until the contract ends," he said. "Twelve weeks for now. Longer if renewed. Or shorter if terminated properly."
"And if I… break it?" she asked, voice barely above a whisper.
He held her gaze. "Don't," he said simply.
Something in his tone—less threat, more bleak honesty—made her stomach flip.
She looked down at her signature again.
It sat there, mundane. Black ink on white paper.
No glowing letters. No blood.
Just a name that now tethered her to a man who was not just a man, to a world that had teeth, to a deal that felt like a noose disguised as a lifeline.
"This is insane," she said.
"Welcome to my life," he replied.
Adrien knocked once and opened the door a crack, eyes flicking between them, taking in the tension.
"Everything settled?" he asked lightly.
Lucian straightened. "For now," he said.
Adrien's gaze dropped to the paper, saw the signature, and exhaled in quiet relief. "I'll file the appropriate notices," he said. "The court will be… intrigued."
"You'll frame it as a mutually satisfactory alternative resolution," Lucian said. "No details."
Adrien nodded. "Of course."
Amara stood, legs unsteady.
As she turned to leave, Lucian's voice followed her.
"Ms. Reyes."
She looked back.
His eyes were gray.
"We now share an interest in keeping you alive," he said. "Try not to make me regret that."
She swallowed. "Try not to make me regret signing," she said.
Then she walked out.
In the hallway, the world looked the same—glass, plants, people in suits. Her wrist itched.
She pressed her fingers there, feeling nothing and everything at once.
Deal with the devil, she thought.
Except the worst part wasn't that she'd signed.
It was that some small, treacherous part of her already wanted to know what story would come out of being caged with a wolf—and what invisible ink was even now writing along her bones.