The fight started over nothing and then turned into everything.
It began with Adrien's "options."
He showed up in the studio after lunch with a folder and a smile that meant trouble. Lucian trailed behind him, more shadow than man, jaw already tight.
"I've been thinking," Adrien said, dropping the folder onto the side table like a magician producing a rabbit, "about our little echo problem."
"Great," Amara said. "Maybe don't call it that like it's a branding opportunity."
He flashed teeth. "Everything's a branding opportunity," he said, then sobered. "But seriously. We can't just let this run wild. You're fraying at the edges. He's getting hit in the crossfire. The bond's heating up like a faulty cable. We need to insulate."
"Insulate," she repeated. "From my own brain."
"From the bleed," he said. "From the old current. There are… measures."
"Measures," she said. "Spells. Drugs. The equivalent of putting my creativity in a soundproof box."
"Temporary dampening," Adrien countered. "Not a lobotomy. Just enough to stop your dreams from turning into storyboards for things we'd rather not happen."
Lucian stood against the far wall, arms folded, silent.
His silence made her angrier than Adrien's words.
"What does 'dampening' mean?" she demanded. "Less detail? Fewer panels? Me staring at walls while my readers wonder why the story suddenly started sucking?"
"It means you get some peaceful nights," Adrien said. "It means you stop waking up with ritual circles under your eyelids. It means if you draw something… bad, it's less likely to… manifest."
There it was.
Out loud.
"Less likely," she repeated. "So you think it's me."
"No," Lucian said, finally speaking. "I think you're a conduit. A lens. The current has to flow through something. Right now, that something is you. I want you less exposed to it, not more."
"By shutting me down," she snapped.
"By shielding you," he said.
Adrien opened the folder and slid a document toward her.
Pages of neat handwriting and symbols she halfway recognized from her dreams. Notes in the margins—some in Adrien's tidy script, some sharper, older.
"This is one suggestion," Adrien said. "Ritual interference keyed to your binding. Think of it as a filter. You'll still dream. You'll still draw. But the… force… behind it will hit a baffle before it gets to the pack."
She stared at the pages without really reading them.
The symbols blurred.
Her wrist throbbed under the skin.
"And what does it cost?" she asked.
"Everything costs something," Adrien said. "In this case, exhaustion. Headaches. Some loss of… clarity. The bond will push back. It doesn't like being redirected."
"So I get more tired, my art gets fuzzier, and my head explodes," she said. "Wow. Sold."
"You're already exhausted," Lucian said quietly. "You already have headaches. You already can't tell where the story stops. This would be controlled. Managed."
"Managed by you," she said.
He didn't deny it.
"We can't leave it as it is," he said. "You tested it once and nearly turned a coffee run into a demonstration of cause and effect."
Her shoulders stiffened. "You don't know that was me," she said.
"Don't I?" he asked.
The way he said it made her stomach twist.
"You're the one who insisted I draw under supervision," she said. "Now you want to supervise my subconscious too?"
"I want you alive," he said. "And unbroken."
"And useful," she added.
His jaw clenched. "That's not what this is about," he said.
Adrien, sensing the temperature rising, raised both hands. "We're not doing anything without your consent," he said. "We're presenting options. You're not a prisoner—"
She laughed, sharp. "Adrien, I have a magical contract in my wrist and guards outside the door," she said. "The word you're looking for is pet, not prisoner."
Lucian flinched, almost imperceptibly.
"You're not a pet," he said.
"Could've fooled me," she shot back. "Feed me, walk me, watch me, punish me when I misbehave—"
"The punishment is for breaches that could get you killed," he snapped.
"Funny," she said, "that the thing most likely to get me killed right now is you."
Silence dropped into the room like a stone.
Adrien exhaled slowly. "I'm going to… step out," he said. "For air. And plausible deniability."
He slipped out before either of them could stop him, the door clicking shut behind him.
They were alone.
The tension changed shape.
Lucian's eyes were darker now, gray with flecks of gold, like something under the surface was starting to glow.
"You think I'm your biggest threat," he said.
"I think you're the one holding the knife," she said. "So yeah, you're on the list."
He stepped closer, slow.
"The old ways," he said, voice low, "are not kind to outsiders. They're not kind to us, sometimes. Without me, without the structure, without the rules, you'd be—"
"What?" she cut in. "A casualty? A warning? A footnote in some pack's secret history?"
"Yes," he said, blunt as a blow. "Probably."
"Cool," she said, throat tight. "Good to know we're in agreement about my expendability."
His eyes flashed. "That's not what I said," he growled.
"It's what it feels like," she shot back. "Every proposal you bring me makes my world smaller. Don't post this. Don't draw that. Don't sleep without telling me your nightmares. Don't breathe too loud in case the old ways hear you. I'm losing pieces of myself by the day."
"I am trying to keep you out of the worst of it," he said. "If I could move you out of the city, out of the tower, out of—"
"You won't," she said. "Because you need me where you can see me. Need the artist in the cage to keep your story under control."
She was breathing fast.
So was he.
"This isn't control," he said. "This is containment."
"Same difference," she said.
He took another step toward her. They were close enough now that she could see the fine lines at the corners of his eyes, the tension in his jaw.
"You think I enjoy this," he said quietly. "You think I don't wake up every day wondering if pulling you in was the worst mistake I've made in a long time?"
Her chest stung.
"Maybe it was," she said. "For both of us."
They stared at each other.
For a moment, the air between them felt like one of her panels right before the impact—lines converging, motion about to happen.
Then he stepped back.
The distance felt like a door slamming.
"Do what you want," he said, voice suddenly flat. "Don't take the dampening. Don't tell me your dreams. Don't listen to anything I say. But when the echoes hit harder, when you can't tell whether you're causing it or seeing it, don't pretend you weren't warned."
"Is that a threat?" she whispered.
"It's a fact," he said.
He turned toward the door.
Her wrist buzzed desperately, like it wanted her to grab him, to stop him, to take the offered shield no matter how much it cost.
Instead, she heard herself say, "Get out."
He paused.
His shoulders tightened.
Then he left without another word.
The studio door closed with a soft click that felt like it might crack her ribs.
She stood there, breathing hard, eyes burning.
"Fine," she said to the empty room. "Fine. You want me to be the problem? I'll be the problem."
She sat down hard at her desk.
Her hand found the stylus like it had been waiting.
She opened a new chapter file.
No thumbnails. No careful outline. No balanced pacing.
Just anger, poured into panels.
The title came first.
Episode 124 – The Ambush in the Glass Tower
She set the font harder than usual.
Her wrist buzzed in warning.
She ignored it.
The opening panel: Rheon alone in his building after hours, tie loose, shirt sleeves rolled, walking down a long corridor of glass and steel. The city glowed outside, reflections multiplying his image until it looked like an army of him marching along.
She drew it sharp, lines crisp, angles harsh.
She gave him the same expression she'd seen on Lucian's face a hundred times: tired, guarded, already half in battle with numbers and obligations.
She added shadows in the corners.
Not the soft, domestic kind she'd used in earlier chapters. Sharp, angular ones. The kind that hinted at people hiding just outside the frame.
Her wrist heated as she roughed in the ambushers.
She didn't base them on any real faces. Hooded figures, masks, silhouettes. The kind of anonymous threat that could be anyone—rival pack, corporate enemy, old ghosts from the old ways. She didn't care.
She just wanted him cornered.
She scripted it fast.
Rheon sensing something off, glancing up at the cameras, seeing static.
A door that should be locked slightly ajar.
A flicker in the reflection of the glass wall—movement where there shouldn't be any.
Panel by panel, she walked him into it.
Not because it was good storytelling.
Because she was furious.
Because a part of her wanted him to feel even a fraction of the vulnerability she lived in every day, trapped in his den with her freedom held like a leash in his hand.
In the central spread, she drew the moment the ambush hit.
Rheon turning, eyes flashing, catching the scent of danger a second too late.
Shadows rushing in from both sides.
A knife—not too big, not a cartoon sword, just a practical, ugly blade—glinting as it slashed across his side.
She paused when she reached that.
Her hand trembled.
She zoomed in, drawing the wound.
Not gut spill.
Not gore.
Just a clean, deep line from just under his ribs to his hip, angled slightly down. Enough to bleed. Enough to slow him. Enough to hurt.
The binding exploded.
Pain seared her wrist, racing up her arm like a live wire.
She hissed, dropping the stylus, cradling her hand.
"Stop it," she snapped aloud. "It's just a story. It's just a stupid edgy chapter. Calm down."
The bond pulsed, furious.
She gritted her teeth and picked the pen back up.
The pain flared again, but she pushed through it, shading the fabric tearing, the stain spreading. She didn't draw the blood dripping on the floor. She left it implied.
Little mercy for herself.
No mercy at all for the man in the panels.
She wrote the rest of the scene with quick, jagged dialogue.
Rheon fighting back, even wounded.
Teeth bared, eyes blazing, claws half-out.
One attacker slammed into a glass wall, cracking it.
Another's mask torn, revealing nothing more than a shadow where a face should be.
She framed it like she always did: impact, reaction, fallout.
But the narration under it was sharper.
They thought he was safe in his own glass tower.
They forgot glass can cut.
By the time she reached the last panel—Rheon braced against a wall, hand pressed to his bleeding side, glare promising something horrible for whoever sent the ambush—her whole arm was throbbing.
Her wrist felt swollen, hot, like the binding was trying to claw its way out.
She saved the file anyway.
It was petty.
It was reckless.
It felt good.
Her anger hadn't cooled; it had changed shape.
Small, sharp, vindictive.
"You're not the only one who gets to write consequences," she muttered.
She posted the episode later that night.
She knew she shouldn't.
She told herself she'd wait, let the fury drain, revise the worst parts in the morning.
Instead, lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, Adrien's folder haunting her from across the room, Lucian's last words echoing—don't pretend you weren't warned—she grabbed her tablet, opened the draft, and hit Publish.
The confetti animation popped up.
Her heart hammered.
Within minutes, the comments started.
@moonhowls: EXCUSE ME MA'AM PUT THE KNIFE DOWN
@feralforfiction: SHE AMBUSHED HIM IN HIS OWN TOWER??? JAIL
@wolfedupreads: this is homophobic to my emotional support ceo
@legalhotmess: as an attorney i can say: this is self-incrimination for assaulting my client he's fictional but still
She watched the counter jump—views, likes, shares.
Her wrist burned steadily, like a coal under her skin.
A part of her whispered that she'd gone too far this time.
She rolled over, shoving the tablet under her pillow, and forced herself to breathe.
"It's fiction," she told herself. "He's not going to get stabbed because I'm pissed."
Sleep, when it came, was jagged and thin.
For once, there were no forests, no rituals.
Just flashes of corridors, glass walls, and the echo of a knife glinting under fluorescent light.
—
The next afternoon, he bled on her floor.
She knew something was wrong before she saw him.
The penthouse felt… off.
She'd been in the studio all morning, forcing herself to work on a lighter filler episode—flashback, banter, anything to balance the violence she'd thrown into the feed. Her eyes ached. Her wrist had cooled to a low, sulky throb.
Around three, someone knocked on her door.
Not the light, polite double-tap Ms. Kwan used, or the rap-rap Adrien favored.
A single, heavy knock.
Her pulse spiked.
"Yes?" she called.
The door cracked open.
One of the guards stood there, face impassive but shoulders a little too tense.
"Ms. Reyes," he said. "Mr. Valtor is back. He's asked that you… remain in your room for the moment."
Her stomach dropped.
"Why?" she asked.
"Security matter," he said. "It's under control."
The phrase under control had never sounded less reassuring.
"Is he okay?" she pressed.
A flicker passed over the guard's expression.
"I'm not at liberty to say," he said. "Please. For now."
He closed the door gently.
Her wrist went ice-cold.
She lasted thirteen minutes.
She paced.
She checked her messages—nothing from Zara, nothing from Adrien. Too quiet.
She checked the news—no breaking alerts, no "Valtor Group CEO attacked in daylight" headlines.
Her heart wouldn't slow.
Thirteen minutes in, something in her snapped.
Screw security.
Screw liberty.
She left her room.
The guard was gone.
The penthouse corridors seemed longer than usual, each step echoing in her ears.
As she neared the main living area, she heard voices.
Quiet.
Urgent.
"…it went sideways," Adrien's voice was saying. "They knew the back route."
"We tightened that route last year," Ms. Kwan murmured. "Someone updated their information."
"That's the point," Adrien said. "Someone inside, or someone with good ears."
Amara's hand brushed the wall as she rounded the corner.
She stopped dead.
Lucian was there.
Standing near the couch.
Alive.
But.
His white shirt was half untucked, spattered with dark stains. The side of it—left, just under the ribs—was torn open in a long, ugly slit, the fabric sliced clean.
His hand was pressed there, fingers slick.
Blood seeped between them.
Not a gush, not a life-emptying wound.
But enough.
Enough that the dark patch soaked the fabric in a shape she recognized.
Her vision tunneled.
The angle.
The length.
The way it ran from just beneath his ribs toward his hip, slightly diagonal.
It was her line.
Her stupid, spiteful line from the page.
Adrien glanced up first and saw her.
"Ah," he said softly. "Of course."
Lucian turned.
For a second, he looked like the version of himself she'd drawn a hundred times: shirt torn, chest heaving, eyes bright with something wild. A predator in a human suit, wounded and furious.
Then his gaze settled on her face.
Whatever he saw there—shock, horror, guilt—made his expression shift.
"Amara," he said.
Her name in his mouth made her knees feel weak.
Ms. Kwan moved toward her. "You shouldn't be here," she said gently. "He's—"
"Fine," Lucian cut in. "It's superficial."
"'Superficial' is generous," Adrien said dryly, hands still stained where he'd clearly been helping with field dressing before they got him upstairs. "It could have been worse."
"Could have been dead," Ms. Kwan muttered.
Amara couldn't get enough air.
"Who—what—" she stammered. "What happened?"
"A misunderstanding," Adrien said lightly. "Some people misunderstood the meaning of 'appointments only' and tried to make themselves at home in a restricted floor."
Lucian's glare said it had been a lot more than a misunderstanding.
"Security responded," Ms. Kwan said. "They won't try again."
The words they won't try again landed like a weight.
In Episode 124, she'd written:
They thought they could cut an alpha in his own tower. They would not try again.
Her stomach lurched.
Adrien followed her gaze to Lucian's side, then back to her.
Something like understanding flickered in his eyes.
"You're hurt," she said, which was the dumbest, most obvious sentence she could have chosen, but it was all that would come out.
"It looks worse than it is," Lucian said.
He moved his hand slightly.
The shirt pulled, revealing more of the wound.
A long, angry line of red.
Not gushing.
Not ragged.
Clean.
Exactly like the one she'd inked.
Her vision blurred.
Her ears rang.
"Bathroom," Ms. Kwan said briskly. "We need to clean it properly and change the dressing. Mr. Hale did the best he could with what we had."
"I've had worse in worse places," Lucian muttered.
Adrien rolled his eyes. "Yes, we're all very impressed with your battlefield résumé," he said. "Let Mei do her job."
Lucian took a step and wobbled, just a fraction.
It was a tiny sway.
Anyone else might not have noticed.
Amara did.
Her body moved before her mind did.
She darted forward, hand reaching out to steady him.
Her fingers met his arm, just above the elbow.
Heat.
Muscle tensing under skin.
The binding at her wrist flared, reacting to the contact.
He caught himself, straightened.
"Careful," she breathed.
It sounded absurd, telling a man like him to be careful.
He looked down at her hand on his arm, then back up at her face.
For a moment, the room fell away.
It was just the two of them and the phantom echo of a panel she'd drawn, where Rheon braced against a wall, hand pressed to his side, glare promising murder.
"This isn't your fault," he said quietly.
The words punched the air out of her lungs.
She hadn't said anything.
Not yet.
She hadn't confessed about the coffee.
She hadn't told him about the test.
She definitely hadn't told him about last night's ambush chapter.
"How do you know what I'm thinking?" she whispered.
"Because you always think it's your fault," he said. "If I trip on the stairs, you'll assume you sketched it. If the moon changes color, you'll assume you graded it that way. The bond doesn't work like that."
Adrien snorted softly. "We're not… entirely sure how the bond works right now," he said. "Let's not oversell our confidence."
Lucian shot him a look.
Amara's fingers tightened on his arm.
"I posted it," she blurted.
He frowned. "Posted what?"
"The ambush," she said. The words tumbled out, uncontrolled. "In the comic. Last night. I—I wrote a chapter. Alpha—I mean, Rheon—coming home late, getting jumped in his own building, cut on his side in the corridor. It was—" Her voice broke. "It was that. It's that."
She gestured shakily at his shirt.
Silence slammed into the room.
Adrien's expression went very still.
Ms. Kwan stiffened.
Lucian's eyes darkened.
"Amara," he said slowly. "Look at me."
She already was.
"I was angry," she said, the confession spilling out like blood. "After you left. After you and Adrien tried to… slow me down. Tell me how to dream. I wanted to hurt you without being able to hurt you, so I did it there. On the screen. I thought if I kept it in fiction, it would stay there. It always stayed there before. And now—"
Her throat closed.
Her wrist burned so hot it felt like it might crack.
"Show me," Lucian said.
"What?" she whispered.
"The chapter," he said. "Show me."
Her fingers fumbled for the tablet.
She'd left it on her desk in the studio.
She couldn't move.
Adrien stepped in, eyes sharp again, charm shutters open just enough to function.
"I'll get it," he said.
He disappeared down the hall, steps brisk.
Ms. Kwan hovered at the edge of the scene, hands full of medical supplies, clearly torn between "clean the wound" and "don't interrupt the magical meltdown."
Lucian swayed slightly again.
"Sit," Amara said, her voice abruptly stronger. "You need to sit down. You're bleeding on your own designer rug."
The attempt at humor came out brittle, but it was something.
He let her guide him gently to the nearest chair.
The white upholstery looked like it would cry at the first drop of red.
Ms. Kwan made a distressed sound and slid a folded towel under him just in time.
He sank down with a grimace.
Amara dropped to her knees in front of him without thinking, closer to his level, eyes locked on his face as if watching him would keep him from flickering out of existence.
The wound was right there.
Close.
The scent of iron hung faintly in the air.
Her mind supplied the panel overlay again: same posture, same tilt, same line.
"This isn't how it works," she said, more to herself than to him. "I don't control it. It's not a script. You're not my character."
"No," he agreed softly. "I'm not."
"But it keeps… matching," she whispered. "The coffee. The glass. Now this. I don't know if I'm predicting or pushing, and both options make me want to throw up."
His gaze softened, just a fraction.
"If you were pushing," he said quietly, "I wouldn't be upright enough to have this conversation."
"You don't know that," she argued.
"Yes," he said. "I do."
Adrien returned with her tablet, screen already awake, Episode 124 open to the central spread.
He handed it to her.
She swallowed and flipped it around so Lucian could see.
The panel glowed between them.
Rheon pinned to the wall, one hand braced, the other clamped over a long, diagonal wound on his side. Shirt torn. Shadows closing in.
Lucian's eyes tracked the image once.
Then they flicked down to his own shirt, to the matching slice.
He exhaled slowly.
"Well," Adrien said, voice too bright, "on the plus side, your composition is excellent."
"Adrien," Lucian said warningly.
"What?" he said. "We're all thinking it."
Amara wanted to scream.
Or cry.
Or both.
Instead she whispered, "I did this."
Lucian shook his head once. "You didn't send them," he said. "You didn't leak the route. You didn't put the knife in their hands."
"I might as well have," she said. "I may not know how, but—"
"But nothing," he cut in, sharper now. "Listen to me. The threats against me existed long before you started drawing. They will exist if you never touch a stylus again. The old ways don't need your episodes to hunt me."
"Then why does it keep lining up?" she asked, desperate. "Why does it keep… rhyming?"
He hesitated.
Adrien sighed, running a hand through his hair.
"Because you're tuned to the current now," Adrien said. "You're catching echoes before they hit. Sometimes you mirror them. Sometimes you… reinforce them. But you are not the source."
"The universe isn't a script someone else wrote," she said. "It's not supposed to be a feedback loop between my nightmares and your body."
"Welcome to the undercurrent," he said. "We're all improvising."
She looked back at Lucian.
"I was spiteful," she whispered. "I did it to hurt you. Even if it was 'just fiction,' I wanted you to bleed. That… has to matter."
He studied her, that unnervingly direct gaze pinning her in place.
"I won't pretend it doesn't," he said. "Intention matters. So does action. So does… connection."
Her eyes stung.
"So what now?" she asked. "You were right, I was warned, I didn't listen. Do I get the dampening? The ritual filter? Do you take my pen away? Cut the bond?"
"If I cut the bond, you'd die," he said bluntly.
She flinched.
Ms. Kwan made a soft, distressed noise. "Mr. Valtor," she chided. "Not now."
"When?" he asked. "After she crashes herself against every boundary we set until she shatters?"
He looked back at Amara.
"This isn't punishment," he said. "This is calibration. We have to learn how far the echoes go before they break you. Or me. Or both."
"I don't want to hurt you," she said, voice small.
"I know," he replied.
"I wanted to," she insisted. "Last night, I wanted you to feel trapped and blindsided and bleeding like I feel. I put it on the page. And the world… listened."
"The world has been waiting for an excuse to take a swing at me," he said. "You gave it a picture. That's all."
"That's not 'all,'" she whispered.
He reached out.
Slowly.
Carefully.
His blood-slick fingers brushed the back of her hand.
The binding at her wrist flared, but not in pain this time.
Connection.
Recognition.
"We will fix this," he said. "Or we will learn to live with it. But we will not let it dictate terms."
"We?" she echoed.
"You signed with me," he said. "You send the chapter into the world, I face the echoes. That was always the deal, even if we didn't say it out loud."
Her throat tightened.
"I don't know if I can keep drawing," she admitted. "Not like this. Not when every panel feels like a loaded gun."
"You can't stop," Adrien said quietly. "If you stop, the current will find another way out. Another conduit. Maybe one without your… restraint."
Lucian's eyes flashed gold for the briefest moment at that.
He squeezed her hand once, as much as he could without aggravating his side.
"You're angry with me," he said. "You have every right to be. You're scared of what you can do. So am I. But I would rather have your anger on paper than your fear in the dark."
She laughed weakly. "That's manipulative," she said.
"That's honest," he replied.
Ms. Kwan cleared her throat delicately. "Mr. Valtor," she said, "if you insist on having a metaphysical argument, at least let me clean you while you do it."
He grimaced. "Fine," he said.
She moved in with practiced efficiency, hands gentle but firm as she peeled the shredded shirt away and began to clean the wound.
Amara turned her head away after the first glimpse, not because the blood was too much—it wasn't, not compared to her panels—but because seeing it half-made her brain overlay the drawing again.
She stared at her tablet instead.
Episode 124 glowed up at her.
A spiteful crime scene she'd designed and the universe had apparently taken as a suggestion.
Her wrist throbbed.
She opened a new note file with her free hand, thumb flying clumsily.
ECHO EVENT #2 – AMBUSH
• Wrote/published Ep124 (Rheon ambushed in own building, side wound L→R) last night ~01:23
• Lucian attacked in restricted floor ~14:30 today → same wound, same angle
• No prior mention of specific injury/location in plans
• Bond reaction: extreme burn while drawing; low burn overnight; spike on seeing wound
• Intention: spite (wanted him hurt in-story after fight)
• Reality: ???
She stared at the last line.
Her eyes blurred.
She typed, almost without thinking:
• Responsibility: not zero.
Her wrist buzzed.
Not approving.
Not condemning.
Just… there.
She locked the note.
When she looked up again, Ms. Kwan was finishing the fresh bandage. Lucian looked pale under his tan, but steadier.
He caught her gaze.
"We're talking about the dampening again," he said quietly. "Soon. Without shouting."
She swallowed.
"Okay," she said hoarsely. "But this time, I get a vote. A real one. Not just 'sign here or die.'"
He nodded once. "You get a vote," he said.
Adrien raised a hand. "And I get veto power over any solution that involves setting the artist on fire," he said. "We need her."
Amara almost smiled.
Almost.
As she rose slowly from her knees, legs shaky, she realized something had shifted.
Not her guilt.
Not his wound.
Not the bond.
But the understanding between them.
She had drawn blood.
The world had followed.
Now they both knew the stakes.
For the first time since this began, she wasn't afraid just of what he might do if she crossed a line.
She was afraid of herself.
Of a blank canvas.
Of the way her anger could travel faster than knives.
That night, when she sat alone in the studio, cursor blinking on a new page, her hand hovered over the tablet for a long time.
"Ambush on paper," she whispered. "Never again."
The binding hummed, low and uncertain.
She didn't know if it believed her.
She wasn't sure she believed herself.
But she picked up the stylus anyway.
Because if she didn't write the next chapter, someone—or something—else might.
And she wasn't ready to hand her story over to anything that bled under a red moon.