I explain the mechanics: legal wording paired to ritual. Two keys, two signatures. My counsel presents clauses that preserve my CEO authority, specify verifiable triggers, and create legal recourse for breaches. Shifter elders—Lucien’s housecar and two other recognized chambers—will submit to an oath under their law that binds them under pain of court sanction.
“How do you bind an ancient court to corporate law?” the fund manager scoffs. “How do you enforce a blood oath?”
Because I anticipated the question, I answer before doubt grows. “We do both. The corporate charter createscivic penalties under regulatory oversight. The blood-covenant creates enforceable rites in their courts. Cross-penalty clauses allow either side to trigger neutral arbitration. Breach on either side triggers automatic escrow and a forensic freeze—preventing unilateral transfer of assets.”
Trust is shy; it wants small, specific promises.
A representative from the shifter court rises. Her eyes hold that pale, otherworld light. She signs the first ritual acknowledgment—fingertips tracing a sigil in a shallow bowl of ink. Ceremonial, but not theater.
Warmth and hollow at once. The elders vow non-interference in an ancestral cadence, then again in English for the record. The judge allows a certified translation. Lawyers cross pens like swords.
My heart is a metronome: each tick an argument I worked out at three a.m., each tick a risk I accepted.
I feel the drive under the folder, ridiculous and heavy. I want Lucien beside me. I want him to stand and take some of this heat, to press a wolf-shoulder against me and remind me I’m not alone.
Ana plays a clip: PROOF.MKV’s key frame, now palimpsested with our annotations. She points out artifacts—the audio stitch that could only be made with a mixing board sold to River House contractors, the timestamp overlapping a maintenance window only the contractor knew about.
The room shifts. The fund manager turns pale. The regulator’s pen scrapes faster. My board liaison leans forward, light of regained control in his eyes.
They call for a vote.
It’s ugly and clinical and exactly what I asked for. I’ve been courting swing votes like rabbits to a trap: nervous institutions promised more transparency. The tally is both linear and political. Every second feels like a clause: tight and enforceable.
“Move to accept the mirrored covenant and place the company under the joint oversight framework,” someone says.
I don’t need to speak. I already signed the public charter, filed it with the registrar, sent copies to the press pool. Cameras catch my face: composed, strategic, not yet broken.
They vote. The count rings like a bell—thin, then solid. The covenant passes. Emergency oversight goes into escrow. Auditors breathe. My counsel smiles a small, controlled smile.
Relief blooms, but the mate-bond tugs with a new current. Lucien’s scent—cedar, iron, blood—flares with memories that are not mine alone. At the back of the room, an elder steps forward carrying a leather-bound scroll like a relic. I did not expect a gift.
“In light of the covenant’s passage, the Court offers context,” she says, solemn and careful, as though handling something half-asleep.
She unrolls the scroll. The ink is old; the paper brittle. The script moves between language and rune, law braided with blood memory. Ana leans in for translation. The courts have their own translator for the record.
I step forward without meaning to. The cedar in my nose sharpens to ocean salt. Images crash through the bond: a child at a cliff’s edge, a crown passed like river-stone, heirs named in a ledger of bone.
The elder reads: “A covenant shared between house and sovereign will bind not only the pair but the line that follows.”
My chest tightens. The word line drops into my hands with cold weight.
“She continues,” the translator says. “Heirs borne of such a union shall carry rights of succession and burdens of blood. The line will be recognized or contested at the discretion of the court.”
The room tilts. Murmurs rise. Ana freezes with a pen mid-air. The fund manager’s throat works.
The bond recoils, then presses like a tide testing cliffs. Everything I fought for—autonomy, power, the ability to sign without giving my life away—is backlit by a future I never asked for.
My first thought is corporate: the clause could be weaponized to dilute my control through succession law, to give heirs rights in corporate and court structures—untested, dangerous, ancient. My second thought is private: if a prophecy names heirs as legal actors, the covenant binds not only my present but any children to the politics I’m trying to shield them from.
I had drafted protections, negotiated triggers, refused emergency vetoes. I believed legal wording could fence off destiny.
The elder rolls the scroll as if to tuck it away. “This has always been the archive,” she says. “It was recovered with other materials and kept for context.”
Recorders capture it all. Cameras frame my face. The bond thrums against my ribs like a second heart.
My phone buzzes against the contract folder. An anonymous message: We have met.
I close my hand around the drive. It is warm from my palm.
