It's the truth, and I'd rather spit it than swallow. When he reaches for me, his fingers rest along the line of my jaw in a way that says he knows both tenderness and command. We both feel the bond pulse when his skin touches mine—warmer, deeper. It intrudes and angers me because it bypasses the polite gatekeeping I keep in corporate life. I don't consent to feelings any more than I consent to a hostile takeover. And yet I let the smallest intimacies in because they steady me.
He kisses me. It is not entertainment. It is assessment, claim, balm. His mouth is blunt and startling. My hands find his shoulders because they are anchors. The room falls away. The boardroom, the smashed glass, the table witness—everything recedes to a single constant: him.
When it grows more intimate it is neither sloppy nor frantic. There is a rhythm—the give and take of two people who have lived alone long enough to have hardened corners. He is careful when I am careful. He is fierce when I lean into his fierceness. I let him because, right now, letting him in is strategy. The bond promises nothing but possibility; the island promises a delay.
Later, after the night goes brittle and a storm drums on the panes, he speaks of the ritual.
"There are ways to make the bond recognized by my courts," he says, slicing the silence. "A formal acknowledgement. It gives you protections within shifter law. It binds our houses with obligations they will respect. It prevents rivals from exploiting this…link."
"No public witness," I say immediately. "No blooded acknowledgement. Not unless I control the terms, Lucien."
He nods. "There are two ways. A witnessed ritual—legal weight but traceable; or a private blood-ink acknowledgement within our house that grants protections through court channels but leaves minimal legal footprint outside the courts. Both have costs."
"Traceable is trackable," I say. "Trackable is weaponizable. I won't be something someone can point to and say, 'There: that's how to take her.'"
"Then we draft protections that mirror your corporate charters," he says. "Non-interference clauses penned by your counsel with teeth. My house will accept them under oath. The ritual just codifies what's already happening."
"Because ritual makes it real?" I ask. "Because I'm supposed to be honored by wolves and crowns?"
His lips curve. "It makes a promise that courts—my courts—will enforce. Think of it as a guarantee beyond paper when paper means nothing in a blooded war."
I listen. I think of my identity-mapping platform, of servers and access points that can be bridges or battering rams. I think of the sniper at my empty chair. I think of the photograph of me—smiling, compromised—that ran across feeds yesterday. The part of me that built systems from scarcity knows one immutable truth: you hedge exposures. You create redundancy. You choose partners whose liabilities are measured.
"I'll hear options," I say. "But the ceremony, the acknowledgement—only with full control. My counsel drafts the terms. My signatures first."
He inclines his head. The bond gives a flash—his father's hand on a ledger, signatures, oaths echoing under banners. It tastes like history.
We negotiate like we do everything: with careful fires. There is tenderness—his hands are practiced at tenderness—and the bond rewards reciprocity. There is friction, too; every soft touch reminds me of the ledger I'm writing in my head: his protection in exchange for pieces of my freedom. I will not surrender that currency lightly.
We sleep in different rooms. He leaves a seal at my threshold. I wake with a bruise of exhaustion and the bond humming like a small engine.
My phone is a brick against my palm. The island is meant to be isolated; I haven't let my company call the island into anything public. I haven't let cameras capture where I am. And yet the screen glares with a single notification: video.
It opens. My stomach drops before the first frame finishes buffering.
It's grainy but edited by someone who knows their craft. The footage shows a staged meeting, a silhouette, a hand pressing something into another's palm—a wax seal, a wolf, a crown. A clipped, legal-sounding voice frames it: "Collusion." Then it cuts to Lucien, clear as daylight, standing over the assailant as he fell. "Assassination." Then the footage splices to look like Lucien overseeing a transfer of funds from my company to an offshore account tied to a foreign noble house.
The file is titled: Proof.
My heart hammers. The island was supposed to be a buffer, a diplomatic pause. This video aims at one thing: trigger an emergency regulatory response in the city—freeze assets,appoint receivers, put my company into a state where I can't move without someone else's permission.
The bond burns with fury. Lucien's name sits on my tongue like a warning and a plea.
I scroll down. Comments already clamber for pitchforks. The video's source tag is routed through layers. But in the bottom corner someone has sewn a watermark—a tiny rune identical to the red-lined annex I'd found in our portfolio, half legal text, half ritual ink.
Someone knows both worlds.
My thumb trembles over the call button.
When the island phone answers, the message is little more than static and a voice that had already haunted the edges of my life.
"We have met," it says.
The screen blacks out.
5
VIVIAN PARK
