By the time the judge came back from her third "short recess," afternoon had folded into a gray, early-evening kind of light. The high windows near the ceiling had gone from washed-out blue to the dull color of dishwater. The fluorescent tubes buzzed louder, like they were getting tired of performing.
"Apologies," the judge said, settling in. "We had a minor technical issue with the building systems. We'll continue for another hour and then adjourn. I'm reserving ruling on the motion. Parties will be notified when I'm ready to issue a decision."
Another hour. The words landed like weights.
Amara sat because everyone sat. Her head felt light, her limbs heavy. The adrenaline spikes from the testimony and Lucian's little ring performance had crashed into a wall of exhaustion that coffee couldn't fix.
The rest blurred.
Patel argued about balance of harms again, this time with case names she couldn't pronounce. Adrien responded with more citations, his voice smooth even when he said things that made her stomach knot. The judge asked tight, pointed questions that made both sides squirm.
At some point, the lights flickered.
Just once at first—a quick, sharp flicker that made the room inhale. Monitors blinked. The screen on the wall hiccuped. A collective murmur rose, then died when the judge snapped, "Keep going."
They kept going.
Then, ten minutes later, the whole room shuddered.
The overhead lights cut out all at once. For one beat, everything was black—ink-black, total, the kind of dark that made your body want to flatten itself instinctively.
Then emergency strips along the walls blinked on, glowing a dim, sickly yellow-orange. The EXIT signs burned red. The judge's bench, counsel tables, and witness stand were bathed in strange, uneven light, shadows stretching long.
"Everyone remain calm," the bailiff barked. Somewhere, a child in the hallway began crying. An alarm whined briefly, then cut off.
The judge looked up at the ceiling, jaw tight. "We're going to recess until maintenance deals with this," she said. "We are adjourned for today." Bang. One hard rap of the gavel.
The sound echoed weirdly in the altered acoustics.
People surged to their feet. Voices rose, a low tide turning into a choppy sea. Someone's phone flashlight snapped on before a clerk hurriedly hissed, "No recording devices, even now, thank you."
"Let's get you out of here," Patel said, already gathering his papers. "Same drill as before. No comments outside. Go straight home. I'll call you tonight once I've had time to… think."
"I'm not sure thinking is legal in this building anymore," she muttered, but she stuffed Leah's coat into her bag and stood.
Her head throbbed.
The emergency lights made everyone look slightly haunted—sallow, overdefined, like characters inked with too many cross-hatched shadows. Lucian and his team were silhouettes at the other table, faces only partially illuminated. He said something to Adrien; the lawyers nodded with the practiced efficiency of people whose evenings had been ruined before.
Amara's bladder chose that moment to send a not-so-polite reminder that she was, in fact, human.
"I need the restroom," she told Patel.
He checked his watch, the dim light turning the face amber. "Fine," he said. "I'll meet you by the front doors in ten. Don't talk to reporters. Don't talk to anyone with a pen that looks too enthusiastic."
"Got it," she said. "Avoid pens with teeth."
"And wolves," he added, almost smiling.
She almost laughed. Almost.
The courtroom doors opened on a hallway washed in the same emergency glow. The usual harsh white fluorescents were dead; in their place, strips of low, warmish light ran along the baseboards and above the doorways, making the corridor look deeper, longer. The hum of the building had changed pitch. Quieter, but denser.
Most people were heading toward the central staircase, a tide of suits and nervous chatter. A clerk directed them with hand gestures and a weary, "This way, folks, power's just out on this floor for now."
Amara slipped in the opposite direction, toward the restroom sign.
The farther she went from the crowd, the thinner the voices became, until the only sounds left were the soft scuff of her flats on the floor and the distant, muffled thump of doors opening and closing.
The emergency lights didn't cover this stretch as generously. Here, the glow pooled in uneven patches, leaving pockets of shadow between them. The air felt… thicker. Not hotter exactly, just heavier, like walking into a room where someone had been crying and the particles hadn't settled yet.
She exhaled, trying to shake off the feeling crawling up her spine. "You're fine," she told herself under her breath. "You've survived worse. You've survived middle school."
The corridor turned a corner.
She took it, hand skimming the wall for balance.
That was when she heard it.
At first, she thought it was a pipe—old building guts groaning under stress. A low, rough sound, half-strangled, coming from somewhere ahead. But then it came again, and this time it sounded less like metal and more like a person.
Like someone trying to breathe through a throat that had decided to close.
Her body stopped before her brain finished processing. The hairs on her arms rose.
The sound was coming from around the next bend. Ragged, forced inhales followed by short, harsh exhales. Too uneven to be someone crying. Too raw to be someone arguing.
Her mouth went dry.
Maybe someone's having a panic attack, she thought. That happens. Court is hell. You know this. Go offer to get help. Be a decent human.
Her feet didn't move.
Another sound layered itself under the rough breathing—the faint scrape of something hitting the wall. Palm? Shoulder? Head?
She forced herself to inhale, then take a step. Then another.
The next corner was sharper, tucked into the back hallway someone had once designed for utility, not aesthetics. No windows here, just the emergency strips and a fire extinguisher cabinet.
She rounded the corner.
At first, all she saw was shadow.
The emergency light in this stretch had either failed or was set further down; the hallway ahead was darker, the glow from the previous section behind her throwing her own shadow long on the floor.
Two, three heartbeats passed.
Her eyes adjusted.
There, about halfway down the corridor, someone stood braced against the wall. One hand planted flat against the painted cinderblock, the other clenched at his side. His shoulders heaved with each breath, suit jacket pulled taut over the strain. His head was bowed, chin tucked toward his chest.
Lucian Valtor.
Even half-silhouetted, even from behind, she knew.
It wasn't just the suit or the height. It was the way his body held tension—contained, controlled, like a man who had spent his entire life making sure nothing showed unless he allowed it.
Except right now, things were showing.
The muscles in his neck stood out in cords. His fingers splayed against the wall like claws digging for purchase. His breathing wasn't just rough—it was wrong. Too loud in the quiet. Too… animal in its struggle, as if his chest was no longer sure how to move air the way it used to.
"Mr. Valtor?" The words left her mouth before she could stop them.
He stiffened.
For a second, everything froze. The air, the emergency hum, her own heart.
Then he half-turned his head, just enough that she could see his profile in the thin wash of light: the hard line of his jaw, the hollow of his cheek, the way his mouth was pulled back as if he were holding back a groan—or a snarl.
"Stay back," he rasped.
His voice was wrong too.
Deeper, rougher, as if someone had dragged it over gravel. The vowels were distorted, the consonants chewed. It scraped over her skin in a way normal human voices didn't.
Amara's body obeyed before her brain could disagree. Her steps faltered. She stopped dead, maybe six meters away.
"Are you—" She cleared her throat. "Are you okay?"
He laughed, a short, broken sound that never made it to humor. It sounded clipped midway, like something else had tried to come out and he'd cut it off.
The hand braced on the wall curled into a fist. His shoulders hunched.
"Go," he managed. The word dragged. "Now."
Her feet didn't move. She should go. Obviously. This was her enemy, not her problem. If a billionaire wanted to have a dramatic fainting spell in a dark hallway, he could do it with his team, not with her.
Except there was no team here.
No Adrien. No Ms. Kwan. No Douglass. No bailiff.
Just her, him, and the strange, thrumming drop in the air pressure that made the whole corridor feel like it was holding its breath.
The emergency lights flickered.
Once.
Twice.
On the third flicker, his head snapped up fully.
His face was turned toward her now, no longer half-hidden.
His eyes met hers.
They were not gray.
They burned.
Gold, like molten metal poured into the space where his pupils should be. The irises were a ring of light, too bright for the dim corridor, catching and reflecting the minimal glow as if they generated their own.
For a heartbeat, it was just color.
Then she realized his pupils were wrong too—elongated, narrowing, reacting not to light but to something else. Something inside.
Amara's spine tried to climb out of her body.
Every panel she'd ever drawn where her Alpha's eyes shifted under moonlight flashed in her brain, overlaying this moment. Except this wasn't her pen. This wasn't her stylus.
This was bone and blood and something more.
"You need to leave," he said.
Only it wasn't really "leave." The word warped around his teeth, coming out more like lee-eaave, the middle syllable dragged as if his tongue had to negotiate unfamiliar terrain.
His lips pulled back further.
His teeth were changing.
Not dramatically. Not movie-style, with fangs erupting in a shower of blood. This was subtler, more horrifying in its restraint.
His canines were longer. Sharper. They pressed against his lower lip as he spoke, a fraction too big for the confines of a purely human mouth. The other teeth around them seemed to be shifting too, minute changes in shape and spacing that her artist's eye caught even through terror.
She realized she was staring at his mouth when a low, guttural sound rolled out of his chest.
A growl.
Not imagined this time. Not distant through walls.
Right here, from him.
It reverberated through the narrow hallway, vibrating in her sternum. It wasn't loud, but it was layered—bass notes under the simple exhale, like more than one voice trying to occupy the same throat.
Her legs locked.
She should run. Every reasonable nerve screamed it. Turn, go, tell someone, pretend you didn't see.
But the sight of him—Lucian Valtor, immaculate, controlled, terrifying in boardrooms—braced against institutional paint like a man about to break, shaking with effort, eyes gone astronomical—rooted her.
His veins bulged at his temples and along his neck, dark lines standing out under his skin. His jaw clenched so hard she could hear faint creaks—whether from teeth or the bones around them, she didn't want to guess.
He sucked in a breath through his teeth. It came out half-snarl, half-gasp. His hand left the wall, hovering midair as if he wanted to reach for something and didn't trust it.
"Please," he ground out. The word came from somewhere low and real. A crack in the warped tone. "Stay. Back."
It was the "please" that hit her hardest.
Not a command. Not an order.
A warning. Teetering at the edge of begging.
Her throat felt tight. "You're… you're changing," she whispered.
The corner of his mouth twitched, but it wasn't a smile. "Brilliant… observation," he rasped, sarcasm shredded by whatever was happening to his larynx.
Another wave rolled through him, head to toe. She saw it—like a too-strong tremor rattling through his muscles, rippling under his suit. His shoulders broadened a fraction in a way that had nothing to do with posture. The fabric around his biceps strained, seams whispering protest. The hand that had been clenched at his side flexed, fingers curling inward like claws fighting to manifest.
He slammed that hand against the wall instead.
The impact thudded through the corridor. The institutional paint didn't crack, but his palm left a faint, too-wide smudge, fingers splayed wider than they had any right to be.
His head dropped forward again, forehead pressing briefly against the cool surface.
Tendons stood out along the back of his neck. The collar of his shirt looked too tight now, the buttons strained.
He exhaled, a sound halfway between a sigh and a snarl.
Amara's heart hammered against her ribs. She couldn't tell if the roaring in her ears was her pulse or the building's wiring.
She took half a step backward, the rational part of her finally winning a tiny skirmish.
His head snapped up at the motion.
Those gold eyes locked onto her again, pupils narrowing into slits.
Something deep in her animal brain gibbered.
Humans weren't supposed to be looked at like that by anything that could speak their language.
"Don't run," he snarled.
The words crashed into her, instinct clashing with command.
"Why?" she whispered, because apparently her mouth and survival instinct were on different committees. "What happens if I—"
"Because it makes… it worse," he bit out. His chest heaved. "Because you smell like fear already and if you run—"
He cut himself off, jaw snapping shut with an audible click. His nostrils flared, as if he'd only just realized he'd said too much.
Her stomach dropped.
You smell like fear.
Her.
He could smell—
Nope. No. Too much. File that under "horrifying details for later."
Right now, she had a werewolf CEO halfway between man and something else, in a dark hallway, during a power outage, telling her not to move.
She swallowed. "Is this… because of the moon?"
It was a stupid question. Basic. Like asking someone standing ankle-deep in water if they were wet.
Still, his eyes flicked—just for a fraction, toward the ceiling, as if he could see through the concrete to the sky. The way animals sometimes still their heads when a storm rolls in.
"Full… enough," he managed.
A different sound slipped out of him then—a low, wounded noise buried under the growl. Like he was losing an argument with his own bones.
Some part of her that wasn't cowering took notes.
This wasn't an elegant transformation. Not a cinematic, I-am-monster-hear-me-claim-the-night sequence. It was messy. Unwanted. A breakdown of control in real time.
He wasn't savoring it.
He was fighting it.
The building hummed again. The emergency lights above her flickered, then steadied. Far off, someone laughed too loudly, the sound carried weirdly by the acoustics.
To anyone else, this was just a creepy partially lit hallway.
To her, it was the panel she hadn't realized she'd been writing toward.
Her throat hurt. "Do they know?" she asked, the words slipping out before she could stop them. "Your lawyers. Your… people."
His teeth flashed—not in a wolf's grin, not in a human smile. Something between.
"They know enough… to bill overtime," he grated. "Not this."
Another tremor rolled through him. His hand left a smear of sweat—or something hotter—on the wall as he dragged it down, nails scraping faintly.
He looked… younger like this, in a strange way. Or older. Stripped of the careful composure that put him at a permanent distance from everyone else. For once, she wasn't looking at an untouchable billionaire or her own fictional Alpha.
She was looking at a man whose body belonged to something he didn't want to unleash in a courthouse.
Her fear shifted, not lessening but complicating. Terror and… something adjacent. Curiosity. Horror. Recognition, in some twisted, unwelcome corner.
"You drew this," a thought whispered in the back of her mind. "Months ago. You drew him losing control in a corridor, begging someone to stay back. You liked the tension then. You called it good drama."
It didn't feel like good drama now.
It felt like standing in front of the edge of a cliff you'd only ever sketched from memory.
"Lucian," she said, surprising herself by using his first name. It tasted unfamiliar without "Mr." or "Valtor" in front of it. "Tell me what to do."
His gaze snapped to hers so suddenly her chest clenched. Gold flared, bright enough she almost expected it to cast light on the walls.
"Stay there," he said. No decorative politeness this time. Just raw command, scraping out of his warped throat. "Don't scream. Don't move. Don't—"
His breath hitched.
"—run."
Another shudder took him. He gripped the wall with both hands now, body bowing slightly, like a wire pulled too taut.
For a heartbeat, she thought he might actually change right in front of her—bones cracking, skin rippling, the neat lines of his suit tearing.
But he held.
By inches, by sheer, terrifying will, he held.
The growl in his chest roared up, then choked down again. Sweat beaded at his temples, glistening in the emergency light. His jaw worked, muscles jumping as he clenched against something only he could feel.
The building's systems sighed.
Somewhere, a generator kicked in with a soft, distant thrum. The overhead fluorescents pinged back to life one bank at a time, bright white flooding the main corridors. Up here, where she stood, the emergency lights flickered once more, then changed—shifting from sickly orange to their normal harsh white.
The world snapped back into mundane shape.
Lucian's eyes squeezed shut at the change. When he opened them again, the gold had dulled.
Not gone.
But banked. Like a fire shoved behind glass.
His breathing was still rough, but less ragged. The veins in his neck receded a fraction. His teeth, when he spoke, were closer to human again, though his canines still looked a shade too sharp.
"As you were," he said hoarsely.
The phrase was wrong here. It belonged in a boardroom. A meeting. A staff memo.
Not in a deserted corridor where he'd just nearly shredded his own skin.
He pushed away from the wall, straightening slowly, as if testing each joint. For a second, he swayed. It was almost imperceptible, but she saw it. The way his hand hovered between bracing himself again or pretending it hadn't happened.
Then the familiar mask dropped back into place.
Not entirely. The edges were cracked. But enough.
If someone rounded the other corner now, they'd see Lucian Valtor standing in an underlit hallway, tie slightly askew, breathing a little hard. That was all.
No golden eyes. No almost-fangs. No vibration of something wild barely leashed.
He looked at her.
Their gazes met.
Neither of them pretended nothing had happened.
"Forget this," he said quietly.
The words fell between them like a stone.
She swallowed. "That's not how my brain works," she said. "It draws things. It… replays."
His mouth tightened. "Then draw something else," he said. "Draw me however you like on your… pages. But not this."
A siren whooped faintly down the hall, signaling systems reset. Somewhere, a voice announced over a crackling intercom that the power issue had been resolved and proceedings could continue as scheduled tomorrow.
Amara's phone buzzed in her pocket again.
Patel:Where are you? Lights back. Front doors in 2.
Lucian's head tilted slightly, as if he could hear the vibration from where he stood.
"We are not finished with our… dispute," he said. The pause around "dispute" was loaded. "Legally or otherwise."
"I figured," she said, her voice steadier than she felt.
"But whatever… story you think you're in, Ms. Reyes," he went on, eyes holding hers, "I suggest you start writing a different one."
His gaze dropped, just for a heartbeat, to her hands. Ink stains on her fingers. Then back up.
"Before this one bites you," he added.
The gold in his eyes flickered again, like a warning.
Then he turned and walked away down the corridor, steps measured, shoulders squared. By the time he reached the end and turned the corner, he looked like any other powerful man leaving a long, annoying day in court.
Amara stood where he'd told her to, knees stiff, breath shallow.
Her palms were slick.
The wall where he'd braced himself bore faint marks—heat-smeared prints, a slight roughness where his fingers had dug in. If she reached out, she could still feel the warmth radiating from that spot.
She didn't.
For a long moment, she just listened.
The building's hum had shifted back to normal. Footsteps echoed from the main stairwell. Someone laughed, tinny and distant. A toilet flushed in the restroom further down.
All the familiar, human sounds of a courthouse closing for the day.
And underneath it, very faint now, the ghost of that growl in her chest.
She finally forced her feet to move.
On the way back toward Courtroom 6B, she walked like a person who had seen something she knew she wouldn't be able to explain to anyone without getting labeled unstable.
She'd gone into this building thinking her biggest problem was a lawsuit that could crush her financially and professionally.
Now, she had another one:
Her villain wasn't just based on a man she'd accidentally plagiarized.
He was based on something real.
And whatever Lucian Valtor was fighting inside himself, it had just slipped its leash enough to show her its teeth.
"Great," she whispered to herself, pressing a hand flat against her own racing heart. "Just what I needed. Legal horror and supernatural body horror. Ten out of ten. No notes."
Her laugh sounded thin, but it was something.
As she stepped back into the brighter main corridor, a reporter's camera turned, trying to catch her face. She angled away, Leah's coat thrown over her arm like a shield.
None of them had seen what had just happened.
Her readers, if they ever heard even a fragment of it, would call it karma. Plot twist. Foreshadowing.
Amara knew better.
It wasn't a twist.
It was a line.
And whether she liked it or not, she'd just stepped over it.