Chapter 14 – Terms of Survival
1291 Words
“How do you think?” Lupa said. “I got into a disagreement with a biologically inaccurate nightmare. The nightmare won on style points.”
Selis’s mouth twitched. “And yet you’re the one who made it run.”
“It took my blood with it,” Lupa muttered. “Not exactly a clean victory.”
Selis moved closer, heels soundless on the linoleum. Up close, the faint shadows under her eyes betrayed a night spent arguing with people who thought they were important.
“I’ll keep this brief,” she said. “You’re on enough painkillers to sue me later if I overstep.”
“Comforting.”
Selis pulled a chair to the bedside, but didn’t sit. “You heard us last night.”
“Little thing called ears,” Lupa said. “Also, walls here are more metaphor than barrier.”
“Then I won’t insult you by pretending you’re not in the middle of the elders’ latest panic spiral.” Selis studied her for a beat. “They are going to create a new category for you. With or without your input.”
“A leash with better branding,” Lupa said.
“A framework with teeth pointed both ways,” Selis countered. “If we’re clever.”
Lupa narrowed her eyes. “You don’t usually say ‘we.’”
“Don’t get used to it.” Selis exhaled through her nose. “Look. Right now, you’re defined in three entirely incompatible ways: Riverside’s beta guard, Everwood’s rejected luna, and Northbridge’s walking liability. If you don’t write yourself into the new rules, they will write you in as a cautionary tale.”
“What does that even look like?” Lupa asked. “ ‘In case of double‑bonded wolf with attached monster, see Appendix D’?”
Selis didn’t smile this time. “It looks like emergency clauses that allow for your ‘neutralization’ if someone decides you’re more conduit than person. It looks like your freedom depending on who is in the room when you have your next episode.”
Ice slid down Lupa’s spine. “You drafting those, too?”
“I’m trying to make sure they never get past committee,” Selis said. “Which is easier if you are not just an abstract threat in their minds.”
“I’m very real to the thing that wears my blood,” Lupa said. “Does that count?”
“It does,” Selis said quietly. “Especially since that thing is the elder’s fault, not yours.”
Lupa frowned. “You don’t even like us.”
“I don’t like people who lie to themselves about the cost of their power,” Selis corrected. “Right now, that’s mostly your elders.”
She finally sat, crossing one leg over the other, tablet resting on her knee.
“So here’s my proposal,” she said. “We codify three things. One: no ritual or magical interference with your bonds without your explicit consent.”
“Explicit,” Lupa repeated. “Not ‘she was sedated and we assumed’?”
Selis’s mouth thinned. “Yes. Two: oversight for any decision about your status must include representatives from all three packs and at least one neutral healer. Not just political elders.”
“That’s going to make Caiden grind his teeth,” Lupa said.
“I’m counting on it,” Selis murmured. “Three: we formalize your role.”
Lupa blinked. “My what.”
“You are already de facto liaison between what the monster is and what it used to be,” Selis said. “Between packs. Between old bonds and whatever this new mess is. If we call you a ‘subject,’ they will treat you like one. If we call you a ‘watcher,’ or a ‘magical stability officer’—”
“Terrible title,” Lupa cut in.
“—they have to acknowledge that you are an actor, not an object,” Selis finished. “It’s harder to sacrifice someone whose job description includes ‘keeping the rest of us alive.’”
Lupa stared at the ceiling for a moment.
“You’re asking me to help you make me too politically expensive to kill,” she said.
“Yes,” Selis said, without flinching. “And to give others like you — because there will be others, after what was done to you and Iven — a path that isn’t a stone slab in a ritual circle.”
The name hit like a small, precise blow. “You believe that,” Lupa said. “That there’ll be more.”
Selis’s gaze didn’t waver. “I read the old cases. Every time they interfered with fated bonds, something frayed that didn’t quite mend. You’re just the first one we’ve had to look in the eye.”
Silence hummed between them. The monitor ticked steadily on.
“What’s the catch?” Lupa asked. “There’s always a catch.”
“The catch,” Selis said, “is that you can’t let them tuck you away as a tragic anomaly. You will have to testify. In council, in private sessions, maybe one day in human courts. You will have to say ‘no’ when they ask for access they’re not entitled to. You will have to be inconvenient, loudly and often.”
Lupa huffed a breath that was almost a laugh. “Being inconvenient is my brand.”
“I noticed.” For the first time, Selis’s smile reached her eyes. “You’re good at seeing the shape of things beneath the narrative. Use that. On paper as well as in the field.”
Lupa looked at her bandaged side, then back at the lawyer.
“And if,” she said slowly, “it gets worse with Iven? If that thing drags me deeper? If I stop being sure where it ends and I start?”
“Then we make sure the rules we write recognize you as two beings sharing one wound,” Selis said. “Not one weapon to be dropped from a great height.”
Lupa swallowed. “You talk like you think the Moon takes notes.”
“I talk like I know old men do,” Selis said. “And I plan to hand them a script they can’t easily improvise around.”
The door clicked; Alder’s scent preceded him by a heartbeat. Selis rose smoothly.
“Think about it,” she said. “When you’re less full of hospital drugs and monster teeth.”
She paused at the foot of the bed. “And, Lupa?”
“Yeah?”
“If you decide you want out of all their boxes entirely one day… don’t sign anything without calling me first.”
Lupa blinked. “You giving me your number?”
“I’m giving myself a better client than the people currently paying me,” Selis said. “Try not to die before we renegotiate the world, hm?”
When she left, Alder slipped back in, eyes immediately checking her face, then her bandage, then the door Selis had just used.
“Well?” he asked.
“She wants to weaponize my personality,” Lupa said. “Politically.”
He blinked. “That sounds… accurate.”
She let her head fall back against the pillow.
“Apparently,” she said, “if I’m going to be the edge of their new rules, I might as well make sure I’m the one holding it.”
Outside, beyond the concrete and glass, the forest breathed. Something on its edge lifted its head, feeling the threads tug and reweave.
For the first time since the alley, the echo that brushed her mind didn’t feel like accusation.
It felt like a question.
- Writer
