FORTY-NINE PERCENT

(Glory's POV) The truck was late again. "Dara," Glory called across the open office floor, not looking up from her laptop, "where is the Crestfield run?" Dara spun in her chair. "The driver says twenty minutes out. Something about the border checkpoint." "The checkpoint cleared at six this morning. Call him again." Dara was already reaching for the phone. That was how Glory ran things. Not by shouting. Not by threatening. By knowing the checkpoint cleared at six, because she had been awake at five-thirty checking it herself, the same way she had been awake before the sun every morning for six years. Havilah Supply Co. had started with a secondhand truck that smelled like old engine oil and a business plan written on the back pages of a spiral notebook. It now moved goods across three major pack territories. Forty-seven employees. Delivery contracts with some of the biggest pack suppliers in the region. A profit margin that made Alpha-owned companies twice their size look sloppy. Glory built all of it. Her name sat on forty-nine percent of it. She never pressed that number too hard. There were reasons Jude's name had gone on the license first, real reasons, and she understood the pack world well enough to know that an Omega's signature alone would not have opened the first door. So she had let him stand in front while she did the work behind him, and told herself the split was temporary, and then six years passed and she stopped calling it temporary and started calling it just how things are. Her wolf did not like it. Her wolf had never liked it. But her wolf also wanted things Glory refused to think about out loud, like the way Jude's presence had always felt like something more than a business partnership, like warmth she hadn't asked for and couldn't name properly. She had locked that away a long time ago. The front door of the office opened, and a courier stepped in, holding a sealed envelope like it was nothing important. "Package for Glory Adaeze Mensah?" "That's me." She crossed the room, signed the slip, and carried it back to her desk. The envelope was heavy. Legal-weight paper inside, the kind law firms used when they wanted to seem serious. She opened it. The top page read: MERGER PROPOSAL, HAVILAH SUPPLY CO. AND THADDEUS HOLDINGS. She turned to the next page. Then the next. On page four, under the heading "Stakeholder Classification," her name appeared in clean black print. Not co-founder; not an executive officer; not director of operations. Minor stakeholder. Her thumb pressed flat against the word. She read it again. Then she read it a third time, not because she was confused, but because her brain kept refusing to file it correctly. She flipped to the attachment behind the main pages. It was a legal notice, shorter than she expected, titled: MATE BOND DISSOLUTION, VOLUNTARY PROVISION 7(c), PACK CORPORATE AND FAMILY CODE. The date on it was four months ago. The signature at the bottom was Jude's. Glory sat very still. Her wolf went quiet inside her, the way an animal goes completely still the moment before it decides what to do next. Not frightened. Not sad. Just... still. Calculating. "Dara," she said, and her voice came out flat and even, "cancel my ten o'clock." Dara looked up. "Should I reschedule it?" "Do you have ear problems? I said you should cancel." Glory was already reaching for her phone. "Get me Lawyer Pend…immediately" She did not cry. She did not slam anything down. She sat with the papers in front of her and waited for the call to connect, and while she waited, she read the dissolution notice one more time from beginning to end, every word, every clause, every footnote. When Lawyer Penda picked up, Glory spoke first. "Tell me everything you know about Provision 7(c). The mate bond rejection clause. Right now, all of it." A short pause. "Glory, that provision is extremely rare. Almost nobody uses it because it requires the bond to be dormant. Both parties have to have gone without verbal acknowledgement for..." "How long?" "Twelve months minimum." Glory closed her eyes for two seconds. Then she opened them. "And the other party. The one who didn't sign. Do they get notified?" Another pause, longer this time. "Not necessarily. If the bond was classified as dormant, the rejecting party can process it without direct notification, as long as they file through a licensed pack officer and submit a declaration that verbal acknowledgment never occurred between..." "So someone can reject your mate bond," Glory said slowly, "without ever saying a single word to your face." The silence on the other end of the line said everything. "Penda." Glory pulled the merger papers toward her with one hand. "The same person who just did that to me is also currently in a merger negotiation with a man named Thaddeus. That meeting starts in two hours. I need you to tell me what rights I have as a co-founder under pack corporate law, and I need you to tell me fast." "Glory, if your name is on those documents as a minor stakeholder, they may try to proceed without you..." "I know." She stood up and reached for her coat. "That is exactly why I am not staying home." She was out the door before Dara could ask where she was going. And the whole drive there, her wolf was no longer still. Her wolf was ready. She had never been inside the Thaddeus Holdings building before, but she had pictured it the way you picture anything that belongs to someone powerful and distant. Cold floors. Too much glass. People who look at you like you are lost. She was not wrong about any of it. The receptionist at the front desk looked up with a polished smile that shifted slightly when Glory said, "I'm here for the Havilah merger meeting." "I don't have you on the guest list, ma'am." "I know," Glory said pleasantly. "Which floor?" The woman blinked. "I can't just..." "My name is on the merger documents." Glory placed her copy of the papers on the counter, open to page four. "I am a stakeholder. The law requires my presence if I request it. You can verify that with your legal team, or you can just tell me which floor, and we can save everyone fifteen minutes." The woman's smile tightened. She picked up the phone. And two minutes later, Glory was in the elevator, going up. The doors opened onto a hallway that smelled like expensive wood polish and old money. Through the glass panels of the boardroom ahead, she could already see the people inside, suits around a long table, Jude's broad shoulders at the near end. She pushed the door open. Every head in the room turned. Jude's face went the color of old ash. At the far end of the table, a man sat very still and did not react at all. He was taller than she expected even sitting down. Dark suit. No expression. Eyes that moved to her face and stayed there. Thaddeus. "This meeting is in progress," said a man in a grey suit beside Jude, already half-standing. "You were not invited to..." "Page four," Glory said. She walked to the nearest empty chair, set her copy of the merger papers on the table, and sat down. "Under 'Stakeholder Classification.' My name is there. Which means I am a party to this negotiation." She looked at the grey suit man. "Please sit down." He looked at Thaddeus. Thaddeus had not stopped looking at Glory. His jaw moved once, barely. Then he said, "Let her speak." And the room went very, very quiet. Glory opened her copy of the documents to page four, pressed her finger beneath her name, and looked directly at Thaddeus. "Minor stakeholder," she said. "That is what your team wrote. I would like to know who gave them that information.”