For a long moment, all Amara can hear is her own heartbeat.
It's loud enough to drown out the distant hum of the estate, the muffled music from somewhere downstairs, even the quiet tick of the clock by the door. The studio feels smaller with Lucian's arm braced beside her, his shadow folding over her like a second night.
"Tell me what you've done, Amara."
His voice is low, even. That's worse than yelling. Yelling would mean he's lost control.
She swallows. Her mouth tastes like metal and coffee and fear.
There's a version of this moment where she lies.
She can see it so easily: panels flipping in her mind. In one, she laughs, plays it off as paranoia, convinces him he's imagining things. In another, she tells a half-truth, admits to one tiny change and hides the rest. In a third, she shrugs, walks away, lets the space between them fill with unspoken suspicion until it rots everything.
She could draw any of those.
She could sketch herself smiling, shrugging, the conversation drifting somewhere safer.
Her fingers twitch toward the tablet.
Lucian's gaze snaps to the movement.
"Don't," he warns.
She freezes. The wolf in his voice is closer to the surface now, layered over his human words like a second tone only her bones can hear.
"Okay," she whispers. "Okay, I won't… draw anything. Not right now."
His eyes search her face. "Start talking."
Her throat tightens.
"I can't do this if you're—" she gestures weakly at the way he's looming, all sharp lines and coiled danger "—wolfing at me."
His jaw flexes once. For a second she thinks he'll ignore her. Then he pushes off the desk and steps back, giving her a breath of space.
He doesn't move far. A predator stepping back is still a predator.
He drags a chair from a nearby drafting table and sets it in front of her, facing her, then sits. No sprawling, no fake casual pose. He's upright, forearms on his thighs, hands clasped loosely, every inch of him focused on her.
The moonlight through the skylight paints silver on his hair, catches in the amber ring around his pupils. His expression is carved stone.
"From the beginning," he says. "No edits. No skipping the parts you don't like."
She almost laughs at that. No skipping the parts you don't like is basically the opposite of everything she's been doing.
Her fingers twist in the hem of her T-shirt.
"Okay," she says again, softer. "The beginning."
"The first time it happened," she says, "I thought it was… just weird luck. Or a glitch. Or that I was going crazy."
"You're stalling," he says.
She grits her teeth. "I'm setting the scene. This is how stories work."
A muscle in his cheek jumps, but he gestures for her to go on.
She takes a breath and drops into the story—their story, in a way she's never told it out loud.
"The predictions started before I met you," she says. "Before Zara showed up at my crappy apartment with a contract and a grin."
She tells him about the way her hand used to move on its own sometimes, catching pieces of future conversations, future accidents, future headlines. How she'd find panels in her sketchbook she didn't remember drawing until they came true days or weeks later.
"How many?" he asks quietly.
"Predictions?" She thinks. "Dozens. Maybe more. They were… fragmented, at first. Little things. A stranger dropping a phone. A cracked window. A bus breaking down on a bridge. I thought it was déjà vu, or my brain doing that thing where it fills in patterns."
"And you never told anyone."
"Who exactly was I supposed to tell?" she snaps, then winces. "Sorry. I just… I didn't have a Zara back then. Or an HR department for reality."
His eyes soften by a millimeter. "Keep going."
She tells him about the big one—the red moon arc, the prophecy she illustrated for his pack's little webcomic and accidentally turned into a script for the world. How the panels started lining up with reality too perfectly. How she realized, sick and shaking, that the comic wasn't just predicting the future.
It was making it.
Lucian's hands tighten together as she describes the night on the balcony, the way she'd edited the prophecy, defaced her own art like a vandal to save him and the pack. She doesn't spare herself the ugly parts: the selfishness, the panic, the way she'd told herself she'd deal with consequences later.
"The headaches started after that," she says. "The nausea. The flashes."
"Flashes?"
She hesitates. "The white moon. The ink. You know those dreams where you're falling but you never hit the ground? It's like that, but with a moon that's too close and ink that's dripping upward."
He studies her, unreadable.
"What else?" he asks.
She presses her palms against her thighs. They're damp with sweat.
"After I changed the prophecy, I wanted to know if it was a one-time thing," she admits. "If it was just some freak moment where the universe was… soft around the edges. So we did the tests."
She reminds him—though "remind" is the wrong word; he was there—of the controlled experiments they'd run together. The staged scenes, the harmless changes. The vase in the wrong corner. The jacket Zara wasn't supposed to wear. Adrien's missing pen.
How every tiny sketch she made in advance became reality.
Lucian's face doesn't move, but something in his eyes flickers. As if each repetition is a nail hammered into a structure he was hoping wouldn't exist.
"And then," she says, throat dry, "I found out I could… rewind."
She tells him about the spilled drink she changed into a near-miss, the way the day hiccuped and replayed with a different outcome. How each edit left her dizzy, short of breath, like paying with pieces of herself.
"And you kept going," he says.
It's not really a question.
"At first it was just experiments," she says quickly. "With you. With rules. Harmless, you said. No big decisions. Nothing with the moon. I listened to you."
His gaze sharpens. "At first."
She looks down at her hands.
Her voice is smaller when she speaks again.
"Then I fell down the stairs," she says. "Or I was about to. My brain… reached for the tablet before I even knew what I was doing. One second I was falling, the next second I was back at the top step."
She can see it again as she says it: the tear in the world, the way her stomach had dropped twice.
"I didn't mean to cheat," she whispers. "It was pure survival."
"And after that?" Lucian asks.
"After that, it was easier to justify," she says. The words taste like confession, thick and bitter. "Coffee that almost spilled. A conversation that went worse than it needed to. A guy on the street who was about to get his bag stolen. Just… little things. Tiny edits. I told myself they were harmless."
Lucian's stare is unblinking, wolf-still.
"How many 'little things'?" he asks.
She squeezes her eyes shut for a second, counting in her head, every flicker of white-noise silence, every nosebleed.
"I don't know," she says. "A few dozen? More, if you count conversations I rewound just to… be less of an idiot. I didn't keep a ledger, okay? There wasn't a column for 'number of times I rewrote physics today.'"
He inhales slowly, as if he's trying to keep his temper in a cage.
"And the cost," he says. "Every time you do this, what does it do to you?"
Her hand drifts unconsciously to her temple.
"Headaches," she says. "Sometimes sharp, sometimes just pressure. Nausea. That… muffled pop in my ears, like the sound drops out for a second. The heavier the change, the worse it gets. If I rewrite something big, it feels like my brain is bleeding even when it's not. And sometimes it is."
She wipes at her nose, almost expecting to find red there now. Her fingers come away clean.
Lucian's jaw tightens. "Why didn't you tell me it hurt that much?"
Her laugh is brittle. "Because you already treat me like I'm made of glass and dynamite, and I didn't want to give you a reason to lock me in a padded room."
His eyes flash. "Glass shatters. Dynamite explodes." His voice roughens. "You are not fragile and you are not safe. That is the problem."
The room feels colder suddenly.
She forces herself to meet his gaze.
"Are you angry?" she asks. "Or just… scared?"
He doesn't answer that directly.
"Tell me everything," he insists instead. "Every test, every side effect. Every time you rewrote something without me there. No filters. No jokes."
So she does.
She tells him about the employee who kept their job because she whispered a client's change of heart into the panels. About the bus that didn't break down after she redrew its route. About Zara's elbow, the coffee, the burns that never happened. About the way some wolves flinch at nothing, their instincts catching the moment before the moment.
She tells him about the addiction of it—the way her hand reaches for the tablet when anything goes wrong, like it's a magic Undo button built into her bones.
"And what happens when you can't draw?" he asks quietly.
She blinks. "What?"
"When you resist," he says. "You told me before, in passing, that it feels worse when you don't comply. Explain."
She grimaces. "If I ignore it too long, it's like… pressure builds up. The headaches get worse. My hand cramps. Sometimes I see panels behind my eyelids and I know if I just draw them, the pain will stop. It's like something's… demanding the story continue."
"The story," he repeats. "As in, you."
"As in everything," she says. "The world. The narrative. I don't know. I'm just the idiot with the pen, Lucian. Something else is holding the script."
He stares at her. His eyes are darker now, shadows swallowing some of the gold.
"And all this time," he says slowly, "you've been handling this alone, coming up with your own rules, making judgment calls about what deserves to be rewritten."
When he puts it like that, it sounds reckless. Dangerous.
Exactly how she's been afraid it is.
"You were busy trying not to die," she mutters. "I didn't want to add 'by the way, reality stutters when I have a bad day' to your to-do list."
His lips twitch, but it doesn't become a smile.
"And now?" he asks.
"What do you mean?"
"What do you want me to do with this information, Amara?" he says. There's an edge of exhaustion in it now, beneath the iron. "Pat your head and say, 'good job, keep fixing my pack when you feel like it'? Call Adrien and start drafting a ten-thousand-page liability waiver?"
She flinches. "I don't know. I just… I thought you deserved to know the full extent of the crazy you invited into your house."
His silence stretches. It feels like standing on a ledge.
Finally, he exhales, a slow, measured breath.
When he speaks again, his voice has lost some of its bite. It's softer, but no less dangerous.
"You're not just a lawsuit problem," he says.
Her laugh comes out more like a cough. "High praise."
"I'm not joking."
She goes quiet.
He leans back slightly in the chair, looking up at the square of sky visible through the skylight. The moon is thin tonight, silver and sharp.
"When Zara brought you here," he says, "I was worried about many things. Public image. Contracts. The enemy pack. The fact that my private life was becoming a public cartoon."
Her chest tightens. "You're welcome, by the way."
His gaze drops back to her.
"I thought the worst thing you could be was a liability," he says. "A girl with a pen and too much access."
He shakes his head once.
"I was wrong."
Her pulse stutters. "About… what I am?"
"About the scale," he says quietly. "You're not a simple risk we can insure against. You're a… variable we don't have math for."
He lets that sit for a second, as if tasting the shape of it.
"You are," he says, and there's something like resignation in the words, "a threat."
The word lands heavy in her stomach.
She opens her mouth, then closes it. "Thanks," she says finally, voice thin. "Great. Love that for me."
"A threat," he repeats, calm. "Because if you decide to change something big enough, you could unravel more than you intend. You could erase advantages we've bled for. You could undo safeguards I built over a decade. You could kill people by saving them in the wrong way."
Her hands curl into fists on her thighs.
"I know," she says, too quick. "I know, okay? You think I haven't played that movie in my head a thousand—"
"But," he says, cutting her off, "you're also a miracle."
The word is so at odds with the last one that for a second she thinks she misheard.
"A miracle," she echoes.
He nods once.
"How many lives have you saved already?" he asks. "The almost-fall on the stairs. The coffee. The bus. The job. The conversations that didn't end in permanent damage because you rewrote one sentence. You act like these are small things, but ask the people living them if they're small."
She stares at him, throat tight.
"You don't know their names," he continues. "But I do. I see the ripple in the pack ledger. The budget line that doesn't go red. The guard who came in with both ankles unbroken. The junior who didn't spiral because his Alpha wasn't a bastard that day."
He looks at her like she's something he doesn't know how to hold without breaking.
"Miracles are messy," he says. "Ask anyone who's survived one."
Her eyes burn. She blinks hard.
"And then there's the third thing," he says. His tone shifts again, acquiring a steel edge that makes the hair on her arms rise.
"A threat and a miracle weren't enough?" she tries weakly.
"A weapon," he says.
The room seems to inhale with him.
She swallows. "So I've been upgraded from risk to armament. Cool."
"Don't joke about this," he says, low. That wolf-layer is back under the words. "Not to me."
She bites the inside of her cheek until she tastes blood.
"You can redraw outcomes," he says. "Do you understand what that means in a war? In a boardroom? In a hostile takeover? Every enemy we have, human and wolf, would kill for what you are. They would burn cities to the ground to get their hands on you. They would strap you to a table and make you redraw their futures until you collapse."
His voice is steady, but his hands are not. His knuckles are white again, fingers laced so tight she can see the strain.
"And you think you wouldn't be tempted," he adds, quieter, "to use that same power for us. For me."
It isn't accusation. It's something worse: recognition.
She can't lie—not about that.
"I already have," she whispers.
His gaze snaps to hers.
"That client who renewed," she says. "I nudged them. Just a little. So the numbers wouldn't tank and… someone down the chain wouldn't get fired."
His eyes close briefly, as if he'd suspected, and having it confirmed hurts anyway.
"There it is," he murmurs. "Weapon."
The word coils in the air between them.
She wraps her arms around herself, suddenly cold. "So what now?" she asks. "Do you turn me in? Lock me up? Put my tablet in a vault and hope the universe forgets about me?"
"No," he says immediately.
Some of the ice in her spine melts, replaced by something hotter and more complicated.
"Then what?" she pushes. "What do I become in your little strategy charts, Lucian? Asset? Nuclear option? Do I get my own color on the war board?"
"Stop." He says it softly, but it cuts through her spiraling.
He stands and steps closer, slow enough not to spook her. She doesn't pull away.
His hand lifts like he's going to touch her face, then hesitates. Instead he curls his fingers around the back of her chair, leaning down so they're eye level.
"You're not a column on a spreadsheet," he says. "You're a person. A stubborn, reckless, infuriating person with ink under her nails and dark circles from too many late nights. You're also the closest thing I've ever seen to a god rewriting their own script."
She huffs out an unsteady breath. "That's… a bit dramatic, even for a wolf CEO."
"Maybe," he says. "But it doesn't make it less true."
There's something raw in his expression now, the Alpha mask cracked just enough for her to see the man beneath.
"I am going to treat you like a threat," he says. "Because if I don't, someone else will, and they won't bother worrying if it hurts you."
She flinches.
"I am going to treat you like a miracle," he adds, "because pretending you're ordinary is an insult to every life you've already saved."
Her vision blurs. "You're doing the thing where you talk in absolutes again."
"And I am going to protect you like a weapon everyone wants to steal," he finishes, ignoring her. "Because if anyone else holds you, the rest of us burn."
Silence falls, heavy and ringing.
Her voice is small when she asks, "And if you're the one holding me?"
He doesn't look away.
"Then," he says quietly, "we write rules. Together. We test your limits on my terms, not in panic, not alone at three in the morning. We decide what is worth the cost. We don't let you redraw the world every time your heart breaks or you trip over your own feet. We treat your power like live fire, not party tricks."
His gaze drops briefly to the tablet, dark and black on the desk.
"And we tell no one," he adds. "Not Adrien. Not the council. Not even Zara—yet. The fewer people who know, the fewer targets on your back."
Something loosens in her chest and tightens at the same time.
"You want to… help me control this?" she asks.
He huffs out a breath that almost, almost resembles a laugh. "Amara, I want to chain your tablet to the floor and throw the moon into orbit somewhere it can't see you."
"That's not how moons work," she says faintly.
"But I also know what happens when you try to bury a weapon instead of learning to wield it," he continues. "Someone else digs it up."
She studies his face. The lines of tension there, the exhaustion, the stubbornness.
"You're afraid of me," she says softly.
"Yes," he answers, just as softly. "And for you. Those two aren't mutually exclusive."
The honesty of it hits her harder than any argument.
Her shoulders sag.
"I don't want to be a threat," she says. "Or a miracle. Or a weapon. I just wanted to draw stupid wolves kissing and maybe pay my rent."
He smiles then. Not a big one. A ghost of one, tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"Too late," he says. "The universe upgraded your subscription."
She snorts, a wet, shaky sound.
He straightens, letting go of the chair. The room feels bigger when his body isn't crowding it, but also colder.
"From now on," he says, slipping back into Alpha mode, "you don't use that power without me knowing. No more secret rewinds. No more private miracles. If you feel the push, you tell me. We decide together."
"So I'm grounded," she mutters.
"I will literally have the IT team install parental controls on your tablet if I have to," he says.
"You wouldn't."
He arches a brow. "Try me."
Despite everything, a tiny bubble of laughter escapes her. It pops quickly, but it's there.
"What if you're not here?" she asks. "What if something happens and I have to choose in a split second?"
He looks at her for a long moment.
"Then you do what you've already been doing," he says. "You draw. You survive. And you live with me being furious later."
There's a rough affection in it that makes her throat close up.
He moves toward the door, then pauses, glancing back.
"One more thing," he says.
She lifts her head.
"You're not alone in this anymore," he says. "You understand? Whatever this power is, whatever it costs you—it's ours to manage now. Not just yours to suffer through."
The words hit her harder than any confession.
She nods, unable to speak.
His gaze lingers on her face, then on the tablet, as if memorizing both.
"Get some sleep," he says, hand on the doorknob. "Tomorrow, we start figuring out how to live with the fact that you can bend time like a drunk god with a stylus."
"That's a terrible metaphor," she croaks.
"It's late," he says. "You're corrupting my vocabulary."
He slips out, closing the door softly behind him.
The studio feels too quiet in his absence.
Amara sits there for a long time, listening to her pulse slowly return to normal, to the faint creaks of the old house, to the hum of the world settling into whatever version she's left it in.
She looks up at the slice of sky through the skylight.
The moon hangs there, thin and silver, watching.
"I'm a threat, a miracle, and a weapon," she whispers to it. "Depending on who holds me."
Her hand drifts toward the tablet.
She stops herself an inch before she touches it.
"Tomorrow," she tells it under her breath. "We draw tomorrow. With rules."
The tablet stays black.
The night does not rewind.
For the first time in days, she lets it stand.