The fire suppression panel was six feet to her left. She’d noticed it during the security orientation—Nyx had walked her through every exit, every alarm, every system on every floor. She’d paid attention because Nyx was the kind of person you paid attention to.
She slammed the panel.
Spray erupted from the ceiling nozzles—thick, blinding, choking. The animal skidded, claws scrabbling on the slick tile, head whipping side to side as the foam hit his eyes. Disoriented. Three seconds. Maybe four.
She grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall mount.
Fifteen pounds. Solid steel. She swung low, targeting the front legs. The impact jarred up her arms and the forelimbs buckled. He slid sideways on the chemical slick.
“This is for breaking into a building where I was having a PERFECTLY NICE working evening.”
She swung again. Higher. Connected with the side of his skull and the intruder dropped—still conscious, still snarling, but down. The chemical blanket covered everything. The hallway looked like a dishwasher had detonated.
Movement behind her. Her arms came up?—
Keanu.
Her brother hit the wolf at full speed before it could rise—two hundred pounds of litigator driving the animal into the tile with an impact that sent foam spraying in every direction. He pinned the wolf’s neck with his forearm. Practiced. Efficient. The calm of a man who’d played college rugby and never quite lost the instinct.
The body shifted beneath him. Human now—dazed, bleeding from the extinguisher strike, naked and soaked and dazed on the tile. Keanu held the pin. Adjusted his grip.
“That’s my sister you’re threatening.”
The man groaned. Keanu glanced at his own shirt—tailored, now covered in fire-suppression foam and unidentifiable residue. He adjusted a zip-tie with his free hand.
“I’m billing this as overtime.”
From behind the locked studio door, Mika’s voice carried through the gap: “Yes, hi, I need—hold on—” A crash from downstairs shook the building. “—sorry, wolf fight. I need you tocall—” Another crash. Glass shattering, two floors down. “Is this a bad time for YOU? Because it’s a SPECTACULAR time for me.”
Lumi’s pulse was hammering. The extinguisher shook in her grip. Chemical residue dripped from the ceiling. Her brother was pinning a naked man to the tile of a publishing house at midnight and her best friend was making phone calls under a desk during an active siege.
This is not how indie publishing works.
She set down the extinguisher. The sounds from below were shifting—snarling intensifying, peaking, dropping into the low rumbling growls of wolves establishing dominance over defeated opponents. The fight was ending.
But one sound cut through—a whimper. High-pitched. Not a battle sound.
Lumi moved toward the stairwell.
She found Sera—theyoung lady she was introduced to a few days ago—on the second floor.
The girl—woman, technically, but she looked barely twenty—was crumpled against the wall where the marble met the shattered remains of a glass partition. Wolf form. Gray-brown fur matted and dark. A gash along her left flank—deep, raw, the kind that exposed muscle beneath skin. Her amber eyes were glazed. Her breathing came in shallow, rapid pants.
One of Korr’s hostiles had come through the east service entrance and caught her in the second-floor corridor before the pack wolves on the perimeter could close. A young pack member in the wrong place at the worst possible moment.
Lumi dropped to her knees.
“I’ve got you.” She stripped off her coat and pressed it against the wound. The fabric soaked through immediately. Hot. The copper smell filled the corridor.
“Stay still. I’m an artist, not a medic, but I once glued a gash shut with fixative spray and it worked fine. Well—it worked okay. The scar is creative. We’re going to be fine.”
Sera whimpered. Her body trembled against Lumi’s legs. The sounds of combat still echoed from the stairwell—but they were growing distant. Moving away.
Lumi pressed harder. Kept steady. Talked.
“You’re going to be okay. I know it hurts. I know you’re scared. But I’m not leaving and neither are you, so let’s both stay right here and you can bleed on my coat because that’s what coats are for, apparently. This particular jacket has absorbed more bodily fluids in the past month than in the previous three years combined and that is a sentence I never expected to say out loud.”
The trembling slowed. Sera’s muzzle pressed against Lumi’s knee—seeking contact, seeking warmth. The instinct of an injured creature turning toward the nearest source of safety.