Chapter 60: A Hostile Business Environment

Lucien wakes up naked in a forest clearing, blinking against a canopy of unfamiliar stars scattered thick overhead, the grass beneath him cool and damp against his bare skin, dew already collecting along his arms.

He sits up slowly, confusion clearing in stages, one memory surfacing at a time, and then it all comes rushing back.

The bonfire, the ritual, the chanting. And then the flaming hand, the sudden yank into nothing, the sensation of falling through something that wasn’t quite fire and wasn’t quite anything at all.

He pops to his feet a little unsteadily, dusts himself off with both hands, spares three full, indulgent seconds to admire his own physique in the pale starlight, then turns to face the tree line properly, hands settling on his hips, feet planted wide in a stance he clearly considers commanding.

"Beast Mother!" he calls out, voice carrying easily across the silent clearing. "I’m going to assume the fact that I’m not currently dead means you want to talk. Fair warning, I love talking. Genuinely, professionally, one of my strongest skills."

Silence answers him, complete and total, not even the rustle of wind through the canopy.

"I also met the Void Mother, by the way, since we’re getting acquainted. Lovely woman. Taught me a whole lot about magic, among other things." He pauses, considering. "Taught her a few things myself. We’re great friends now."

Still silence, heavier now, pressing in around him.

"Honestly, I’ve been hoping to meet you since the moment I first heard your name mentioned. Figured we could be friends too... like me and the Void Mother. Give me a chance to make a proper impression, and I think you’ll find I’m excellent company. Ask literally anyone."

A single hoot rings out through the trees, cutting cleanly through the quiet..

Lucien spins, scanning the dark forest in every direction. And in every direction not a soul in sight, no wind, no movement, nothing but a pale, directionless glow of moonlight filtering down through branches that shouldn’t be letting any light through at all.

He flinches hard when he finally spots it: the owl, perched calmly on a low branch just ahead, watching him with the same unblinking, patient attention it’s shown him twice before now.

He raises both hands, slow, innocent. "Good to see you again. If I’d known you were the Beast Mother, I would’ve properly introduced myself the second we crossed into your land. I do apologize for the lack of—"

The owl drops from its branch in a silent dive, and mid-swoop, dissolves into a churning swirl of leaves and wind. Every tree in the clearing groans, tilting inward, as if bowing to the approaching power.

A figure forms within the swirling vortex of wind and flora, expanding and thickening as it reshapes itself above the clearing floor.

Fur erupting from shadow, muscle piling onto muscle, a spine arching up into something that blots out half the visible sky, a presence alone that ignites every survival instinct in Lucien’s body.

When the wind clears, and the forest settles, standing in the middle of the clearing is a obsidian-black wolf-like beast the size of a tour bus, breath steaming in the cold air, claws the length of an arm sinking into the earth with every step, filling the clearing edge to edge like the trees themselves had to lean back to make room.

Lucien scrambles backward with both hands thrown up. "Five minutes! I just need five minutes to explain!"

The wolf stalks toward him, snarling low, each step shaking the earth beneath it, each breath washing over Lucien like a warm invitation to his own death.

"I know the Void Mother!" he says, voice climbing an octave. "We’re good friends! I was hoping we could be too!"

The wolf looms directly over him now, hot breath rolling over him in waves that smell of pine and rust, jaws parting, massive fangs catching what little light there is, each one taller than his head.

Lucien squeezes his eyes shut, bracing for the end, already composing something, he hopes, sounds dignified enough to be his last words.

But nothing happens.

Instead, a wet, enormous nose presses into his hair, sniffing and snorting him.

He cracks one eye open just as the jaws finally swing open wide, and he lets out an entirely too loud and very undignified squeal.

The wolf licks him, once, slow and thorough, from head to toe in a single pass.

He blinks hard, dripping slightly, thoroughly confused.

The wolf stares at him for a long moment, ears perking, head tilting sideways.

Lucien, on pure, unthinking reflex, tilts his own head to match hers.

The wolf bellows something that might be a laugh, and the sound alone hits him like a physical wave, flattening him back into the grass, ears ringing, skull throbbing.

He lies there for a long moment, blinking dazedly up at the stars, muttering to himself, half-delirious, "That was simultaneously the scariest and sexiest greeting I’ve ever received in either of my lives."

He sits up slowly, gathering himself, and goes completely, utterly silent.

Across from him, seated cross-legged in the grass, one hand propped under her chin, watching him like he’s wounded prey she hasn’t decided whether to finish off yet, sat a woman.

Jet-black fur, sleek and moon-glossed, catching what little light there is in shifting silver highlights. Long, curved claws tapping idly against her cheek. Ears pointed and swiveling toward him with obvious interest, eyes like a pair of collapsing stars, bright and endless and faintly, unmistakably terrifying. Entirely naked, built with the same effortless, overwhelming presence as the wolf she’d just been, and entirely, thoroughly unbothered by any of it.

"What are you?" she asks, and her voice comes out rough as gravel drowned slowly in honey.

It crawls straight up his thigh, through Lucien’s chest and erupts in his mind.

His eyes light up almost instantly, all traces of fear draining visibly out of his expression in the span of a single breath.

He rises, brushing off what little dignity he has left, and struts toward her with the easy, sunlit confidence of a man who has clearly already forgotten he was just licked head to toe by a building-sized wolf, and decided he was going to turn said wolf-woman into more than just a friend

He stops directly over her, fully naked, fully unbothered by the fact, and extends a hand down toward her like he’s opening a very promising business deal rather than standing before the exact woman who was, moments earlier, actively threatening to swallow him whole.

"Lucidius. Demon Lord." He announces, easy grin spreading. "Lucien, to friends. And I’m already hoping we’ll be very good friends."

A slow, dangerous smirk spreads across her face.

The kind that makes something deep in his gut whisper, quite reasonably, that he might be in far more trouble now than he ever was staring down her jaws.