Howling Point
The travel from Biometric-secured penthouse to Ashby Industries shareholder hall and adjacent plaza consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The shareholder hall of Ashby Industries smelled of polished mahogany and expensive cologne, the kind of sterile opulence that had never belonged to Killian’s father but which Killian himself had learned to weaponize. He stood at the head of the long table, the morning light cutting through floor-to-ceiling windows in blinding panels, and watched the board members settle into their leather chairs like vultures arranging their wings.
Freya sat in the observer’s gallery, two rows back, her hands folded in her lap. Victor had positioned himself near the side door, his stance deceptively relaxed, his eyes tracking every movement in the room with the precision of a man who counted exits for a living.
She felt his disapproval radiating across the distance. *You shouldn’t be here*, he’d said in the elevator. *This isn’t a battlefield you understand.* But Freya had touched Killian’s cheek before they’d left the penthouse, her fingers warm and steady, the trembling finally gone. “Then we fight, together.”
And now she sat in the lion’s den, watching the lions circle.
Beckett Blackthorn entered at 9:03, three minutes late, flanked by two attorneys in charcoal suits. He didn’t look at Killian. He didn’t look at anyone. He took his seat at the opposite end of the table, opened a sleek black portfolio, and began arranging documents with the fastidious care of a surgeon laying out instruments.
“If we’re all settled,” Killian said, his voice carrying the practiced ease of a man who had nothing to prove, “I’d like to open with the quarterly projections.”
“Actually,” Beckett said, not looking up from his papers, “I’d like to open with a different matter.”
The temperature in the room shifted. Freya felt it in the way Victor’s hand drifted toward his jacket, in the way the board members exchanged glances like children watching parents argue. Killian didn’t move. He simply waited, letting the silence stretch until it became uncomfortable for everyone except him.
“Go ahead,” Killian said.
Beckett slid a document across the table. It traveled hand to hand, passed by the vice chair, the CFO, the head of legal, each person reading and then looking away, unwilling to meet Killian’s eyes. When it finally reached Killian, he didn’t pick it up. He just looked at it, his face unreadable.
“That’s a complaint,” Beckett said, “filed with the Paranormal Oversight Commission. Signed by three former Ashby Industries contractors who claim you suppressed evidence of a rogue wolf attack in the eastern territories. They allege you paid off witnesses, destroyed medical records, and allowed the wolf to escape into civilian population centers.”
Freya’s nails bit into her palms. The accusation was absurd. She knew because Killian had told her about that incident—a panicked beta who’d lost control during a full moon, nothing more. The man had been contained, treated, released back to his family. There had been no suppression. No cover-up.
But she also knew what Beckett was doing. He wasn’t trying to win a legal battle. He was trying to wound Killian’s reputation, to force him onto the defensive, to make the board question whether their CEO was a liability.
Killian picked up the document. He didn’t read it. He simply held it in his hands, feeling the weight of the paper, the expensive weight of betrayal printed on premium stock.
“These contractors,” Killian said. “Ethan Marlow. Derek Vance. Sarah Holden.” He looked up. “They were fired for embezzlement. All three. I have the internal investigation reports, the forensic accounting, and the signed confessions. You filed a complaint based on the testimony of three convicted thieves.”
Beckett smiled. It was a thin, practiced expression that didn’t reach his eyes. “Their criminal history doesn’t negate the validity of their claims. It simply makes them unreliable witnesses. But the commission doesn’t need reliable witnesses to open an investigation. They just need a credible accusation.”
“Is that your strategy?” Killian set the document down. “Throw mud and hope some of it sticks?”
“My strategy,” Beckett said, “is transparency. Something your family has consistently avoided for three generations.”
The board members shifted in their seats. Freya could see them calculating, weighing loyalties against risk, wondering which side of this war would leave them with the most power when the dust settled.
Killian stood. He walked to the window, his back to the room, and looked out at the city below—the steel and glass monuments to human ambition, the arteries of traffic pulsing through the streets. Then he turned, and Freya saw something flicker in his eyes. Not gold. Not yet. But something close.
“You want transparency?” Killian reached into his jacket and pulled out a slim digital recorder. “Then let’s talk about the wire transfer you made to a shell company in the Caymans. Four point three million dollars. Two days before the complaint was filed.”
Beckett’s smile faltered.
Killian pressed play. The audio was crisp, recorded through a lapel mic, the conversation between Beckett and an unidentified associate playing out in real-time: *“Find me three people who will say whatever I need them to say. I don’t care about the cost. I need Ashby’s feet held to the fire long enough for the board to lose faith.”*
The recording lasted forty-seven seconds. By the time it ended, the board members were no longer looking at the documents on the table. They were looking at Beckett, and their expressions had hardened into something cold and calculating.
“That’s—” Beckett started.
“That’s you,” Killian said. “Bribing witnesses to fabricate evidence against a competitor. Which, I believe, constitutes fraud, conspiracy to commit perjury, and obstruction of justice.” He set the recorder down. “Do you want to keep playing this game, Beckett? Because I have nineteen more recordings, thirty-seven financial irregularities, and a sworn affidavit from your former chief of staff that you’ve been siphoning company resources for personal use since you took over the Blackthorn estate.”
The room was silent. Freya held her breath, watching Beckett’s face cycle through shock, anger, and finally a cold, calculating stillness that reminded her of a snake coiling to strike.
“You’ve made your point,” Beckett said quietly.
“No,” Killian said. “I’ve made my opening argument. The meeting continues.”
He sat down, and the quarterly projections were presented. Freya barely heard them. She was too focused on the way Beckett’s hands remained perfectly still on the table, too focused on the way he nodded at the right moments, smiled at the right jokes, as if the entire confrontation had been a minor inconvenience rather than a public execution of his credibility.
The meeting ended at 11:47, eighteen minutes early. The board members filed out in clusters, their whispered conversations echoing off the marble floors. Killian stayed at the table, gathering his papers with careful, deliberate movements.
Freya walked to him. “That was brilliant.”
“It was necessary,” he said. “And it won’t matter.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but before she could speak, the main doors swung open. Cole Blackthorn stepped through, flanked by six security guards in tactical vests. He was older than Beckett, his face lined with the hard edges of a man who had spent decades building power through fear. His eyes found Killian immediately, and when he smiled, it was the smile of a predator who had already tasted blood.
“Impressive performance,” Cole said. “The recordings. The financials. Very thorough.”
Killian didn’t stand. “I learned from the best.”
“You learned from a corpse,” Cole said, and the casual cruelty of the words hit Freya like a physical blow. “Your father spent his entire career trying to outmaneuver me. He failed. He died bitter and alone, and the only legacy he left was a son who thinks clever paperwork can win a war.”
“Then why are you here?” Killian asked. “If I’m so irrelevant?”
Cole’s smile widened. He walked to the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down across from Killian. Up close, Freya could see the network of scars on his hands, the knuckles permanently thickened from decades of violence.
“I’m here to offer you a deal,” Cole said. “Step down. Sell me Ashby Industries at market value. Leave the city within forty-eight hours. And I’ll make sure the commission never finds out about the Blackwood Incident.”
Killian’s stillness was absolute. Freya saw his hands tighten on the armrests of his chair, saw the muscle jump in his jaw, and she knew—she *knew*—that whatever the Blackwood Incident was, it was something Cole had been saving for exactly this moment.
“You’re bluffing,” Killian said.
“Am I?” Cole reached into his pocket and pulled out a photograph. He slid it across the table, face-up. Freya leaned forward, her stomach turning cold as she recognized the image: a young man, barely twenty, his body riddled with bullet wounds, his eyes still open and glassy.
“Your father,” Cole said, “ordered that boy killed. Eleven witnesses. Three signed confessions from the men who pulled the triggers. I’ve kept them safe for twenty years, waiting for the right moment to use them.”
Killian didn’t look at the photograph. He looked at Cole, and Freya saw something in his eyes that she had never seen before: fear. Not for himself. For Leo. For her. For the fragile life they had built together.
“What do you want?” Killian asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
“I already told you,” Cole said. “Step down. Leave. Forget you ever heard the name Blackthorn.”
He stood, buttoned his jacket, and walked toward the doors. At the threshold, he paused and glanced over his shoulder.
“You have twenty-four hours.”
The doors closed behind him. The room was silent except for the hum of the air conditioning and the distant sound of traffic filtering through the windows.
Killian sat motionless for a long moment. Then he looked at Freya, and she saw the calculation in his eyes, the desperate arithmetic of a man trying to find an answer that didn’t exist.
“I can’t give him the company,” Killian said. “If I do, he’ll control every pack on the eastern seaboard. He’ll turn the territories into a private army. And Leo—”
“I know,” Freya said.
“The photograph is real. The confessions are real. If he releases them, I go to prison. The company goes to receivership. Everything we’ve built—”
“I know,” she said again.
Killian closed his eyes. When he opened them, the gold was flickering at the edges of his irises, a warning sign she had learned to read over the past weeks.
“There’s no clean way out of this,” he said. “Not without burning everything down.”
Freya stood. She walked around the table, took his hand, and pressed it against her chest. His fingers curled around hers, grounding them both in the simple reality of touch.
“Then we burn it down,” she said. “Together.”
Victor appeared at the side door, his face grim. “We need to move. Cole’s men are sweeping the building. He’s trying to box us in.”
Killian stood, his decision already made. He tucked the photograph into his jacket, picked up the digital recorder, and walked toward the door. Freya followed, her heart pounding a steady rhythm against her ribs.
The plaza outside was crowded with lunch-hour pedestrians, businessmen and tourists and office workers going about their ordinary lives. The sunlight was harsh, unforgiving, casting long shadows across the concrete.
Cole Blackthorn stood in the center of the plaza, flanked by his security. When he saw Killian emerge from the building, he didn’t move. He simply waited, a statue of power and patience, his eyes fixed on the man he had come to destroy.
“You think a boardroom victory matters, boy?” He tapped his chest. “The blood war has already begun.”
Killian’s jaw set firmly. “Then let’s finish it.”