The envelope did not look like doom.
It looked like every other boring, rectangular problem that had ever slid under her door. No wax seal, no skull watermark, no dramatic "YOU'VE BEEN SERVED" stamp in red.
Just thick, off-white paper with her full name printed on a sticker and a line of text in small font: By Hand – Signature Required.
She only realized it was different when the knock came right after.
Three sharp raps. Knuckles with purpose.
Amara froze halfway between her desk and the kettle. For a second she considered pretending she wasn't home, but the knock repeated, more insistent.
"Ms. Reyes?" a muffled male voice called. "Delivery."
Rent? Landlord? More legal letters? All of the above?
She padded to the door and checked the peephole.
A man in a courier uniform stood in the dim hall, holding a slim clipboard and the envelope.
She unchained the door and opened it a crack. "Yes?"
"Amara Reyes?" he asked.
"Yeah."
He held out the clipboard. "Need a signature."
"For what?"
He tipped the envelope slightly. "Documents. From… uh…" He squinted at the label, then whistled softly. "Fancy people."
She didn't laugh.
Her hand felt numb as she took the pen and scribbled something vaguely resembling her name. He handed over the envelope like it was just weight and not a life-altering object, then left with a polite nod.
The hallway swallowed him. The door clicked shut.
For a moment Amara just stood there, back against the wood, envelope in both hands. It felt heavier than it looked, like someone had snuck bricks in between sheets of paper.
She carried it to the desk and set it down carefully next to her tablet.
The Valtor logo was printed in one corner this time, small but unmistakable. Inside the envelope, something stiff crinkled—a stack of documents, stapled.
Her lungs forgot how to work properly for a few seconds.
"Okay," she told herself. "Okay. You knew this was coming. Patel said they'd send something formal. Paper first, apocalypse later."
Her fingers didn't seem to agree, but they obeyed.
She tore the top open and slid the contents out.
A sheaf of papers thumped onto the desk. At least twenty pages thick, double-sided in tight, unforgiving font. The top page had a caption banner straight out of a TV legal drama:
VALTOR GROUP, INC., and LUCIAN VALTOR,
Plaintiffs,
v.
AMARA REYES,
Defendant.
Her name, centered, looked very small between them.
She skimmed down. So many words she didn't know, arranged like a spell designed to hurt: complaint, injunctive relief, damages, willful misconduct, malicious, irreparable harm.
Someone had translated Lucian's irritation into Latin and fines.
Phrases jumped out, anchored in legal cement:
"…knowingly appropriated the likeness and persona of Plaintiff Lucian Valtor…"
"…depiction as a violent, predatory, supernatural creature…"
"…intent to profit from and exploit Plaintiff's reputation…"
"Plaintiffs seek full injunctive relief and monetary damages in an amount to be determined at trial, including punitive damages and attorneys' fees."
Full injunctive relief. Monetary damages. Attorneys' fees.
Her stomach curled in on itself. That was lawyer-speak for: We want to stop you from ever doing this again, take down everything you've made, and send you the bill for daring to exist near us.
Somewhere near the bottom of the first page, a date and time were listed for a preliminary hearing. A location, too—downtown courthouse, but a courtroom number she'd never noticed in passing.
Her phone slipped slightly in her sweaty grip as she took a photo of the first page and texted it to Patel, fingers trembling.
Amara:This just came. They filed.
Three dots appeared almost immediately.
Patel:That's the complaint. I'm guessing there's a summons attached. Bring it all in. Today if possible.
Amara:Is it… bad?
A longer pause.
Patel:It's serious. Come in and we'll talk through it. Don't post about it. Don't contact them.
She looked back at the stack.
It didn't look like fiction. It looked like a script written in a language designed to shut you up.
She dressed on autopilot—jeans, hoodie, sneakers—brain too full to care about professional impressions. The bus ride blurred. People got on, people got off, the city passed in chopped-up glimpses. At one point she realized she'd been clutching the complaint so tightly the edge had drawn a faint line across her palm.
Patel's office looked the same as before: tired plant, piles of file folders, books leaning against each other like old comrades.
He looked up as she came in, took one look at her face, and frowned.
"Sit," he said. "Let's see it."
She handed over the papers.
He flipped through them quicker than she could read a single paragraph, eyes scanning, pen in hand. Every now and then he underlined something, circled a phrase. His mouth tightened.
"Well?" she asked, voice too small.
He set the stack down and exhaled slowly. "All right. So. Yes, they've filed a formal complaint. It's not just talk anymore."
"Okay," she said. "That's… bad."
"It's not good," he agreed. "They're going for the whole menu: injunctive relief—that's the takedown and stop-order—and full damages."
"How full is full?" she asked.
"They haven't put a specific number here," Patel said, tapping the paragraph. "Just that they want 'amounts to be determined at trial.' That's typical. It leaves room. But given who they are, they could claim substantial harm. Loss of reputation, brand dilution, all that."
"Can they actually get that much?" she asked. "Like, if a judge agrees?"
He hesitated, which told her more than any answer.
"They can ask for more than they expect to get," he said. "Legal strategy: you start high so compromise doesn't leave you empty-handed. But even a fraction of what they could claim would be… significant for you."
"Significant like 'ouch I'll feel that for a month' or significant like 'goodbye, life'?" she pushed.
His eyes met hers. "Significant like: you'd be paying it off for a very, very long time, if at all," he said. "If the worst-case sticks."
Her throat went dry.
She looked down at the top of the complaint again. Her name felt like it was shrinking on the page.
"They want me to pay them," she said. "For drawing a wolf in a suit."
"They're framing it as you exploiting his image for profit," Patel said. "Which, technically, you are profiting. However modestly. They're also claiming deliberate malice—that you knew about his reputation and leaned into it."
"I didn't," she said, anger flaring under the fear. "I didn't know who he was until the internet told me."
"I believe you," Patel said. "We'll say that. We'll say a lot of things. But from their perspective, you're not a person. You're a risk assessment. They don't need to be right about your motives to make your life hell."
The anger fizzled into panic again. "So what do I do?"
"First, we respond," he said. "We have a deadline. If we ignore it, they win by default. We'll file an answer to the complaint, dispute their claims, raise defenses. Then we see if they want to talk settlement rather than spend the next year or two in court."
"Settlement," she repeated, tasting the word. "Which means…?"
"Some form of agreement that doesn't involve a full trial," Patel said. "You might agree to permanently remove the comic, promise not to use that character again, maybe pay a lesser amount. They might agree to drop further claims. No one gets everything they want."
"And if I don't settle?" she asked. "If I fight?"
He watched her for a long moment.
"If you choose to fight all the way through, you need to understand something," he said. "They have a full-time legal department. I'm a small practice. I can represent you, but we'd need more help, and that costs money. Even if we crowdfunded some support, even if other artists rally to your cause, the process is long. Stressful. Public."
Public. Her name in articles, tied to his, forever.
"Best-case scenario," he continued, "we win on some points, lose on others. Maybe a judge agrees your work is transformative and protected enough that they can't bleed you dry. Maybe they still force some changes. But you'd come out the other side exhausted, in debt, and probably very tired of wolves."
"So my choices are 'do what they want and watch my work disappear' or 'fight and maybe still lose, but slower,'" she said.
"That's the blunt version," he said. "Yes."
Her eyes burned. She blinked hard.
"This comic is… all I have," she said. "I know that sounds dramatic, but it's true. I don't have a stable job. I don't have savings. I have this story and a very impressive collection of instant noodle wrappers."
Patel's gaze softened. "It doesn't sound dramatic," he said. "It sounds like every client I've ever had who cared about something they made."
She swallowed. "If I lose, they can take… what? My tablet? My… bed? What happens?"
"In theory, if a large judgment is entered against you and you can't pay, they can go after assets," he said. "Garnish future income. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. That's the doomsday scenario. Right now, we're at the stage where they've fired a big, scary shot across your bow. It is serious. It is not yet the end of everything."
"Feels like it," she muttered.
He slid the complaint back toward himself and straightened the pages. "Let me draft a response," he said. "I'll also reach out informally to their counsel, see how rigid they are. In the meantime, I strongly recommend you stop posting new episodes featuring that character."
Her chest twisted.
"I posted one yesterday," she admitted.
He closed his eyes briefly. "Of course you did."
"There was… momentum," she said weakly. "And people were—"
"I understand why," he said, cutting gently across her spiral. "But legally, it gives them more fuel. From now on, nothing. No new content about him, no statements, no subtweets with thinly-veiled references. Lay low."
"Right," she said. "Lay low while a skyscraper tries to step on me."
He almost smiled at that. Almost.
On the way out, he stopped her with a hand on the doorframe. "Ms. Reyes," he said quietly. "I won't sugarcoat this: they're aiming to take your comic down, yes. But they can't erase the fact that you made it. That exists, even if it's only on your hard drive for a while. Don't let them convince you otherwise."
It was the closest thing to comfort he could legally offer.
It still felt flimsy compared to twenty pages of threat.
Back in her apartment, the complaint lay on the table like a brick in the middle of a small pond, ripples touching everything. Her desk. Her bed. Her future.
She paced, counting the things she might lose.
The tablet—bought on installments she'd just finished paying. The laptop—old, but still working. The apartment—cheap, noisy, hers. The little bit of professional reputation she'd clawed out in the freelance trenches. The readership that had finally, finally found her.
All the hours nobody had seen: drawing until dawn, erasing whole pages because the emotion didn't land, re-lettering dialogue because the rhythm was off.
All of it could vanish into someone else's idea of "amicable resolution."
Her notifications blinked incessantly.
Every time she tapped them open, there were more messages from readers: some worried, some oblivious.
AUTHOR-NIM ARE U OKAY WHY ARE THEY SAYING LAWSUIT
is this promo? please say this is a promo
i hope you're getting paid at least 😂
I work in law and this is wild, DM me if you need help
if they take this down I'm going to be so mad
Someone had posted a screenshot of the lawsuit filing, obtained from the public court records, with the caption: "Billionaire CEO Officially Suing Werewolf Comic Author IRL."
News sites had picked it up.
By evening, online articles were circulating with headlines like:
"Corporate Wolf Bites Back: Lucian Valtor Sues Webcomic Creator."
"Indie Artist in Legal Battle over 'Werewolf CEO' Comic."
Her username—InkSpiral—was everywhere. Sometimes her real name, too. Her art, sliced out of context, embedded in articles without permission, ironically.
A local news channel even ran a short segment. She didn't watch it live, but someone sent her a link.
She sat cross-legged on her bed, laptop balanced on a pillow, and hit play because morbid curiosity was stronger than self-preservation.
The anchor smiled with professional concern. "Tonight, a legal clash between billionaire CEO Lucian Valtor and a small webcomic creator is drawing attention online…"
A blurred-out version of one of her panels appeared over his shoulder, Alpha's silhouette against a city of glass. Then a photo of Lucian from a charity gala. The resemblance, even fuzzed, was undeniable.
Her stomach knotted.
They cut to B-roll of Lucian walking into a building, past flashing cameras. The footage was older—no scar visible in that angle, just the clean line of his jaw, the slight downward tilt of his mouth that made him look perpetually unimpressed by the world.
The anchor's voice droned: "…critics say this raises questions about fair use, artistic freedom, and the legal risks of basing fictional characters on real people…"
The camera caught Lucian at a podium from some past event, answering a question she couldn't hear. He didn't know she existed yet in that clip. Had no idea some artist would one day draw a wolf's shadow behind him and wind up in his inbox.
The video froze on a frame mid-blink for a graphic. The editor had chosen a moment where his eyes were open just enough to show the light catching in them.
Amara leaned closer to the screen without meaning to.
For a heartbeat, the gray looked wrong.
The usual camera glare on a retina—a tiny white dot—seemed to flare warmer, richer, like ember instead of spotlight. The pixels glitched for a second, colors separating slightly. In that small, frozen square, his gaze seemed to go straight past the lens and land on her.
Her breath stuttered.
The room around her dimmed at the edges. The hum of the fridge retreated. For that one moment, it felt like the only things in existence were her, the screen, and Lucian's eyes—too sharp, too aware, as if some part of him on the other side of the glass recognized the one who had dared to redraw him.
Then the clip resumed.
He blinked, looked away, the video cut back to the anchor.
The spell broke.
The fridge hummed loudly again, as if it had never stopped. A car honked outside. Upstairs, someone slammed a door.
"Okay," she said aloud. Her voice sounded thin. "That was… probably just low-quality streaming."
She scrubbed at her face, pushing her hair back. Her fingers trembled.
Her laptop screen saver kicked in when the video ended, shrinking Lucian's image down to a tiny thumbnail in a corner.
She stared at the black screen reflected in the window.
Behind her own faint outline, the city lights blinked lazily. Somewhere out there, in a tower she'd drawn a hundred times, the real man from the lawsuit might be watching his own story play out on the news, his legal team whispering in his ear.
Maybe he wasn't thinking about her at all.
Maybe he was already thinking ahead—to the next acquisition, the next quarterly report, the next problem to make disappear.
Or maybe, in some impossible, irrational corner of his awareness, he'd felt the moment his eyes on a screen had pinned hers through cheap glass and weak Wi-Fi.
Amara closed the laptop with more force than necessary and lay back on the bed, staring at the cracked paint on her ceiling.
She thought of everything she could lose, stacked in a silent list.
Tablet. Laptop. Apartment. Comic. Confidence. The part of her that believed stories were safe.
A siren wailed faintly in the distance.
She turned onto her side, pulled her thin blanket over her head, and told herself she was just tired.
That the weight on her chest was paper and numbers, not claws.
That the feeling of being watched was paranoia, not a pair of wolfish eyes lingering in pixels somewhere, waiting for her next move.