Amara had never been more overdressed and underqualified in a hoodie.
"This is a terrible idea," she whispered as the elevator slid past the familiar penthouse floors and kept going down.
Zara, beside her, adjusted a stack of folders and grinned. "Relax. It's just a room full of apex predators who've been arguing about you for months."
"Wow," Amara said. "I feel so much better."
On her other side, Lucian watched the floor numbers tick down, arms folded, expression giving away absolutely nothing. He'd gone full neutral Alpha: dark shirt, dark slacks, that specific calm that meant everything inside him was sharp.
"No one is going to hurt you," he said.
"You say that like you're not bringing me to a meeting literally called 'Council'," she muttered. "Do they at least have snacks? Or is it just blood oaths and people glowering at me?"
Zara bumped her shoulder. "Both," she said. "Kidding. Mostly. There's coffee, at least. And that one guy from the Lakeward pack who always brings those almond cookies."
"Great," Amara said. "I'll just hide behind the cookie guy."
The elevator slowed. The display showed B3.
"You're not hiding," Lucian said. "You're being introduced."
She eyed him. "Like a person," she asked, "or like a new weapon system?"
The corner of his mouth twitched.
"Like our Moon-Scribe," he said.
Her stomach did a small, unwilling flip.
"Still hate that name," she muttered.
Zara beamed. "You love that name. You're just pretending you don't."
"I love drawing," Amara said. "I love sleeping. I love not being on any secret supernatural councils. This"—she gestured vaguely—"is not on the list."
The elevator doors opened with a soft chime.
Cold air rolled in: faintly metallic, faintly antiseptic, undercut with the unmistakable base layer of wolf.
The hallway beyond was nothing like the polished upper floors. Concrete walls, industrial lighting, no art. Security cameras tucked discreetly into corners. Two heavy doors with biometric panels. It felt less like an office building and more like a bunker designed by someone with trust issues and a spreadsheet habit.
Lucian stepped out first. The guard at the checkpoint straightened, nostrils flaring once, then dipping his head.
"Alpha," he said. His gaze flicked to Amara. "Moon-Scribe."
She flinched.
"I have a name," she said before she could stop herself.
The guard's mouth quirked like he'd expected that.
"Yes, ma'am," he said politely. "Just… not one the stories use yet."
That didn't make her feel better.
Lucian's hand came up, hovering at the small of her back without actually touching.
"Ready?" he asked.
"No," she said. "Let's go."
The Council chamber was not what she expected.
She'd pictured stone circles and torches, or maybe a cathedral of exposed brick and aesthetic mood lighting.
Instead, it looked like someone had fused a war room with a co-working space.
A long oval table dominated the center of the room, polished dark wood shot through with faint silver lines that, if she squinted, looked almost like runes. Comfortable chairs ringed it, some already occupied. The walls were lined with screens and maps: digital overlays of the city, color-coded territory lines, shifting dots indicating patrols. A large screen on one end showed several faces in little windows—packs joining remotely.
The smell hit her first: wolf, in layers. Different notes overlapped—citrus, pine, smoke, rain, city, forest—like someone had tried to bottle different kinds of night.
Conversations cut off as she stepped in.
Dozens of eyes turned toward her.
Her instincts screamed door, door, door.
Her feet kept moving.
Lucian walked straight to the head of the table, Zara sliding into a chair halfway down. Amara hovered uncertainly until he glanced back and indicated the seat to his right.
"Here," he said, like it was obvious.
She sat. Her heart sat six inches higher, hammering.
"Okay," Zara said brightly, clapping her hands once. "Housekeeping before we start: no lunging, no rude mind-links, and if anyone uses the word 'prophecy' in a non-ironic way, you owe me fifty bucks."
A low ripple of laughter circled the table. It broke the tension a little. Not much.
Lucian rested his hands on the table, fingers spread.
"Thank you all for coming," he said. "In person and on screen. We've had a significant development. Two, actually."
Amara felt the weight of his next words before he said them.
"You all know the first," he went on. "The trap we set using the comic and the Ashridge attack. We'll discuss the full tactical report in a moment."
Several wolves nodded. A scarred older man near the far end bared his teeth in a satisfied grin; on one of the screens, a middle-aged woman with silver-streaked hair gave a small approving nod.
"But before that," Lucian continued, "there's someone you need to meet properly."
And there it was.
He turned slightly toward her.
"This," he said, voice steady, "is Amara Reyes. The artist you've been arguing about in your chats. The one some of you call curse. The one others call miracle. The one we call"—he hesitated, just for a fraction of a second—"Moon-Scribe."
The title landed in the room like a dropped coin.
Several heads dipped in what might have been respect. A few wolves bowed their chins lower than they did to Lucian.
Others stiffened, eyes sharpening, jaws tightening.
On the screen, one remote elder signed something with quick, precise hands; the younger wolf beside him murmured into a mic, "The Old Tongue's term is Lunagraph, but the translation sticks better."
Amara tried not to hyperventilate.
"Hi," she said, because her brain had never met a bad situation it couldn't make more awkward. She lifted a hand halfway. "I draw wolves. Some of them are you. I'm sorry, and also you're welcome."
Silence.
Then, unexpectedly, a snort from down the table.
"BlackSun_92," said a young-looking wolf with a nose ring and a hoodie, eyes bright with barely-contained excitement. "That's your handle, right?"
Amara blinked. "Um. Yeah."
He grinned, leaning forward. "Dude. My mate and I started training night patrols because of Episode 18. We thought you were exaggerating how bad rooftop fights could go. Then Kai literally slipped in the same spot your character did. If we hadn't seen it in the comic, we'd have laughed it off. Instead we changed the route and caught a Thornbite spy two weeks later."
A few wolves murmured agreement.
"She saved two of my scouts," said a woman with a tight braid and eyes like cold water. "We moved dens after that flood arc. A month later, the river bank we'd been using collapsed in a storm. Call it coincidence if you want. My pack doesn't."
"I lost cousins in that alley fight," another voice cut in, low and bitter. The speaker was older, heavyset, with gray at his temples and lines around his mouth. "Your Episode 7? The one with the hero dragging his packmate out of the explosion in slow-motion? I watched my boys die the same way. Your panels hit the net before the bomb. How am I supposed to look at you and not see that?"
Amara flinched as if he'd hit her.
"I didn't know," she said quietly. "Not until after. Not until Lucian showed me the footage. If I could have changed it—"
"But you didn't," he snapped.
Lucian's voice cut through the rising tension.
"Rao," he said. "Enough."
The older wolf—Rao—met his eyes. There was history there, and reluctance, and something like grief.
"I know what it cost you," Lucian said, tone tightening just a fraction. "You're right to be angry. At Ashridge. At their Alpha. At me, if you want. But not at her. She didn't plant that bomb. She didn't trigger it."
"She drew it," Rao said.
"And because she drew it," Lucian shot back, "we were able to prove Ashridge's involvement to the Accord. We forced sanctions. We cut their supply chain. The cost was real. So were the consequences."
He glanced around the table, sweeping everyone into that gaze.
"None of you is here because you live in a safe story," he said. "You're here because you know war. You've lost people. You've made ugly choices. That hasn't changed. What's changed is that now we have someone in the room whose art can show us the shape of certain threats before they hit."
His hand brushed the table near hers. Not quite touching. Anchor-adjacent.
"I asked her to join this council," he went on. "Formally. So you can stop speculating about her in private channels and start asking questions to her face."
Zara raised a hand. "Also so I stop being tech support for a dozen packs texting me 'what does Panel 4 mean??' at three in the morning."
A ripple of rueful chuckles broke the tension.
The silvery-haired woman on the screen leaned closer to her camera.
"Amara," she said. Her voice carried the weight of age and authority, but there was warmth in it. "I'm Lidia, of the Lakeward. We owe you a debt. We would have been in the flood's path if not for your 'melodramatic water arc,' as my nephew called it."
"I'm so sorry about the melodrama," Amara blurted.
Lidia's lips curved. "Melodrama saves lives sometimes," she said.
The younger wolf beside her whispered, "I told you she was awkward," off-mic. Lidia elbowed him.
Amara's mouth twitched despite herself.
Another voice chimed in from a different screen: a broad-shouldered man with dark skin and a scar down one cheek.
"Mateo, South Edge pack," he said. "My first instinct was to ban your comic in our territory. The second was to force my wolves to read it. I chose the second. We've lost less since."
"That's… good?" Amara said. "I think?"
"It is," he said simply.
Rao exhaled through his nose, shoulders slumping a fraction.
"My anger is not rational," he admitted, grudging. "I know that. It has teeth anyway."
"I get it," Amara said quietly. "If someone showed me a panel of my brother dying before it happened, I'd want to burn their tablet too."
The room went still for a second at the mention of a brother—something personal she hadn't meant to share. She cleared her throat.
"Look," she said. "I don't fully understand what I am to your world. I didn't wake up one morning thinking, 'You know what would be fun? Accidentally storyboarding a secret werewolf war.' I drew what was in my head. Sometimes it lined up with what was in yours. Sometimes it didn't. I can't promise I won't draw more things you hate. I can't promise people won't get hurt anyway."
She swallowed.
"But I can promise I'm not doing it on purpose," she finished. "And that if we're going to be stuck in the same messed-up narrative, I'd rather be in the room trying to help than out there guessing."
Silence.
Then the nose-ringed wolf nodded, like she'd passed some unspoken test.
"Moon-Scribe it is," he said.
Rao grunted. Not enthusiastic. Not hostile. A provisional ceasefire.
"Good," Lucian said. "Now that we've all made each other uncomfortable, we can move to the agenda."
He tapped the tablet in front of him. The main wall screen behind him lit up with bullet points.
Ashridge/Thornbite operation recap
The unsynced anomaly
Human cover-up logistics
External packs & Moon-Scribe impact
Next moves
The word unsynced flashed in Amara's chest like someone had hit a nerve.
Lucian gestured to Zara.
"Z?" he said.
She bounced up, grabbing a remote.
"Okay, kids," she said, sliding smoothly into her "presenting to both execs and gremlins" mode. "Story time."
For the next ten minutes, she walked the council through the trap operation: the episode, the enemy chat logs, the monitoring, the successful capture of eight wolves.
On the screen, the footage played in controlled clips: Kade and his team slipping into the building, the hub door slamming, the gas, the neat neutralization. Sensor data scrolled alongside: entry times, heart rates, unconsciousness onset.
"Any casualties?" Lidia asked.
"None on our side," Zara said. "Minor injuries from scuffles. Two concussions, three bruised egos. The captives will live. Assuming they don't get themselves killed in holding."
"And they know?" Mateo said. "That they walked into a story?"
"We showed them the printout we found in Kade's pocket," Lucian said. "The one with Amara's panels and their little notes. We've also leaked carefully edited stills into their channels. They're… not taking it well."
"Good," growled a wolf near the far end. "Maybe they'll stop treating us like NPCs."
"So we agree the tactic worked," Lucian said. "With caveats we'll discuss under [5]."
He flicked to the next slide.
The word UNSYNCED appeared in large letters over a still image: the shadowed figure pressed to the wall near the loading bay.
The temperature in the room seemed to drop a notch.
"This is the anomaly," Lucian said. "Ninth signature. Not in the episode. Not in Amara's drafts. Not in any of our projections."
Zara zoomed in as far as the pixels allowed.
The figure remained stubbornly blurry. A cap. A jacket. A body language that said I'm not where I'm supposed to be, and I like it that way.
Murmurs swept the table.
"Sensor glitch?" someone suggested.
"No," Zara said. "We cross-checked with gate logs and scent reports. There were nine foreign signatures in the perimeter. Eight went in. Eight went down. One left. This one."
"You think he's a seer?" asked the younger wolf next to Lidia. "Like her?"
"Unlikely," Lucian said. "If the enemy had someone like Amara, they'd be doing more than piggybacking off her work. My guess is mercenary. Information specialist. Someone who trades in patterns and knows when something smells too neat."
"Doesn't change the fact that your story missed him," Rao muttered, eyeing Amara.
"Rao," Lidia chided.
Amara forced herself not to shrink in her chair.
"He's right," she said. "The panels didn't show him. When I tried to draw him after, I… couldn't. It hurt."
That got their attention.
"How do you mean, hurt?" Mateo asked.
She rubbed the bridge of her nose, remembering the spike of pain, the way lines refused to hold.
"Headache," she said. "Like when I force an edit the universe really doesn't like. And the lines… wouldn't stick. Every time I tried to define him, the drawing slid away. Like he was made of static."
Zara's brows shot up. "You didn't tell me it was that bad," she said.
"You were busy wrestling encrypted comms," Amara said. "I didn't want to be like, 'Hey, also, reality stung me.'"
"You're telling us," said a low voice Amara hadn't heard yet, "that your power refused to put him on paper."
She turned.
The speaker was a woman sitting two seats down from Rao. She was older than Zara, younger than Lidia, with close-cropped hair and eyes the color of wet asphalt. Her presence was… quiet. Not less intense. Just less showy. She'd been watching the whole meeting without saying a word.
"And you are?" Amara asked carefully.
"Eira," Lucian supplied. "My third. Runs intel and external relations."
"Also the only one who scares bureaucrats more than Lucian does," Zara added.
Eira inclined her head in acknowledgment.
"When a system rejects input," she said, "it's either corrupted… or protected. The question is which one he is."
"Protected by what?" the nose-ring kid asked. "The story?"
Amara's skin prickled.
"Could be whatever's behind the… sync," Eira said, nodding at Amara's tablet. "Could be whoever hired him. Could be something older. We don't know. That's the point."
"I don't care who he is," Rao said. "I care that he got out. What did he take with him?"
"Not much," Lucian said. "He saw a truck go in and not come out. He saw our guards. He smelled the air. He might have felt the trap snap shut from a distance. He knows we used the comic as bait, even if he doesn't know the mechanics."
"That's not 'not much,'" Rao said. "That's a blueprint for 'never fall for that again.'"
"Good," Mateo repeated, echoing Lucian earlier. "Maybe they'll stop being lazy and we'll get back to fighting wolves, not fanboys."
"We need to assume," Eira said, "that Ashridge and Thornbite now know the comic can cut both ways. They'll be more cautious about using it. That reduces one kind of risk. It increases another."
"Which is?" Zara asked.
"That our enemies stop tripping over the obvious," Eira said, "and start playing smarter games in the gaps. Including using you, Amara, as a symbol instead of just a data source."
Amara frowned. "A symbol how?"
"Boogeyman," the nose-ring wolf offered. "Martyr. Rallying point. 'Look what the Gray Alpha and his witch did to our brothers.' That kind of thing. If I were their PR wolf, I'd be all over that."
"So," Amara said slowly, "either I'm their cursed oracle, their target for revenge, or the star of their victim propaganda."
"Welcome to politics," Zara said.
Lucian's hand finally, actually, touched the back of her chair. Lightly. Like he thought she might bolt and wanted to anchor her without pinning.
"We adapt," he said. "We've already tightened security around Amara. We'll adjust how we use the comic going forward. Fewer direct traps. More… noise."
Zara nodded. "I can seed enemy channels with fake 'analysis' of future episodes," she said. "Get them second-guessing everything. The point isn't to get them to follow the script now. It's to make them doubt there is one."
"And what about her?" Lidia asked gently. "The weight you're putting on her shoulders is not a tactical problem, Lucian. It's a human one."
Amara felt the room's attention shift back to her, softer this time.
"I'm not… cracked yet," she said. "Promise."
"You're not steel, either," Eira said. "And the world is learning your name."
As if on cue, Zara flicked to another slide.
It was a screenshot montage: forum posts, private chat snippets, meme images.
"Did you see the new BlackSun episode?"
"The Moon-Scribe dropped an update, brace for impact."
"We should be timing patrols with her release schedule."
"Rumor says the Gray Alpha locked her in his tower to keep the stories for himself."
fanart: a stylized version of Amara's in-comic avatar with glowing hands and a moon behind her
Amara stared.
"People are… talking like that?" she asked faintly.
"Only in certain circles," Zara said. "The Accord scrubbers keep most of it from leaking into human-facing channels. But among the packs, among the interested… yeah. You're trending."
"This one's my favorite," the nose-ring kid said, pointing at a meme of a cartoon wolf clutching a phone, eyes wide: "Moon-Scribe updated / every wolf in a 50-mile radius:"
"Burn it," Amara muttered.
"Too late," Zara said cheerfully. "It's already on T-shirts in three territories."
"Zara," Lucian said, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"I'm just the messenger," she said, unrepentant.
Lidia cleared her throat.
"The point," she said, "is that your art is not contained anymore, child. Not to your friends. Not to this pack. Packs in other countries set watches by your schedule. Young wolves trade your episodes like talismans."
"We got a report from Berlin," Eira added. "A small pack there changed their route home after reading your alley scene. They avoided a police raid that would have exposed them."
"And in São Paulo," Mateo said, "a pack elder banned your comic for being 'corrupting and inflammatory.' The pups started sneaking it anyway. It's become… rebellious scripture."
Amara dropped her forehead briefly to the table.
"I wanted fanart," she said into the wood. "Maybe a cosplay. Not a cult."
"Not a cult," Eira corrected. "Yet."
"That is not helpful," Lucian told her.
"I'm not paid to be helpful," Eira said. "I'm paid to be accurate."
"So what do we do?" Amara asked, lifting her head. "Take the comic down? Go dark? Pretend it was all performance art and move to the mountains?"
"No," Lucian said immediately. The vehemence surprised even her.
He met her eyes.
"If you disappear," he said, "they'll mythologize you more, not less. Every random blackout will be 'the Moon-Scribe's silence.' Every misfortune will be blamed on your 'withdrawal.' At least this way you're present. Accountable. Able to respond."
"And we know where you are," Zara added. "Very selfishly."
"Thanks?" Amara said.
Lidia nodded.
"He's right," she said. "You can't uncross this river, Amara. But you can learn to swim it without drowning. That means boundaries. Structure. Allies."
She shot Lucian a pointed look on the last word.
He inclined his head minutely, understanding the subtext: Don't just use her. Protect her. And not only with your teeth.
"We formalize her role," Eira said. "Make it clear to allies and enemies alike that she is under our protection, not a freelance oracle they can harass. We set communication protocols. We decide which packs get access to her directly and which get filtered summaries."
"People can… talk to me?" Amara asked, horrified. "Like, other Alphas? In my DMs?"
"They already are," Zara said. "You just haven't seen those accounts. You're welcome."
Amara gaped.
"I thought those were bots."
"They are," Zara said. "Bots I wrote to keep the creeps busy."
"Marry me," Amara said weakly.
"Get in line," nose-ring kid muttered.
Lucian cleared his throat. The wolf in him didn't love that last exchange; she felt it in the tiny spike in the bond. He shut it down fast.
"So," he summarized, sliding back into command mode. "Council consensus: the Moon-Scribe stays visible. Her episodes continue. We treat them as one signal among many—not gospel, not trash. We adjust our use of them in strategy. We increase her security and reduce her exposure to random demands."
He glanced at Amara.
"And," he added, softer but no less firm, "we remember that she is not a tool. She's a person in the middle of this with us."
Rao grunted something that might have been assent.
Mateo nodded.
Lidia smiled.
Eira simply watched Amara, eyes thoughtful.
"Do I get a vote?" Amara asked.
Lucian tilted his head. "On which part?"
"On whether I want to be Moon-Scribe," she said. "On whether I want to sit at this table and listen to people talk about territory lines and supply chains and how many patrols got mauled last week."
"You can walk out," he said quietly. "Right now. I won't stop you. You can go upstairs, draw your episodes, and pretend this doesn't touch you."
She waited for the but.
"But," he said, "it will touch you anyway. You've seen that. The wolves in your comments. The bombs in your panels. The migraines. You're already in it, Amara. The only choice is whether you want to have any say in how."
The room faded for a heartbeat.
It was just him and her and the question she'd been dodging since the courthouse.
She thought of Kade on the floor of the hub.
Of the unsynced man in her sketch, half-formed and smiling.
Of the guard in the lobby who had called her ma'am with a hint of apology.
Of young wolves in far-away cities watching her updates like weather reports.
She thought of the ledger she'd started in the back of one of her sketchbooks—little notes: Ep 18 flood – Lakeward moved / Ep 7 alley – Rao's cousins / future blast scene – DO NOT POST.
Her art had always been a way to control the narrative inside her own head.
Now the narrative had leaked.
"I don't like this," she said. "Any of it."
"I know," Lucian said.
"I don't want to be anyone's prophecy," she said. "Or curse. Or Moon-anything."
His mouth twitched. "Noted."
She took a breath.
"But I really don't want to be blindsided by my own story," she finished. "So… fine. I'll sit at the table. I'll listen. I'll help where I can. I'll scream at you when you're being an idiot. I reserve the right to draw everyone here with extra ridiculous ears."
"Hey," Zara protested. "My ears are perfect."
"Seconded," nose-ring kid said.
A low ripple of amusement went around the table.
Something in the room eased.
Lucian's shoulders dropped just a fraction.
"Then we have our Council," he said. "With the Moon-Scribe as a standing member."
"I am absolutely designing my own nameplate," Amara muttered.
"Please do," Zara said. "We need more chaotic signage down here."
Eira cleared her throat.
"One more thing," she said. "Amara."
"Yeah?" Amara said, bracing.
"You mentioned earlier," Eira said, "that your art… resists when you try to force it. That sometimes it gives you things you didn't ask for."
"Welcome to being an artist," Amara said dryly.
Eira's lips quirked.
"In the old stories," she said, "there are tales of Scribes under the Moon. People whose words and pictures bent the world. Some of them became tyrants. Some became saints. All of them paid for it. The ones who survived longest were the ones who learned when to refuse the page. When to leave some things undrawn."
A chill ran up Amara's spine.
"I'm not a myth," she said.
"Not yet," Eira said. "Let's keep it that way."
Lidia nodded gravely.
"Your power is not infinite," she said. "And it is not neutral. You cannot save everyone by drawing. You cannot doom everyone by accident. But you can hurt yourself trying to control a story that was never meant to belong to one person."
"That," Lucian said quietly, "is why she's not doing it alone."
He looked at Amara.
"We're in this together," he said.
She rolled her eyes because the alternative was crying in front of the Council.
"Yeah, yeah," she said. "Alpha, fate-artist, uneasy truce. I remember."
The bond between them pulsed, steady and unnervingly warm.
She ignored it.
"What's next on the agenda?" she asked, dragging her focus back to the screen. "Territory, cover-ups, rival movements. Let's go. If I'm stuck in your Council, I might as well learn the map."
Lucian's mouth curved.
"As you wish," he said.
And as the discussion rolled on—into human news cycles and staged gas leaks, into how to explain a missing catering truck without triggering a police investigation, into small skirmishes in other cities that might or might not tie back to the unsynced stranger—Amara sat and listened.
She listened to wolves argue about zoning laws and pack rites.
She listened to elders speak of old wars that never made it into history books.
She listened to Zara hack the conversation into digestible slides.
She listened, and she drew, fingers moving almost unconsciously across her tablet: the shape of the table, the curve of Eira's thoughtful frown, the way Rao's big hands clenched when someone mentioned another bombing.
Her art had always touched strangers on the internet.
Now she saw, with painful clarity, how far those lines had spread: into forest dens and city rooftops, into emergency exit drills and whispered bedtime stories, into the council of wolves sitting around her.
Her panels were no longer just hers.
They were part of a world-wide, furred, snarling conversation.
And somewhere, in the corner of a blank page, a thin figure in a cap leaned against a lamppost, watching.
Unsynced.
Waiting for the next chapter.