Chapter 64: Killing With A Closing Argument

Lucien rolls his neck carefully, wincing hard at the grind of a rib that definitely shouldn’t move like that, and tells himself that it’s time to change strategy entirely.

A standard sales approach clearly isn’t landing with this particular client, not when the client in question can turn him into a projectile with nothing more than a flick of the wrist. He’s been thrown, bitten at, nearly disemboweled, and licked more times than he can currently count on his own aching fingers, and none of it, not one bit of it, has slowed her down for more than a few seconds at a time.

Fear isn’t working on her.

Flattery barely even registers.

Time to get direct, then, and see what that accomplishes.

He surveys the full damage from up on his branch. Torn earth stretching in every direction, splintered trunks scattered like matchsticks, a crater roughly his own body’s shape sitting fifty yards off from where he first landed.

He privately concludes that this is, without any real question, the single worst first date of either of his lives.

"Would you consider," he calls down, cupping both hands around his mouth, "a short break? I’d like to a different type of mediation—"

"No breaks," she cackles from below, not even glancing up. "Unless it’s bones."

"Pity. I was going to bring up the friends-with-benefits clause while we had a moment."

She grabs her own ribs, laughter cutting off sharp. "That one, I actually want to hear properly."

"Happy to discuss it in full—"

She shakes her head instead, flicking both clawed hands upward, beckoning him down rather than continuing the conversation.

"Fine," he sighs, theatrical, letting his shoulders slump dramatically. "Hope I survive this next part. Would’ve genuinely liked to get some actual use out of that clause before dying."

She cackles again, louder this time, the sound shaking a small shower of loose bark down from the branches surrounding them both.

"You could just let me win," he offers, mostly for the principle of the thing at this point. "Save us both a fair amount of trouble."

"Where’s the fun in that, exactly?" seh chuckles.

"Fair point. I withdraw the suggestion entirely. Apologies."

He takes one slow breath, smirks despite the pain, and lets every fighting instinct the blessing gave him loose all at once, muscles coiling with a certainty that doesn’t feel entirely like his own. Some deeper, older thing rising up from underneath the panic and quietly taking the wheel from him.

He drops from the branch faster than she anticipates, closing the distance before she can properly reset her stance, the forest floor blurring past beneath him in a smear of shadow. She smiles wide in response, arms spreading open, entirely untroubled by his approach, and simply takes the hit.

His fist lands square on her grinning jaw.

He follows through with absolutely everything he’s got behind it, driving her down onto one knee, fist still planted firmly against her cheek, the impact rippling out visibly through the entire forest in a pressure wave, leaves torn loose and tumbling down around them both in the pale, magical moonlight, dirt kicked up in a widening ring like a small crater forming in real time beneath their feet.

Silence follows.

He pulls his fist back carefully.

She rises slowly in response, turning to face him with fangs bared, bloodlust spiking hard and fast behind her eyes.

He stares down at his own fist for a long moment, flexing the fingers slowly like he’s genuinely checking it’s still properly attached.

Then at her, rising from the fresh crater he just put her in.

Then back at his fist again, and his whole face lights up all at once like a kid at Christmas.

"That... was... SO freaking cool," he gushes, all pretense of danger forgotten entirely. "Did you see that? The... the shockwave? The..." he immates the punch badly, "... then then the leaves flying everywhere? All of it? Come on!"

She stops dead mid-snarl, tilting her head at him in genuine confusion, the bloodlust draining visibly out of her expression completely, replaced instead by something closer to pure bewilderment.

"Sorry." He winces, sheepish about it now. "I get a little overwhelmed sometimes, in the moment, when I learn new stuff. Still fairly new to this magic thing."

He shakes himself loose, raises both fists, one still trembling faintly from adrenaline, the other smeared thick with drying blood.

"Okay. Where were we?" he asks, squaring up like a puppy volunteering enthusiastically to fight an actual god. "Oh right... I’m ready to die now."

The Beast Mother bites back a laugh so hard her whole body visibly swells with the sheer effort of containing it, shoulders shaking, one hand clamped tight over her own mouth like she’s physically trying to hold the sound in by force.

And then it breaks loose entirely, unstoppable, a laugh so massive it knocks Lucien clean off his feet from the sound alone, the noise rolling out across the entire forest in an actual, audible boom that rattles the last few loose leaves free from every tree at once.

He blinks up at the sky from flat on the forest floor as she stumbles toward him, still clutching her ribs tight, wheezing hard, actual tears gathering visibly at the corners of her eyes now.

He catches his breath, still flat on his back, watching the stars swim lazily overhead.

"You’re unlocking so many new fetishes in me right now, genuinely. Really is a pity I’ll be dead before we could explore some of them."

She cackles again, doubling over entirely this time, one knee actually buckling as she braces a clawed hand hard against a nearby tree just to stay upright.

"I’m begging you," she plead between ragged gasps. "I seriously cannot take much more of this. it hurts."

"Ah, sorry," he says, entirely unrepentant about it. "Talking’s kind of my whole thing, statisically. Kept me alive this far in life. Seems to be doing the job right now too, somehow, against all reasonable odds."

She grits her teeth hard, visibly trying to summon some fresh fury back into herself, drawing deep on several thousand years of carefully practiced menace for the effort. And settles instead for shaking a fist weakly in his direction, still wheezing throughout, the whole effect rather undermined by the tears still tracking freely down her face.

"You’re impossible! You know that?"

"Fourth person to say that to me this week," he says cheerfully, counting it off on his fingers one by one. "One was an angel. Another was an elder dragon. I’m honestly starting to think it’s less of an insult at this point and more of an actual professional title. Might get it embroidered on something official."

"Give me strength!" she wheezes, "Are you some kind of trickster god?!"

"Hm." Lucien considers, almost seriously, "That would explain a lot."

She groans at that, the sound sliding straight back into another helpless burst of laughter before she can properly stop it.

Still laughing freely, she reaches down and hauls him back up onto his feet in one easy motion, effortless as lifting a bag of flour, dusting a bit of forest debris off his shoulder afterward with something almost tender in the gesture, claws surprisingly gentle now against the bruised skin underneath.

"Fine," she says at last, wiping at one eye, then the other, visibly struggling to compose herself back into something resembling an ancient, terrifying force of nature once more. "I’ll agree to your proposal. Just... stop making me laugh, please. My ribs genuinely can’t take much more of this tonight."

"Can I at least walk you through the friends-with-benefits clause properly before we sign anything official?"

"Oh gods."

"It’s got very reasonable terms, for the record. Mutually beneficial arrangement. Flexible scheduling built right in."

She cackles again at that, begging him openly to stop now, one hand pressed flat against her own face, the other braced hard against his shoulder like she might genuinely collapse from the sheer effort of it all. "Stop. Stop, I mean it properly this time, I will start this entire fight over again purely to make you be quiet for five straight minutes."

"Counterproductive threat, that," he points out reasonably. "You’d just end up laughing again within about four minutes, anywy."

"I hate that you’re probably right about that." she wheezes.

Lucien grins, entirely too pleased with himself at this point, watching the last of her fight dissolve fully into helpless, wheezing laughter.

No more claws bared, no more bloodlust simmering underneath, just a goddess doubled over in the moonlight, genuinely undone by a man who never once, in the end, threw a second punch after the first.

He takes the quiet moment to actually look at her properly now, without the adrenaline of imminent death crowding out the view. The sheer, absurd scale of her, the way even her laughter seems to carry the weight of centuries behind it somehow, softened for just this once into something almost warm and welcoming.

She finally straightens up, catching her breath in slow, measured pulls, and studies him with fresh eyes now, something settling into place in her expression that clearly wasn’t there an hour ago.

"You know," she says, quieter now, all the earlier menace gone from her voice entirely, "in a few thousand years of existence, nobody has ever once made me laugh like this. Not once."

"High praise," he says, "from a woman who tried to eat me twice tonight already."

She extends a clawed hand toward him again, this time without any real pretense of it being a handshake gone wrong, and he takes it properly, wincing slightly at the grip anyway out of old habit.

"Deal stands," she says, firm now. "Trade route. Hunting rights. All of it, exactly as discussed."

"And the clause?"

She smirks at that, slow and genuinely dangerous, the very same smirk that started this entire ordeal in the first place, hours ago now.

"We’ll discuss terms."

And Lucient grins at that.

The deal, and considerably more than the deal, it seems, had been thoroughly won.