I stay exactly where I am, hunched low on the table, knees bent, spear haft resting diagonal across my thighs, kite shield angled lazy but ready.

  Then he finally speaks. “You burned a warehouse without sanction. Started a blaze that’s still lighting half the district. City watch is crawling around, asking questions. Crimson will hear about this by morning, if they haven’t already. And you sit there asking for pocket change and calling us cowards.”

  Master doesn’t blink. “I’m asking for what I spent and what I earned. The manifest’s real. The Cartel’s hurting. Crimson’s proxies just lost a fortune in alchemicals and whatever else was in those crates. You wanted them squeezed, you got squeezed. Now pay up, or admit you’re too small to play in the big leagues.”

  I shift my weight forward a fraction, enough to make the table creak under me. My tail lashes once, slow and deliberate and one of the guards makes a small noise in his throat, hand twitching toward his hilt. My eyes snap to him instant, fangs flashing in a wider grin and he instantly freezes

  The guild master exhales through his nose. His gaze flicks to the pouch at Master’s belt, then to me. He reaches into his own vest, pulls a small coin purse, counts out one gold piece with deliberate slowness, and slides it down the table.

  “There’s your gold,” he says, voice flat. “And the logs are worth the standard rate for high risk extraction. Thirty silver each, plus hazard. Sixty total. Take it or leave it.”

  Master doesn’t move to touch the coin. He just leans back again, one hand dropping to rest on my calf where my boot’s planted on the table beside his chair. “It is a start,” he says. “But we both know the Cartel bleed means Sapphire gains ground. Means you owe more than pocket change for turning a proxy war into your advantage.”

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  He scratches behind my ear whilst the guild master just stares at us, at Master’s bored calm, at me purring and purring under the scratch. “You’re impossible.” he says.

  Master shrugs. “We’re effective.”

  A long silence stretches but eventually the guild master simply nods. “Sixty silver now. Another forty when the Cartel pulls back and if Crimson comes knocking, you two handle the knock.” He reaches under the table, pulls a small lockbox, counts out the coins with precision and simply slides the stack across.

  Master takes it without looking away. “Deal.”

  I finally straighten a fraction, still crouched and still very much on the table but leaning back now.

  The guild master stands. “Get off my table.”

  The guild master rises from his chair as if he is trying to look authoritative, the way men in fancy posh clothes with "titles" always do.

  He stops a pace from the table’s edge, close enough I can smell some masking scent in his hair. His hand lifts slow, palm up.

  My reaction is instant.

  I surge upright in a flash of motion. My Lips peel back from fangs in a hiss that starts low and builds into a rattling snarl, ears flattened razor flat.

  Master’s chair scrapes back. Steel whispers free of its sheath, the clan redstone noble sword.“I didn’t give you permission to touch her, now did I?”.

  The guild master’s eyes flick to the blade, he recongises the design right away, eyes now clearly confused on whom we are.

  Master doesn’t take his eyes off the guild master, doesn’t even blink. But his next words are clearly for me, pitched soft, intimate, like we’re the only two people in the world. “Unless you wish to feel someone else’s hand on you for once in your life.”

  My hiss cuts off mid breath,“Touch me,” I hiss “and I’ll make sure every hand that ever comes near you again remembers what my claws feel like first.”

  The guild master exhales through his nose, slow, like he’s forcing calm. “We’re done here,” he says, voice tight. “Take your coin. Take your leave.”