[BL] I Didn't Sign Up For This-Chapter 46: In Which I Learn Trust Is Expensive (And We Can’t Afford It)

Chapter 46: In Which I Learn Trust Is Expensive (And We Can’t Afford It)

The next three hours were weird in a way I wasn’t expecting.

Not dangerous-weird. Just... domestic-weird.

Mara assigned us a corner of the warehouse with a folding table and some chairs that looked like they’d been stolen from a high school cafeteria. She brought us coffee, actual good coffee, not the burnt motor oil most people called coffee, and then proceeded to explain their entire operational structure like we were new employees getting orientation.

"We have seven active cells in the tristate area," she said, spreading out a map covered in color-coded pins. "Red pins are confirmed Covenant activity. Blue are rift sites we’re monitoring. Yellow are neutral zones where we’ve established treaties with local supernatural entities."

"Treaties," I repeated. "With demons?"

"Not all demons are Covenant." She glanced at Azryth. "Some of them just want to exist without causing apocalypses, we work with those ones."

"How progressive of you," Azryth said dryly.

"We’re pragmatists." Henrik had joined us, carrying a laptop that looked like it had survived several wars. "Killing everything supernatural would leave the mortal realm defenseless when bigger threats emerge, better to have allies than to be surrounded by enemies."

He wasn’t wrong, but the casual way he said it, like alliances with demons were standard operating procedure, was still throwing me off.

"So what’s the actual plan here?" I asked. "We hide in your underground bunker until the Covenant gets bored?"

"The Covenant doesn’t get bored." Mara pulled up a chair. "They get persistent, which is why we’re not just hiding you, we’re going on offense."

"Offense how?"

"The Covenant is opening rifts deliberately." She pointed to three red pins clustered on the east side of the city. "Small ones, testing the dimensional stability, they’re building toward something bigger."

"A nexus," Azryth said, leaning forward to study the map. "Multiple small rifts create resonance, once enough are open, they can force a larger tear."

"Exactly." Henrik tapped the laptop screen, pulling up what looked like seismic readings. "We’re detecting dimensional tremors, and the pattern suggests they’re aiming for a major rift event within the next two weeks."

"Two weeks." My stomach dropped. "What happens when a major rift opens?"

"Depends on the size and location." Mara’s expression was grim. "Small one? Maybe a few dozen demons cross over. Large one? Could be hundreds, thousands if they time it right."

"And we’re supposed to stop this how?"

"By closing the feeder rifts before they can build enough resonance." She pointed to the three red pins. "We hit them systematically, cut off the Covenant’s anchor points, and disrupt their timeline."

"You want us to be rift-closing enforcers," Azryth said.

"I want you to save your own lives while coincidentally preventing a demonic invasion." Henrik smiled slightly. "Mutually beneficial arrangement."

Through the binding, I felt Azryth’s skepticism. He was running calculations, looking for the trap, the hidden angle.

"What’s the catch?" I asked. "Because there’s always a catch with these things."

Mara and Henrik exchanged another one of those loaded looks, the kind that said they’d discussed this extensively before we arrived.

"The catch," Mara said carefully, "is that closing rifts requires a warden actively channeling energy into the seal, and most wardens can’t sustain that kind of output for more than a few seconds without burning out."

"But Riven can," Azryth said, understanding clicking into place. "Because he’s drawing power from our bond."

"We think so, yes." Henrik pulled up another screen, energy readings, charts I didn’t fully understand. "Standard warden output peaks around three hundred units, your combined signature during that pulse last night registered at fifteen hundred."

I stared at the numbers. "That’s... a lot more."

"That’s five times normal capacity." Mara leaned forward. "Which means you could theoretically close rifts that would require entire teams of wardens working in rotation. You could do it alone, or rather, together."

"You want to weaponize our binding," I said flatly.

"No, we want to utilize your unique capabilities to prevent mass casualties." Henrik’s voice was firm. "There’s a difference."

"Is there?"

"Yes." He didn’t back down. "Because we’re asking, not compelling, you can walk away right now and no one here will stop you."

The scary thing was, I believed him.

These weren’t the hunters from stories, the fanatics who killed anything supernatural on sight. These were people who’d figured out that survival required nuance, that sometimes the monster you knew was better than the chaos you didn’t.

It was almost reasonable.

Which made it more unsettling somehow.

"I need to talk to Azryth," I said. "Alone."

"Of course." Mara stood. "There’s a smaller office in the back, take your time."

She led us to what had probably been a supervisor’s office before the warehouse was abandoned. It had a desk, two chairs, and a window that looked out over the main floor.

The moment the door closed, Azryth pulled me close.

"Your thoughts?" he asked quietly.

"I think they’re being honest about immediate intentions." I rested my forehead against his shoulder. "But I also think they want more than they’re saying."

"Agreed." His hand moved in slow circles on my back. "The study condition—’non-invasive interviews and energy readings’—that’s broader than it sounds, they’re asking for access to fundamental binding mechanics."

"Which could be replicated."

"Or weaponized in ways we can’t predict." He pulled back enough to meet my eyes. "If they figure out how to force stable demon-warden bindings, they’ve created a new class of supernatural enforcers."

"Prison guards," I said, remembering what Henrik had said earlier. "My bloodline’s specialty."

"Precisely." His jaw tightened. "I don’t think they’d use it maliciously, but good intentions don’t prevent consequences."

"So we say no."

"We can’t." He said it simply, pragmatically. "We need their resources, their safe house, their intelligence network, their ability to move us without triggering every tracker in the city. We’re exposed, Riven. Dangerously so."

"So we say yes and deal with the consequences later."

"We say yes with conditions." He released me, started pacing the small space. "We agree to help close the feeder rifts, we agree to the studying after the immediate crisis. But we maintain veto power over how the information is used, any binding replication attempts require our explicit approval."

"You think they’ll agree to that?"

"I think they need us more than we need them right now." His eyes met mine. "Your pulse made you the most visible warden on the continent, the Covenant will be sending their best operatives. Henrik and Mara know that, they need you alive, which means they need me cooperative."

"So we negotiate from a position of strength we don’t actually have."

"We negotiate from a position of necessity that benefits both parties." He stopped pacing. "But Riven, you need to be certain, once we commit to closing rifts with them, we’re declaring sides. The Covenant will escalate, other factions will take notice, then this gets significantly more dangerous."

I thought about the pulse last night, the sigil flaring, the feeling of dozens of spirits converging on our location.

We were already in danger, had been since I touched that stupid amulet.

This was just... making the danger useful.

"Okay," I said. "Let’s do it, with conditions."

"Are you certain?"

"No." I managed a weak smile. "But I’m deciding anyway."

He kissed me, brief, grounding, the binding hummed approval. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

"Then let’s go negotiate with the professional monster hunters," he said. "This should be entertaining."

***

It was, in fact, entertaining.

Henrik listened to our conditions with the expression of someone who’d expected exactly this response. Mara took notes on a tablet, nodding occasionally.

When Azryth finished outlining our terms—help with the rifts, conditional study access, veto power over replication, temporary alliance only—Henrik leaned back in his chair.

"Acceptable," he said simply.

"That’s it?" I blinked. "No negotiation?"

"You’re offering to close dimensional tears that would otherwise require sacrificing multiple hunters to seal temporarily. I’d be an idiot to haggle over study conditions." He extended his hand to Azryth. "We have a deal."

They shook.

Mara turned to me. "We leave for the safehouse in four hours. Pack light, the wards there are old-school, no modern tech, no internet, very limited communication with the outside."

"So we’re going into supernatural witness protection."

"Essentially." She smiled. "Welcome to the underground, Riven. It’s not glamorous, but you’re significantly harder to kill here."

"That’s the selling point? ’Harder to kill’?"

"In our line of work, that’s the best you can hope for."

Fair enough.

We spent the next hour going over logistics. Routes, contingency plans, what to do if the Covenant breached the safehouse (spoiler: nothing good). Henrik’s people were efficient, thorough, and deeply paranoid in ways I was starting to appreciate.

Azryth made calls back to his own people, arranging coverage for Valek Industries, moving assets into protected accounts, essentially preparing for an extended absence that might become permanent depending on how badly this went.

I sat in the corner and tried not to think about the fact that my life had become "preparing for extended supernatural warfare."

The binding hummed steadily, calm, settled, like it approved of this choice.

Or maybe it just approved of being near Azryth.

Hard to tell sometimes.