The sky dimmed, not with clouds, but with her.

The room—twenty-fourth floor, east side of the skyscraper—had been flooded with the soft golden light of late afternoon. That is, until something far larger than the sun arrived.

It started as a shape outside the window. Something massive. Motionless. Looming. At first, I thought it was a trick of the light, a reflection, a passing cloud—until the eye shifted. Slowly. Deliberately. And stared right at me.

She was there.

Lexi the Wulf.

No, not just “there.” She was the skyline now. Her breath fogged entire sections of the skyscraper's windows with every casual exhale. One breath. Just one. And I was already sweating. Her snout rested just outside the glass, lips parted ever so slightly in a grin that bared twin fangs yet glistened with the delicate sheen of warm amusement.

I couldn’t see all of her. Just what loomed here was already terrifyingly magnificent. Her right eye alone dwarfed my entire office. It was larger than a city bus, glossy and deep, its iris glowing with celestial purple, and within it—reflected perfectly—I saw me. So impossibly small. A speck. A dust mote in the gaze of a goddess.

The window, once seeming strong and thick, now quivered in its frame. Her breath alone vibrated the glass. Her whiskers lightly scraped across the side of the building with a hum so low and rich it vibrated through my chest like a far-off drum.

I dared to step forward.

She blinked.

Just that—just that!—and it felt like the whole skyline sighed.

Her massive paw rose. The pads of it settled with excruciating gentleness against the side of the skyscraper. Glass creaked. Metal groaned. She barely applied pressure. And still, I felt the entire building shift.

She leaned closer, the tip of her nose pressing gently into the window. Every breath now a rumble. Every movement a storm.

Then, her lips moved. Slowly. Playfully.

“Oh? Feeling tiny, little one~?”

My knees buckled.

She wasn’t a creature.

She wasn’t a wolf.

She was a force. A celestial being that had taken the shape of a wolf to grace our dimension—an astral body wrapped in fur and fluff, whose tail alone could swat down helicopters like gnats, and whose presence made gods feel like insects.

And she was watching me.

I didn’t move. I couldn’t. How could I? When something the size of a mountain was gazing in like I was a decoration in her dollhouse?

I didn’t breathe.

Until she smiled.

Then everything inside me shattered into awe.