Samuel isn’t the first boy Geir kissed—that was a human from the packed and unruly school down the block from the Brightlove house, with whom he had played as a small child and come to feel strangely about as he grew. That kiss had been mutual, but the two had been disturbed by it and had never spoken again. Geir thinks about that a lot, throughout the day that he realized that he was going to kiss the wolf. When he realized that the kiss was an inevitability, and that he must be prepared for the worst to come of it.
But in the evening, when they have finished with their studies and stolen away together into the House’s closed library like they do most nights, he ceases to worry, and it happens naturally. He plants his hands against the bookshelf on which Samuel is reading, and they look at each other, and they kiss. It’s awkward, with one’s lupine snout and the other’s raptorial beak, but they make it work. Afterward, Samuel pulls a book off the shelf and slaps Geir with its open pages, playfully and shyly, and it will be some weeks before they kiss again, but in the moment both laugh and sit down together on the floor.
It is a year yet before Samuel will lead the movement for emancipation, with Geir as his lieutenant. This is when they start to discuss the issues that will lead to it. Or, rather, Samuel discusses them, while Geir, who is not quite civic-minded enough to hold all the pieces in his mind at once, quietly fawns.
The barbatus zoan is tall—nearly his adult height already—but thin, and has not quite begun to become strong, but he has been increasingly physical. He jogs the neighborhood streets in the hours that he is allowed out of the facility, he takes easily to whatever games the others invite him to play, and he does not hesitate to throw a measly punch when someone makes him angry. And he is getting made angry more and more often. Sometimes for things people do to him; more often for things he sees them do to others. The caretakers and teachers and counsellors—and sometimes the police—don’t always agree that he was acting in anyone else’s defense, and often on reflection he isn’t sure himself. Part of the reason he loves Samuel, part of the reason he wants to be with him all the time, is because Samuel knows what makes Geir fight, he can suggest a framework for fairness that makes more sense than anything the teachers try to impart. In the past months, Geir has started fewer fights over a look he thought a human gave another Brightlove zoan, or the sounds someone made when eating. And more over name-calling, bullying, and snitching.
To the caretakers, that doesn’t mark any change in Geir’s behavior. To Samuel, it means everything.
In the library, Geir tells Samuel he will be at his side forever.
Don’t say that, Samuel says. We don’t know if we’ll believe the same things in ten years.
That doesn’t make sense to Geir. He can’t imagine coming to feel differently from Samuel. But he accepts the proscription, and they continue to sit together in peace.

***

When Grouch entered the storage room, he left his retinue at the door and came alone. The smoldering fury Geir had seen from across the basement was gone, replaced by the half-lidded, calculating look he’d worn before the defeat. Up close he was an unimpressive figure: aging, unkempt, angular but soft. He wore a nondescript button-up shirt and hooded jacket, over khakis and old sneakers. His hairline was receding.
“You lost me a lot of money today, bird,” he said. “And if you ask me, that was the point. Not whatever you won. Not the satisfaction.”
Geir was quiet.
“The fight was to send me a message,” Grouch continued. “From who?”
“Just me,” Geir said. He hadn’t anticipated how much it would hurt to talk.
“Just you. Nobody knows you. You’re not one of the big orgs. A message doesn’t mean anything coming from just you.”
“It’s still just me.”
Grouch glowered.
“Then what was the message?”
“That I’m looking for work,” Geir said.
The human was unamused.
“You want me to do you a favor when you put one of my earners in the hospital.”
“You put him in a fighting ring.”
“I’m not negotiating with you.”
“I can do everything your zoans do, and I’ll do it for room and board.”
“Do you think this is a joke?”
“I took a beating. I’m pretty serious. You’ve seen what I can do. I’m an asset. Dump me on the street, I’ll find out who your competitors are and I’ll be their asset. Take me on and I’ll work off whatever I lost you.”
“Or I could shoot you.”
“You could.”
Grouch mulled it over, his face a mask of disdain.
“You’ll pay,” he said. “Everything you lost and more. Once you have, I’ll decide whether you owe more. If I find out you’re working for someone, I make you put a bullet in your brain.”
“Understood.”
The door closed back after Grouch left, shutting Geir in the dark again. They left him there for the rest of the night, until well into the morning, when the door opened again. This time it was Left, the rhinoceros zoan, who entered.
Left wasted no time, but punched Geir hard in the face without a word. Amidst the blinding pain and flashing lights, Geir felt himself being slung over the bigger zoan’s shoulder, before he passed out.