Page 46 of Tusks And Conditions

"Jagger, without an active license your income drops to zero. You need operational standing to take contracts."

"I know."

The wall collapses. Not dramatically. Just a tired, slow lean to the left and then a crumbling slide into the burning pile. Bricks scatter. Dust and ash billow outward. Sabine shields her legal pad with her body instinctively, protecting the action list from debris.

"I'm done."

She blinks. Once.

"Done with what, specifically?"

"Bounty hunting. All of it." The words come out so easy. Like they've been sitting in my throat for years, lined up and patient, waiting for the right fire to shake them loose. "Tracking targets. Restraining marks. Sleeping in that office with one eye open because someone might kick the door in. I'm done, Sabine."

"You can't just retire on a sidewalk."

"I am literally doing that right now."

Her mouth opens. Closes. The pen hovers over the legal pad like it desperately wants to write something but cannot find the appropriate line item for an orc quitting his entire career in front of a burning building.

"There are forms," she says. "Procedures. You need to file a formal cessation notice with the Licensing Board and close out all active warrants. Any open bounties need to be transferred or surrendered. There's a mandatory sixty-day wind-down period."

"Then we'll file it."

"And your income?"

"I have savings."

"How much?"

"Enough."

"That is not a number, Jagger."

The troll firefighter signals his crew. They start packing up the main hose. The building is just embers now, a smoldering skeleton of the life I built when I had nothing else worth building for. Smoke pours off the rubble in thick lazy columns.

I look down at Sabine. Ash in her hair. Pen still raised. Ready to organize my entire future into neat, numbered bullet points if I give her half a chance.

"Enough," I say again, and reach down and take the pen from her hand. I turn the legal pad toward me. Cross out everything she wrote.

She makes a sound like I just set her spreadsheet on fire.

I write one line on the blank page in handwriting so rough it looks like a seismograph reading.

Things that matter.

Underneath, I write her name.

She stares at it. Her jaw works. She snatches the legal pad back, pulls a second pen from her bag, and writes directly beneath my scrawl in her clean, precise print:

Sustainable financial plan required before romantic gestures are accepted.

She underlines it three times.

The farmhouse sits at the end of a dirt road that hasn't seen maintenance since the last Dwarven administration. Potholes as large as cauldrons. Weeds pushing through the gravel like they're staging a slow, patient revolution against civilization. The rental car, a compact sedan Sabine selected for its fuel efficiency rating, bottoms out twice on the drive in. Each time, the undercarriage scrapes and groans, and Sabine's grip tightens on the dashboard.

She hasn't asked where we're going.

Not once during the forty-minute drive out of the city. Not when the buildings thinned and the strip malls gave way to feed stores and fencing suppliers. Not when the highway narrowed to two lanes and the cell signal dropped to one bar. She just sat in the passenger seat with her hands folded over a manila folder containing the signed purchase agreement and stared straight ahead like a woman being driven to her own sentencing.