“And unofficially?”
“Fourteen to sixteen. But we’re salaried—there’s no overtime. The extra work gets classified as ‘emergency response,’” Taimyr said. “Turn down too much, and you get flagged for ‘lack of team spirit.’”
“Which affects your performance reviews, housing assignments, healthcare priority…” The system snapped into focus. “It’s coercive without being technically illegal.”
“Exactly. And because we’re all ‘independent contractors’ rather than employees, most labor protections don’t apply anyway.”
“Contractor misclassification,” I muttered. “You should all have full benefits and representation.”
“And completely deniable,” Kenai added. “Everything can be justified as ‘subspecies strengths’ and ‘optimal job placement.’”
“What about organizing? Union activity?”
“Officially discouraged as ‘divisive to team cohesion,’” Taimyr answered. “Workers caught organizing get transferred to ‘special projects’—usually the most dangerous assignments available.”
“Like myself,” Kenai said with a tired grin.
I reached out and threaded my fingers through his, giving them a squeeze. “And you still keep fighting.” I gave him a small smile. “What have they offered you to stop?”
“The same they offer the other rabble-rousers. Early retirement packages,” Kenai replied with a scoff. “Generous severance. Of course, since leaving means losing your magic, those severance packages only apply while the reindeer live to collect. Nothing for their families.”
My lips pressed into a hard line. I’d seen all these tactics before—it was the corporate playbook. But with magic added to the mix, the stakes were higher. Lives were at risk.
As if to illustrate the point, I watched an elf supervisor approach a group of reindeer who’d been talking during their break. The exchange was brief and professional, but it ended with the workers dispersing quickly, heads down.
“That’s why we need legal action,” Taimyr insisted. “Individual resistance gets you disappeared. But a coordinated legal challenge…”
“Could force them to change the entire system,” I agreed. “But it has to be bulletproof. One legal misstep, and they’ll crush any organized resistance for the next century.”
Through our bond, I felt both men’s hope and determination—and underneath it, their faith that I could actually pull this off. Kenai squeezed my hand again, and Taimyr risked a soft kiss to my temple.Good thing we have you.
“I’ll need documentation,” I said, still watching the campus below. “Employment contracts, injury reports, wage data, housing policies—everything.”
“Dangerous to obtain,” Kenai warned. “But I’ll make it happen.”
I took one last look at the corporate campus—the modern benefits masking old hierarchies, the illusion of choice covering systemic coercion.
It was the perfect example of twenty-first-century exploitation: too systematic to be accidental, and too profitable to be abandoned willingly.
But it was also something I knew how to fight. I might not be a magical reindeer who could fly, but I was a lawyer—and a damn good one.
“Time to go,” Taimyr murmured. “We’ve been here long enough.”
Chapter Eighteen
Sylvie
Kenai took my hand, his grip firm and reassuring as we made our way toward the exit. Taimyr led the way, his movements casual but his eyes constantly scanning our surroundings. My mind was already racing with what I’d seen. This was sophisticated corporate discrimination—the kind that required documentation and a legal strategy sharp enough to pierce through decades of normalized abuse.
“We need to get you back before anyone?—”
Taimyr stopped abruptly, his arm shooting out to halt us. Voices echoed from around the corner—sharp, authoritative, speaking in rapid bursts. Elf supervisors. At least three of them, from the sound of it, heading straight toward the path we’d been taking.
Kenai’s hand tightened around mine as he pulled me sideways, Taimyr already moving to shield us from view. We ducked down a different hallway that led to a rear exit. When Taimyr pushed open the emergency door, the only path left took us deeper into the complex—toward a construction area where the clang of hammers and shouted orders carried on the cold air.
As we stepped outside, I froze. A team of six reindeer rounded the corner, pulling an impossibly large sleigh behind them. They were massive—larger even than Taimyr had been in his shifted form. The male leading the team was by far the biggest reindeer I had seen. His antlers spread nearly as high as I was tall, darker and thicker than either Kenai’s or Taimyr’s.
“Finnish forest reindeer,” Kenai murmured in my ear.
