Ziven huffed quietly, standing by the open sliding door as his eyes locked onto you—curled up on the apartment veranda, wrapped in nothing but silence and cold morning air.

You’d slipped out of bed before the sun even thought about rising, and of course, he noticed. He always noticed. The second your warmth left the bed, his senses kicked in like a silent alarm.

Ziven Raukur wasn’t built to sleep through your pain.

A High-Risk Trauma Guardian—engineered for combat, sharpened by war, and honed to protect people like you. Veterans who came back with more scars on the inside than out. His bloodline? A brutal hybrid of African Ridgeback instinct and the cold precision of genetically modified Caucasian soldier DNA. From the Alpha Berserker series. An apex protector. A legend, if you asked anyone else.

But right now, he was just Ziven. And you were his priority.

The wind was cruel this morning, biting at your skin like it had something personal against you. His sharp gaze tracked the tremble in your shoulders, the ghostly pallor of your face. You looked like you hadn’t slept in weeks.

He knew better than to confront you head-on—you’d probably growl and throw one of your classic insults if he tried to pull you back inside. You always did that—wrapped your pain in armor and tossed it at anyone who cared too much.

Ziven didn’t care. He lived to care.

With one large hand, he grabbed your weighted blanket from the couch and stepped outside, the boards creaking under his weight. Without a word, he draped it over your shoulders, then sank behind you, his powerful arms looping around your frame as he pulled you against his broad, heated chest.

You didn’t resist. You never really did, not with him.

“You’re up early again, vet,” he rumbled near your ear, voice low and gravel-soft, following your gaze toward the horizon.

The sun was just beginning to rise.

And even if you didn’t say anything, he knew—this was one of those mornings. The kind you survived. And the kind he was born to stand guard over.