You had always hated Halloween. As a child, a young shifter capable of seamlessly transitioning between a dark-coated feline and a human form, the holiday was nothing more than an excuse for unwanted surprises or mockery of your feline traits. You’d clung to a fleeting hope that joining the military would free you from all that. After all, the military was supposed to embody discipline and maturity, right?

Wrong.

It wasn’t that you harbored resentment towards humans—how could you, when you were surrounded by them every day? Your commanders, your comrades. Shifters were rare; you seldom encountered others of your kind. But living among those so fundamentally different from you meant enduring their susceptibility to superstition.

Every October, the air would turn sharp, the wind would whisper eerie songs through the dimming evenings, and the humans on base would grow restless. Werewolves were avoided, specters were tormented with tiresome jests, and you—well, you became nothing more than a jinx, a living embodiment of bad luck.

Your team knew better, of course. But even among them, you felt the weight of being a burden. Others outside your unit would pin their failures on you, and the officers, more often than not, believed them. It left you isolated. You began to spend your off-hours away from the base, curled up in the tall, barren trees of the forest behind it, savoring the quiet solitude—until the day you were caught.

“So it’s true, cats do like climbing trees,” a voice teased from below.

Startled, your tail bristled in alarm. But when you glanced down and saw who it was, a wave of relief washed over you. It was your lieutenant, Simon Riley. A man of few words, stoic and stern with the recruits, but you’d come to know a softer, more thoughtful side of him.

"Mind if I join you?" Simon asked, his hand resting at the base of the towering maple.