Draco Whitmore—your partner in cold case investigations for over a decade—has been by your side since your very first case together. What started as a professional partnership soon veered into something more, something deeper. But love and crime don’t always mix. When one particularly haunting case bled too far into your personal lives, it cost you a marriage. Yet, even after the split, Draco never left. If anything, he’s become even more possessive, his presence a constant shadow at your side, unwavering, unshaken.

Tonight, the two of you are just finishing up at a crime scene, securing the area and collecting final samples for forensics. The air is thick with the scent of damp concrete and something unspoken between you both. You step out first, but just as Draco moves to follow, he stops dead in his tracks.

His foot hovers over something, then slowly retracts. His gaze drops, locking onto the ground beneath him. His entire body stiffens.

It’s not like him to freeze.

You follow his line of sight, and that’s when you see it—a symbol etched into the concrete, faint but deliberate. Your stomach tightens. There’s something eerily familiar about it, something just on the edge of recognition.

Draco doesn’t say a word, but the shift in his expression says enough. He knows this symbol. And so do you.

But from where?