You and Simon Riley had been married long before the rest of Task Force 141 ever realized what the quiet glances meant.

To them, you were just another lethal operator. Efficient. Unshakable. A ghost in your own right. To Simon, you were home. The only place he ever let the mask slip.

Years ago, the two of you had stood in a dim chapel with no guests, no grand speeches—just dog tags pressed into each other’s palms and vows spoken low enough that only you could hear. War didn’t pause for love. It just learned to live around it.

Until the mission that took you.

The intel had been simple: infiltrate a black-site laboratory rumored to be experimenting on biological weapons. You volunteered for recon. Simon had argued, just once. You’d smiled at him the way you always did before a dangerous op.

“I’ll be back before you miss me.”

You never came back.

The building was found half-burned, abandoned. No bodies. No prisoners. No sign of you.

Simon searched for over a year. Pulled strings. Threatened people. Broke rules. Broke himself. Eventually, even he had to accept the likelihood that you were gone.

Dead.

He buried you without a body.

Years passed. The grief never softened—it just calcified.

Then the government made its announcement.

A “new species” discovered in remote regions. Aggressive. Highly adaptive. Not human—but disturbingly close. They were being captured, studied, repurposed. Some were handed over to elite task forces as biological assets.

Task Force 141 received one of the worst.

It arrived in a reinforced transport cage, snarling and clawing at the metal. Over seven feet tall when fully upright. Blackened, scaled skin stretched over muscle too dense to be natural. Horn-like protrusions curved back from its skull. Clawed hands. A tail that lashed when agitated. Its eyes glowed faintly in low light—almost ember-like.

No official name. Just a designation.

Price gave the order plainly. “Riley. You’ll handle it.”

Simon didn’t hesitate. He stepped into the containment ring day after day while the others watched from behind reinforced glass. He spoke to it. Provoked it. Tested it. Fought it when necessary. The thing hated him. Or seemed to.

But it never tried to kill him outright.

Weeks passed.

He started noticing patterns. The way it stilled when he spoke instead of anyone else. The way its breathing shifted when he stepped closer. The way those eyes tracked him—not like prey.

Like recognition.

Then he pushed too far.

One afternoon, Simon entered the ring alone. No shock restraints active. No sedation.

He challenged it.

It snapped.

Alarms blared as the creature lunged, slamming him into the mat with enough force to crack concrete beneath them. The base went into lockdown instantly—steel doors slamming shut, red lights flooding the room.

Simon’s knife skittered out of reach.

The beast towered over him, claws pinning his shoulders. Its breath was hot, ragged, furious against his mask. One strike. That’s all it would take. It could rip through bone like paper.

Simon didn’t fight.

He just stared up into its eyes.

And the world stopped.

The rage was there. The pain. The confusion.

But beneath it—

Him.

Recognition.

Memory.

You.

He knew those eyes. He had memorized them in candlelight, in combat, in quiet mornings before deployment. He had seen them soften only for him.

His voice broke for the first time in years.

“…Luv?”

You froze.

Its grip loosened slightly. A low, almost pained sound vibrated in its chest. Not a growl. Something closer to a fractured whimper.

And suddenly the lab made sense.

The black-site. The disappearance. The missing bodies.

Your claws trembled against his chest plate. Your breathing shifted again—less murderous, more desperate. Like you were fighting something inside yourself. And turning them into the beasts.

The government wasn’t discovering monsters in the wild.

They were making them.

Kidnapping soldiers. Civilians. Anyone useful.

Experimenting. Reshaping. Weaponizing.

And you were one of the victims.