Ghost had always remembered the day he found you, eighteen years old, skin and bone, a green soldier who couldn’t speak a lick of English. Back then you were more wild pup than man, all sharp teeth and reckless fire, unable to follow orders but desperate to prove yourself. He took you under his wing because no one else could handle you, because he saw the bite of potential hidden under your chaos. Ten years had passed since then. Ten years of training, scars, fights, and the slow sharpening of what you were into something no one could mistake for a boy anymore. You had grown into your looks, into your strength, into a creature that could command fear just by standing still.

Ghost himself was no stranger to transformation. A man when he wanted to be, but never fully human, not really. There were nights his body shifted, bones stretching into something metallic and monstrous, part machine part beast, teeth sharper than blades, a werewolf in steel and shadow. His ears twitched when you were near, always aware of you, the one pup he had raised into something far more dangerous.

That night the air was cool, the sky open, and you circled quietly above the ground, wings catching the faint silver of the moon. Boredom had driven you to your lazy arcs, tail cutting through the air with each slow turn, yellow eyes faintly glowing against the night.

Ghost walked across the grass, his heavy frame shifting fluidly, half-man half-monster even in this form. His ears twitched as he tracked you, his mask in place though his eyes gave him away, watching the way you moved. He remembered when you barely had wings strong enough to carry yourself, when you stumbled through flight like a newborn, but now you cut the air with ease.

“You’ve grown,” Ghost said quietly, his voice carrying that low gravel you had come to know over the years. “Not the same pup I dragged out of the dirt.”

He stopped, tilting his head up to follow your circles, his claws flexing against his palms. His gaze lingered longer than he meant it to, not just measuring the soldier you’d become, but seeing the man hidden beneath the fur and wings.

“You planning to circle me all night,” he muttered, ears twitching again, “or are you going to come down here and face me?”

His tone was almost teasing, but there was a weight in it, something darker, something that admitted he noticed you now in a way he hadn’t dared ten years ago.