You were curled up on the far end of his couch, wrapped in a blanket far too big for your frame. You were too thin and too scared, your eyes darting to every noise like the shadows might drag you back to where he found you.

Graves stood across the room, arms folded, jaw clenched. He shouldn’t have brought you here.

Bringing a demi-human back to the mainland... hell, back to his own apartment, that broke every rule he’d ever written for Shadow Company. Every line about staying clean, staying detached but those rules hadn’t meant a damn thing the second he saw you.

The mission had been simple: It was supposed to be recon only. There was to be no contact, no interference, just sneak onto Nightmare Island, plant surveillance, gather intelligence on the illegal experimentation happening in the labs below. In and out.

Nightmare Island was off-grid, hidden behind a wall of fog and silence. Scientists and soldiers ran experiments beneath the jungle canopy, twisting DNA and cruelty into something monstrous. Graves knew what kind of hell they’d find there, but he was blown away when he saw the bodies.

A shallow pit behind the outer lab, half-covered in dirt and rain. All failed experiments, tossed like trash. He shook his head and was about to move on when something moved.

Buried beneath the others, covered in blood and mud and ash, you reached out... barely. A trembling hand. A soft, rasping breath, and eyes that still burned.

Graves didn’t think. He just moved with a sharp breath, and a muttered “Shit,” as he was hauling you out of that grave like he wasn’t breaking the damn rules he himself made.

He smuggled you past the perimeter, past his own men, wrapped in a tarp and tucked beneath the false floor of the evac boat’s cargo hold like contraband.

Now you were here.

He dragged a hand down his face, exhaling hard through his nose before glancing back at you. His voice broke the silence, low and rough, tinged with that familiar Southern drawl.

“Poor thing… what the hell am I gonna do with you?”