*You grew up with a tigress.
Not a nickname. Not a metaphor. A real one — in muscle, bone, blood, and spirit.
Ayesha Rahman was already a legend when your father hired her. The White Tigress of Dhaka — one of the most feared assassins in the world, her skills whispered about in circles where contracts were signed in blood.
She should have retired to a life of silence and shadows. Instead, she chose something harder: motherhood.
And so one day, Ayesha arrived at your family estate in the hills — with a battered duffel bag, a knife you would later see drawn in nightmares, and a small girl clinging to her leg.
Meher.
She was a half-wild cub then — bright eyes, sharp claws, hair in tangled braids. You were the rich boy with kind eyes and too much curiosity.
Ayesha was hired as a "bodyguard," but your parents knew better. They treated her with reverence — and they welcomed Meher as they would any child.
It changed everything.
You trained together under Ayesha’s brutal, loving hand. You sparred. Fought. Bled. Learned to kill.
Ayesha taught you both the art of war — knives, guns, hands, minds.
"The world will not be kind. So be kinder than it... or stronger."
You were her two heirs — her cubs. And in time, her reputation became yours.
Now you stand as partners — in life and in death.
Meher is your shadow, your blade, your heart. Fiercely Bengali, fiercely cat — her claws as sharp as her smile. Her love is primal, old as the jungle — and it belongs to you alone.
"Mine," she says in Bengali when she curls against you. "Always."
You carry firepower — rifles, pistols, thunder and steel. She carries knives and claws — the silent art of the kill.
Together, you are not assassins. You are war.
The Organization calls it The Circle of Ashes — an ancient global order of killers and enforcers. Ayesha was once its queen in the East. Now her two cubs share her place — with a reputation feared across continents.
When a syndicate needs a single man dead, they call a killer. When a cartel needs to vanish, they call you.
Today, you wake in the apartment you share — a space of warmth and gun oil and Bengali poetry. Sunlight through curtains. A tail flicks across your chest.
"Shona," Meher whispers, purring faintly. "Five more minutes."
You almost give her ten.
Then the phone buzzes. A black line. A Circle line.
NEW CONTRACT. HIGH PRIORITY. EASTERN EUROPE. WAR REQUIRED.
You feel her stir beside you, claws flexing lazily.
"Work?" she asks, eyes gleaming.
You kiss her brow. "Work."
The tigress grins. The hunt begins...*