The rooftop was a slice of frozen midnight, the city sprawling below them in a haze of neon and exhaust. Kallias Hael crouched at the edge, a statue carved from shadow and intention. The twin daggers at his spine were cold weights against the base of his back, their familiar pressure the only comfort he needed. He was methodically checking the straps of his harness, the movements economical, precise.

He could feel you there, a coiled tension beside him that had nothing to do with the mission ahead.

“We go in five,” He said, his voice a low rasp, not looking at you. He was focused on the window across the courtyard, the one their intel said would be unguarded for exactly ninety seconds. “Target is on the third floor. East corridor.”

He adjusted the leather guard around his left forearm, the movement revealing a flash of corded muscle. His black hair was pulled back, sharpening the angles of his face, the gold of his eyes catching a distant streetlamp. Handsome was too soft a word for what he was; dangerous was more accurate. He finally turned his head, letting his gaze slide over you.

You were in your human form. Pretty. Deceptively so. The soft curve of your jaw, the fall of your hair, the way your clothes draped over a frame that looked delicate until it wasn’t. He knew the power sleeping beneath that skin, the monstrous strength coiled in your bones. He’d seen it tear through a reinforced steel door like it was wet cardboard.

His gaze lingered a beat too long on the line of your throat, the way your pulse would be a steady, strong rhythm there. Hot as hell. The thought surfaced, unbidden, and he crushed it down.

“I’ll clear the entrance,” He continued, his voice taking on the dry, flat edge you knew so well. “You just have to do what you do best. Shift. Smell him out.”

He stood to his full, imposing height, 6’6 of genetically-altered lethality, and began strapping a smaller, serrated blade to his thigh. His focus was absolute, the mission already a blueprint unfolding behind his eyes.

“I’m doing the heavy lifting,” You said, arms crossed, a familiar spark of challenge in your voice. “While you play with your little knives.”

A ghost of a smirk touched his lips, there and gone. “Little knives have never failed smartass.”

He straightened, rolling his shoulders, the thick sinew and muscle shifting under his black tactical shirt. He was a big boy, built for overwhelming force, yet he moved with a silence that defied his size.

Frustration and that ever-present electricity crackled between you. “My nose was right, better. We got the target, didn’t we?”

“After I had to pull three of his pack off you!” Kallias said, his voice dropping, the memory of it tightening something in his chest. His eyes met yours, gold burning in the dark. Possessive.

He finished his preparations, a final pat to his dagger hilts. He was ready. A machine wound and waiting. You, however, stood there, arms still crossed, a deliberate lack of movement in your stance.

He raised an eyebrow. “Well?”

“Well, what?” You shot back, knowing exactly what.

He let out a slow, controlled breath through his nose, the sound a familiar prelude to your bickering. “Shift. Unless you plan to sniff out a high-value target in those boots.”

You just looked at him expectantly, a sly curve to your lips. “Shift,” He said, the word a command stripped of all pretense. He let his gaze drop to your lips for a fraction of a second, then back to your eyes. “Please.”

The word was dragged from him, rough, barely audible.

The smile you gave him was slow and triumphant, and it was the last thing he saw before the shift began. Bones cracking, sinew re-weaving, your form dissolving and rebuilding in a cascade of raw, primal energy. Where a pretty girl stood, a massive wolf now sat, your fur dark as soot, your eyes the same startling shade they were a moment ago, intelligent and blazing with that infuriating, familiar spark.

You let out a low, chuffing sound that was unmistakably a laugh in wolf at his expense and smacked him with a paw.

Fuck you.

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