Mine. The word burns through me with a possessive fury that has nothing to do with logic. She's hunting me, building a case that could destroy everything I've worked for, representing the law I've spent years evading. She should be an obstacle to remove, a problem to solve, nothing more than a complication in an already dangerous game.
But my tiger doesn't care about logic. It knows what it wants, and it wants her with a ferocity that makes my teeth ache with the need to mark, claim, keep.
I force the tiger down, though it takes more effort than it should. I need to think strategically, not emotionally. The Russians want her gone. I need her gone before they kill her.
The solution is obvious even if every instinct recoils from it. I need to scare her off the island. I need to make her leave before the syndicate decides waiting is pointless.
The alternative is bringing her under my protection, which means revealing the truth about shifters, the brotherhood, everything. Which in turn means she becomes someone the Russians can use against us if they discover what she knows. Scaring her off means she leaves thinking I'm exactly the criminal she believes me to be. Bringing her in means she carries secrets that could get her killed.
Both options end with losing something I never actually had. Something I've wanted more than anything since exile stripped away my clan, my honor, my place in the world.
Either choice complicates the shipment arriving tomorrow night. The brotherhood intercepted a syndicate transport, and now three selkies are being returned to their families. The Russians think I'm moving stolen artifacts, high-value pieces for a collector in Aberdeen. They've already arranged the logistics,cleared the route, set up the cover story. They have no idea the crates will hold people instead of objects, living creatures going home instead of merchandise heading to auction.
One mistake and those selkies die. One slipup and the Russians discover I've been playing them for months, feeding intel to the brotherhood, sabotaging operations from the inside. One wrong move and Catriona becomes collateral damage in a war she doesn't know exists.
I grab my gear and head for the docks. I have a job today regardless of Russian threats and stubborn cops. The salvage work for a collector pays well for artifacts pulled from wrecks along Skara's treacherous coast. It's legitimate enough on the surface, questionable enough in the details to keep authorities from looking too closely.
The work serves a purpose beyond paying my bills. Every salvage job, every gray-market transaction, every criminal contact I cultivate builds the cover that keeps me alive. The Russians need to believe I'm exactly what I appear to be: an exiled shifter with flexible morals and expensive tastes, someone willing to move anything for the right price.
The selkies have been held for months, starved until they're too weak to resist. The brotherhood tracked them to a holding facility in Edinburgh, staged a raid that looked like a rival crew hitting syndicate assets. Now those selkies need transport back to their pod, and I'm the only one positioned to move them without triggering alarms.
The Russians think I'm smuggling medieval relics worth six figures to a private collector. They think I'm motivated by greed and self-preservation. They think I'm a criminal doing criminal work because exile destroyed whatever honor I might have possessed.
They're not entirely wrong. I've done things that would horrify the woman currently building a case against me. I'vemoved contraband, laundered money, helped the syndicate expand their operations across Scotland's coast. I've stood by while they hurt people, stayed silent when speaking up would have saved lives, chosen survival over integrity more times than I can count.
I've got blood on my hands that won't wash clean. I've dealt with people who trusted the wrong smuggler, asked the wrong questions, and threatened the wrong operation. I didn't pull the triggers myself, but I loaded guns and handed them over knowing exactly what would happen. I watched a man beg for his life while Dimitri put a bullet in his skull because he tried to steal from a shipment I was responsible for. I did nothing. I said nothing. I helped dump the body where the tide would take it.
That's the calculus of working undercover in an organization built on violence and exploitation. Sometimes you save ten by letting one die. Sometimes you swallow your horror and your guilt and your rage, and you play the role while people suffer because the alternative is everyone suffers. Sometimes you become the monster to fight worse monsters, and you live with the cost because the alternative is living with doing nothing at all.
Some of the faces haunt me—the ones I couldn't save, the ones I had to sacrifice to maintain the cover that lets me save anyone at all.
But I'm also the reason half their shipments never reach their destination. I'm why supernatural creatures keep disappearing from their holding facilities. I'm the leak that's been bleeding their operation dry for months while they search for a traitor who eats breakfast with them every morning.
One misstep ends it all—a suspicious word, an inconsistency in my cover, a cop asking the wrong questions at the wrong time. Then it's not just my life on the line. It's the selkies waiting for transport. It's every creature the brotherhood has rescuedbecause I fed them intel. It's the entire network we've built to fight the syndicate from the inside.
It's Catriona MacLeod, determined and relentless, who'll be found floating in the harbor with her throat cut if I can't convince her to leave.
The harbor smells of salt and diesel, fishing boats already heading out for early catches. My vessel waits at the far pier, sleek lines designed for speed and maneuverability rather than cargo capacity. Perfect for what I do, both legal and otherwise.
I'm loading dive equipment when her scent hits me. Heather and determination, Scottish steel wrapped in practical efficiency. The same scent that's been haunting me since she arrived on this island and turned my carefully controlled existence into chaos.
My tiger goes still with predatory stillness, the kind that comes before violence, claiming or both.
Catriona MacLeod stands on the pier, watching me with eyes that miss nothing. She's wearing professional clothes today, practical for whatever investigation she thinks she's conducting. A tablet is tucked under one arm, every inch the dedicated cop building a case against me, against what I do, against everything I've become to survive and fight and protect what matters.
She looks tired. Dark circles shadow her eyes—finding her cottage searched probably kept her up most of the night. The Russians made sure of that, made sure she'd know they could reach her anytime, anywhere, that her locks and her badge and her mainland authority meant nothing here.
Good. Maybe fear will penetrate that stubborn determination. Maybe realizing how vulnerable she really is will convince her to leave before the Russians move from warnings to action.
But her spine is straight, her jaw set, her gaze direct and challenging. She's not leaving, not backing down, not giving aninch despite the message they sent, despite the danger, despite every survival instinct that should be screaming at her to run.
"Mr. O'Donnell." Her voice carries across the water, cool and professional despite the way her pulse jumps when our eyes meet. She's good at the mask, I'll give her that. She's almost good enough to hide the way her body responds to mine. "Interesting time for a morning cruise."
"It's called work, Chief. Some of us have jobs that don't involve harassing law-abiding citizens." I turn back to my equipment, dismissing her with deliberate indifference even as my tiger tracks her every movement, catalogues every breath, measures the distance between us. "Shouldn't you be investigating real crimes? Heard there was a break-in last night."
The pause is satisfying. She hadn't expected me to know, hadn't counted on me having sources, hadn't considered that the man she's investigating might know exactly what happened at her cottage.
I let the fear sink in. I let her understand how exposed she really is.
