Tigers don't exist in Scotland. They don't materialize from silver mists accompanied by thunder. They don't look at attackers like a sentient being making a conscious choice to protect.
One of the attackers breaks first, turning to run. The tiger moves with liquid grace, covering the distance in a single bound. Its jaws close around the man's throat, crushing his windpipe. The crunch is wet and terrible. Blood sprays across the alley wall in an arterial arc. The beast shakes him once, viciously, and tosses the corpse aside like discarded prey.
The second attacker pulls his gun, desperate now, firing three shots point-blank into the tiger's shoulder. The bullets tear through muscle and fur, drawing lines of red that stream down its foreleg, but the beast doesn't even slow. A massive paw swipes out, claws extended, the strike bone-shattering as they catch the gunman across the face and throat, tearing through flesh and cartilage. His scream cuts off in a wet gurgle as he collapses, choking on his own blood.
The third attacker, the one who mentioned the Prague journalist, tries to fight. He slashes at the tiger, his knife opening a gash across its muzzle. The beast snarls, a sound thatreverberates through my bones, and lunges. Its teeth sink into the man's shoulder, crunching through bone. The man shrieks, high and desperate, trying to beat at the tiger's head.
The tiger drags him down, jaws still locked on his shoulder, and plants one massive paw on his chest. The man's ribs crack audibly under the pressure. His screaming rises to a fevered pitch before the beast's jaws close around his skull, silencing him.
The fight is over in moments that feel both endless and impossibly fast. When it's over, bodies lie scattered across the alley in spreading pools of blood. I see torn throats, shattered bones, viscera painting the walls in dark streaks. The tiger stands in the center of the carnage, sides heaving, its muzzle and chest matted in gore.
The smell hits me next: copper and salt, the metallic tang of blood mixed with a wild, musky scent that shouldn't exist in a Scottish fishing village. The tiger's breath comes in deep huffs, steam rising from its nostrils in the cold night air. Its tail lashes once, twice, muscles coiling beneath that blood-matted pelt.
The beast's gaze fixes on me.
I should run. Every part of me screams to flee from the predator that just slaughtered three men. But I can't move, can't think, can't reconcile anything I'm witnessing.
The tiger stalks toward me, each step deliberate, its movements smooth as water despite the blood dripping from its jaws. I press back against the wall, shaking hands, knowing bullets won't stop this thing that shouldn't exist.
The sound returns, rolling through the narrow space.
Silver mist explodes around the tiger, the same opalescent fog that heralded its arrival. The massive form seems to collapse inward, reforming, reshaping. The mist clears.
Kian stands where the tiger was a heartbeat before.
He's naked, his body marked by the fight. Blood covers him from chest to hands, though I can tell now most of it belongs to the men he just killed. Bullet wounds mar his shoulder, raw and weeping, but already the flesh knits itself back together. The healing speed is unnatural, impossible. His eyes still carry that same glow, fading slowly back to their normal color, but the predatory focus remains. He breathes hard, muscles taut.
The air between us crackles, charged like the moment before a lightning strike. Details register automatically despite the shock fracturing my thoughts. He's taller than I realized, broader, built for violence rather than honest work.
Scars mark his skin in thin white lines, some old, some relatively recent. There are too many for any normal life. The blood on his chest runs in rivulets down defined muscle, and I force my gaze away from the sight, focusing instead on his face.
His expression holds no apology, no shame, no remorse for the brutality I just witnessed, just cold calculation as he studies me, weighing whether I'm a threat or a liability. The weary resignation I expect from someone who's revealed their secret doesn't appear. Instead, his jaw tightens, determined and grim.
We stare at each other across the alley. My hands won't stop shaking. Every law of nature I thought I understood has just been shattered by blood and silver mist and a man who kills in tiger form.
"We need to talk." His voice carries that same rough edge I've heard before, but now it's layered colder. The tone isn't a threat, exactly, and it isn't seduction either. It's more dangerous than both, pure command. "Now."
My voice won't work. Words stick in my throat, trapped behind the shock spreading through my system like ice water. I manage a nod, because what else can I do?
He moves toward me, and I don't flinch away. I can't. My legs have locked in place.
My hands tremble despite my efforts to steady them. I clench them into fists, nails digging into my palms, using the sharp bite of pain to anchor myself in the moment. Kian stops a few paces away, close enough that I can see the pulse beating in his throat, the way his chest rises and falls, close enough that the wild, musky scent I noticed earlier surrounds me, mixing with blood and the salt tang of the sea and a primal edge that makes my hindbrain scream predator.
Blood wells dark from the bullet wounds in his shoulder. "You're bleeding."
He glances down, dismissive. "Not anymore."
Already the holes have closed, pink new skin sealing over muscle.
He moves to the shadows, retrieving a bundle he must have stashed there earlier. Jeans and a shirt appear in his hands. He pulls the shirt over his head, efficient despite the blood still staining his skin beneath the fabric. The jeans follow, and he's dressed in seconds, but the transformation does nothing to make him seem less dangerous. If anything, the casual violence of moments ago seems more threatening now that he wears a human face again.
Kian is a criminal, a smuggler, the man I've been investigating for days, planning to bring to justice. He's also a tiger, a creature that transforms through thunder and silver mist, a creature that just saved my life by killing three trained assassins in the most brutal, visceral way imaginable.
I look past him at the bodies sprawled across the alley. The men who tried to extract information before killing me lie in pieces, their blood pooling dark on the cobblestones. The one who mentioned the Prague journalist has his skull caved in, his face barely recognizable.
I should feel grief, professional regret that they died before I could question them, before I could find out who sent them andwhat they know about the syndicate. Instead, numbness spreads through me, cold and hollow, insulating me from the magnitude of what just happened.
"We can't stay here." His voice cuts through the static in my head, hard and certain. "More will come. They always send more."
