And she's human.
The realization settles in my gut like a stone. Human.
Which means even if I wanted to explore whatever the hell my tiger recognizes in her, it's impossible. Even if I could get past the fact that she's a cop who could destroy everything I've built. Even if by some miracle she didn't run screaming when she learned what I am. Claiming her would require turning her. Making her like me.
And that requires consent, trust, a willingness to abandon her humanity that no law-abiding cop would ever give to a criminal smuggler she just watched break the law.
I sit back, processing what this means. No leverage. No pressure points. No way to make her look the other way or accept that island business operates differently than mainland law. And no possibility of the one solution my tiger keeps pushing toward. She'd have to choose this life, choose me, and everything about her screams that she never would.
My phone buzzes against the desk, screen lighting with an incoming message. Dimitri's name appears on screen. The Russian has eyes everywhere and nerves that make him respond to the first hint of trouble.
Cop at docks tonight. Watching. We have problem.
I type back quickly.
Identified. New chief. Will handle.
His response comes immediately.
Syndicate noticed. She has evidence that could expose Cork operation. Records from her predecessor's files. They want her gone. Permanent solution.
My fingers freeze over the keyboard. Cork. The shipment I've been tracking for months. The one that makes my stomach turn every time I think about the manifest details. Twelve units of livestock with ventilation holes and restraint systems. No refrigeration. Twelve children disappeared from Cork over six months, all from poor families where missing persons reports wouldn't raise alarms.
She must have found Murdoch's hidden files. The previous chief was building a case before his convenient "accident." If she's smart enough to locate what he hid, she's already connected dots that took me months to piece together.
The syndicate thinks I'm moving artifacts and cursed objects. They don't know I've been intercepting their shipments, liberating the living cargo, gathering intelligence on their operations. They don't know the brotherhood uses my information to rescue victims and destroy the supernatural weapons that fund this whole nightmare.
My first thought isn't protective—it's tactical. Dead cops bring heat, but live cops with evidence bring prison. I've killed for less than my freedom. Three men in Dublin who threatened to expose what I am. A woman in Cork who didn't just see me shift—she tried to dose me with tranquilizers, calling someone on her phone about ‘securing the specimen.’ Each time I toldmyself it was necessary, survival, the law of predators in a world that would dissect me in a laboratory if it knew I existed.
But my tiger surges forward with a snarl that nearly chokes me, rejecting the thought with a violence that makes my hands shake. Not her. Never her. The possessiveness doesn't make sense—I've never hesitated before when survival required blood—but my tiger won't be reasoned with.
But the thought of syndicate enforcers eliminating her makes the beast within me want to tear through my skin and hunt down anyone who might harm her.
I breathe slowly, wrestling the tiger back under control. This reaction is wrong. Unprecedented in all my years of exile. Women have come and gone from my life without my animal giving a damn about their safety. What makes this one different?
No. I'll handle this. Give me time to assess.
Dimitri's reply carries warning.
Boss won't wait long. She's liability. You fix or we fix.
Understood.
I set the phone down and scrub my hands across my face, feeling stubble rasp against my palms. Exhaustion pulls at me, but sleep isn't an option. Not with my tiger pacing like this. Not with a cop who could destroy everything and the Russians ready to kill her if I don't find another solution.
The smart play is letting them handle it. One dead mainlander, tragic accident, investigation goes nowhere because islanders protect their own. My hands stay clean. My position remains secure. Business continues as usual.
My tiger rejects that option with a snarl that reverberates through my bones.
I pull up more information on Catriona MacLeod, digging deeper into her background. I'm trying to find something, anything, that might give me leverage or at least understanding of what I'm dealing with.
Born and raised on the mainland. No family connections to Stormhaven. No obvious reason for requesting this posting except career advancement or perhaps a desire for quieter work after years in Glasgow's rough neighborhoods.
Single. No romantic relationships listed in the gossip sites that track such things. Dedicated to her career. Lives for the job, according to colleagues who praise her work ethic while admitting she's difficult to get close to. Perhaps lonely. Perhaps isolated by her own standards and unwillingness to compromise those standards for connection.
The tiger within settles slightly, recognizing something in that isolation. Something familiar. Something that mirrors my own exile, living on the edge of town because I don't fit anywhere else.
I could use that loneliness. Most people who are isolated make mistakes, drop their guard, trust the wrong person when they're desperate for connection. I've exploited it before—the detective in Glasgow wasn't the only one. There was a customs inspector in Dublin, lonely widow who thought I was interested in more than access to her shipping manifests. She disappeared too, eventually. I wasn’t responsible for whatever happened to her, but I always thought I had a hand in it.
