"Bold words from someone who was crying three seconds ago."

"I wasn’t crying." She sniffled loudly. Directly into his shirt. "I was expressing tactical concern."

"Tactical concern." His thumb traced the shell of her ear, and her tail gave one helpless wag behind her. "Is that what we’re calling it?"

"Shut up, Victor."

His chest rumbled against her back. Not quite a laugh. Worse. Satisfaction. The kind that settled into his bones and made him hold tighter, one arm banded across her ribs, the other hand still doing that maddening thing along the curve of her ear. His lips grazed the crown of her head, not a kiss, not quite, just the press of his mouth against her hair like he was memorising the texture.

Her knees went stupid.

"Make me," Victor said.

Low just against her hair. The vibration travelled through her skull and pooled somewhere beneath her navel.

Felicity lightly bit his arm.

"That’s..." She swallowed. His thumb pressed into the soft spot below her ear, and her train of thought derailed into a ditch.

"That’s not fair, you can’t just say things like that and expect me to function."

"I don’t expect you to function." The corner of his mouth twitched almost into a smile. Victor looked like a predator deciding whether to play with its food. "I expect you to stay."

Her ears burned. The tips of them probably glowed pink against her pale hair, and she knew he could see it, knew he catalogued every flush and twitch like battlefield intelligence.

"Where would I even go?" she muttered. "You’d find me in three seconds."

"Two." No hesitation, "one and a half if you run."

She laughed gracelessly and loudly, and his arm tightened around her waist like the sound delighted him. Like her complete lack of dignity was the best thing he’d heard all day.

"You’re a menace," she told him, but her fingers had curled into the front of his jacket, knuckles pressed against the hard plane of his chest, and she wasn’t pulling away, wasn’t even pretending to anymore.

His forehead dropped to hers. The bridge of his nose brushed against her smaller one, and this close she could count the silver lashes framing those impossible red irises, could see the way his pupils had blown wide, swallowing the colour at the edges.

"Your menace," he corrected. Quiet. Certain. Like he was stating a law of physics rather than a sentiment.

Her tail curled around his thigh. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

Felicity let out a small squeak of surprise as Victor’s chest rumbled with a deep, melodic chuckle against her back. He stepped out from the shadows of the crates, holding her securely as if she weighed nothing at all.

"Alright, listen up," Victor called out to the gathered men, his voice cutting through the morning banter with effortless authority. "The coffee’s gone, the sun’s up, and it’s time to move."

Voss, already beginning his shift into the massive, black-maned wolf that usually served as Felicity’s Uber, trudged forward to take her. He moved with the practised ease of someone expecting his "strategic asset" to be handed over for the day’s travel.

Victor didn’t budge. He tightened his grip on Felicity and levelled a sharp, challenging glare at the wolf beast.

"Nope," Victor said, his tone dropping into a possessive, unmistakable edge. "Back off, big guy, it’s my day, and I’m carrying her."

The obsessed energy in the camp spiked instantly as the husbands adjusted to the sudden shift in the rotation, leaving Dimitri to brood in the background as the pack prepared to run.

Victor POV

Before the world shattered, Victor had been a ghost with a heartbeat. As a core member of Snow Team, his life was a blur of high altitude drops, silent extractions, and missions that officially never happened. He was always on the move, drifting from one continent to another, fueled by caffeine and the cold, calculated efficiency of the government’s black-budget goals.

People back home, the few who even remembered his name, probably thought he was just another army veteran coasting on a pension. They didn’t know about the months spent in deep-cover operations where he had to play a role. He’d had to pretend to be in love with women before; he’d whispered the right things and mirrored the right emotions just to get close to a target or secure an asset. It was a mechanical necessity, a professional mask he wore with a detachment that made him wonder if he even had a soul left to lose.

But Felicity? No woman, real or fabricated, had ever made him feel this raw, territorial ache.

Looking down at the blonde fox ears twitching near his chin, Victor felt a protective surge so violent it made his power hum beneath his skin. With the targets in his past, there was always an exit strategy. With Felicity, there was only the "crazed" need to keep her safe and the realisation that his obsession had no finish line. She wasn’t an objective; she was the only reason the mission mattered anymore. He had the deranged, bone-deep certainty that if anything in this broken world so much as breathed wrong in her direction, he would unmake it with his bare hands and feel nothing but satisfaction.

"You’re staring again," Felicity mumbled, half asleep, one ear rotating toward him like a satellite dish locking onto a signal.

Victor’s mouth twitched. "I’m assessing the perimeter."

"Your perimeter is my forehead."

"Dangerous territory." His thumb swept a slow arc across her hip bone, dragging the hem of her shirt up a fraction. Just enough to feel skin. Just enough to make his blood thicken. "Requires constant surveillance."

Felicity laughed then burrowed closer, her nose pressing into the hollow of his throat. Her breath fanned across his pulse point, and Victor’s wings shifted behind him, the black and white feathers rustling in a possessive half-spread that he absolutely did not authorise.

"Victor." Her fingers curled into the front of his shirt, tugging weakly. Those fox ears pressed flat against her hair in embarrassment, he’d learned. Embarrassment and something softer. "You’re growling."