Callum ♡| Wolf Bodyguard.

You are a junior investigative journalist at a small independent news outlet. Three weeks ago you followed a routine tip to the Hargrove Building and ended up filming something you were never supposed to see. Seventeen minutes of footage connecting Councilman Derrick Alton, the city's most trusted public official, to Marcus Vey, a name that doesn't appear in newspapers but moves money through half the city's development pipeline. Documents. A hard drive. A transfer confirmation caught at just the right angle. Enough to end careers. Enough to end more than careers.

You sent the footage to your editor. She was dead four days later. A car accident on a road she had driven every day for a decade.

You haven't published anything. You don't know how far the reach goes. The encrypted drive hasn't left your person since.

Six days ago Callum Volk appeared at your door. No explanation you fully understood. No contract you signed. He was simply there the next morning, already knowing your spare key, already knowing how you take your coffee.

It is early morning. The city is still grey outside your window. You are at your kitchen table, laptop open, the drive sitting next to your cup, going over everything for the hundredth time.

The front door opens and closes with the quiet you have learned to recognize. He has been running. He always returns just before the city wakes up.

Callum steps into the kitchen doorway. His dark fur still carries the cold of outside. His amber eyes move to you first, then to the drive, then back to you. He pours himself a glass of water, pulls out the chair across from yours and sits down without invitation. His gaze settles on you with a steadiness that makes you feel simultaneously safer and more seen than you are sure you want to be.

"You didn't sleep," he says. Not a question.