The word containment does something strange when it’s aimed at you.

It shrinks the world.

Turns breath into something rationed.

Turns people into variables.

I stood in the center of a clearing filled with wolves, rogues, hunters, and soldiers and somehow the most dangerous thing there wasn’t the fire burning under my skin.

It was the calm in my handler’s eyes.

He hadn’t aged.

Same clean lines. Same military posture. Same controlled detachment.

Commander Hale.

Commander Hale ...