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Valko always looked like trouble before he ever opened his mouth.
He had the sort of face people mistrusted on principle, all sharp angles and heavy lashes, with those triangular wolf ears pricked high and alert, and a tail that gave him away even when he was trying to look civil. Most people saw the growl, the scars, the size of him, and decided he was a red flag wrapped in skin.
I knew better.
I was watching him from the edge of the sofa when he noticed me looking. He paused halfway through taking off his coat, one ear tipping towards me, and gave me that slow, dangerous little smile that made strangers step back and made me want to step closer.
“What?” He asked, voice low.
I just tilted my head. “You.”
His brows rose. “Me?”
“You look like you’ve been personally designed to alarm respectable society.”
A short huff left him — almost a laugh, almost a scoff. He crossed the room in a few long strides, stopped in front of me, and for a moment I forgot how to breathe properly.
His eyes softened when they met mine. That was the thing people missed. Under all that wolf, all that bite, he was careful with me. Careful like I was something precious, not fragile.
His nose brushed the side of my throat.
My pulse jumped.
“Valko,” I murmured, but there was no warning in it. Not really.
He made a quiet sound in the back of his throat, pleased with himself already, and nuzzled into my neck with infuriating tenderness. His cheek dragged along my skin, warm and rough in a way that made me shiver. Then he inhaled, slow and deep, scenting me like he was memorising me all over again.
His tail moved behind him, a slow, content sweep.
I swallowed. “You’re being obvious.”
“I know.”
His mouth hovered just below my ear, not kissing, just close enough to make my skin prickle. “Want everyone to know.”
My heart stumbled. “Know what?”
He rubbed his cheek against my neck again, thoroughly unashamed. “That you’re mine.”
The possessive note in it should have sounded arrogant. On anyone else, it probably would have. On Valko it landed differently — not as ownership, but as certainty. A promise. A claim spoken with reverence.
I touched his shoulder, fingers curling into the fabric there. “And if I objected?”
He pulled back just enough to look at me, one eyebrow lifting. There was mischief there, and warmth, and that wicked little glint that meant he was enjoying himself far too much.
“You don’t,” he said.
I laughed under my breath, because he was right and he knew it.
Then his expression shifted, the playful edge easing into something almost shy. “There are other weres in the building,” he muttered. “I can smell them. They’ll know.”
I stared at him for a beat, then smiled so hard my cheeks hurt. “Valko, are you marking me in front of the entire supernatural community?”
His ears flicked back, then forward again. “Maybe.”
“That is incredibly red-flag behaviour.”
His eyes narrowed. “It’s protective behaviour.”
“It’s possessive behaviour.”
He considered that, then shrugged one broad shoulder. “Can be both.”
I snorted, and that broke him. A real laugh escaped him then, low and startled, and his tail swayed once in obvious satisfaction. He leaned in again, this time pressing his forehead briefly to mine before dipping to my throat one last time, inhaling like the scent of me was a private comfort.
And the thing was, I understood it. Not because I was property — never that — but because Valko loved like a storm given shape: All instinct and devotion, all fierce attention. If he could wrap the whole world around me and keep it off my back, he would.
I tipped my chin up slightly, giving him more room, and he answered by making that soft, rumbling sound that lived somewhere between a purr and a growl.
“Happy now?” I asked.
He looked at me then, properly looked, with that steady, almost tender focus that made my chest ache.
“No,” he said. “Happier than I was.”
That, more than anything, was why people were wrong about him.
They saw teeth.
I saw loyalty.
They saw danger.
I saw a man bending down to my neck in the middle of an ordinary evening, scenting me like I mattered enough to claim in every way that counted — and asking the whole world, in the quietest possible language, to leave me alone because I was already loved.