Everyone was terrified of the aggressive K9 — until a rookie quietly whispered six words that no one else understood…

The tiled floor of the Bayside Emergency Clinic was already slick with blood, and the air was heavy with the sharp scent of copper and fear. Chaos filled the room. It wasn’t a shortage of equipment or a technical failure that had brought the trauma team to a halt—it was a sound. A deep, vibrating growl that rattled the stainless-steel tables, rising from the chest of a Belgian Malinois named Ghost.

Ghost was pinned into a corner, bleeding badly from a jagged shrapnel wound along his side. Yet he looked less like an injured patient and more like a weapon ready to fire. Each time Dr. Aris, the lead veterinarian, edged forward with a sedative, the dog lunged—teeth flashing, movements explosive—forcing even seasoned professionals to retreat.

“We can’t treat him if we can’t get close!” Dr. Aris shouted, wiping sweat from his brow. “He’ll bleed out in five minutes if we don’t start a line. Muzzle him. Now!”

Two Military Police officers rushed in with a catch pole, but Ghost was quicker. He didn’t just react—he anticipated. He struck the pole, twisted violently, and slammed himself against the wall, eyes wide and rimmed with white. This wasn’t simple aggression. It was terror, grief, and raw combat instinct—every approaching hand registered as an enemy.

“He’s feral,” one MP muttered as he backed away. “His handler was KIA. No one’s left to control him.”

“Then we sedate him from a distance or we put him down,” the vet snapped, reaching for a stronger syringe. “I’m not losing a hand tonight.”

Voices clashed, tension boiling over, until no one noticed the quiet figure standing in the doorway. Petty Officer Riley Hart—a junior trainee, dusty fatigues, no rank that demanded attention—watched the scene with piercing focus. She didn’t stare at the blood. She watched Ghost’s ears. She saw the trembling beneath the fury, the desperate confusion of a dog still waiting for a command that would never come.

As senior staff argued over brute force or lethal injection, Riley stepped forward. She moved unlike the others—slow, controlled, unarmed.

“Stop,” she said.

Her voice wasn’t loud, but it carried weight.

Dr. Aris turned sharply. “Hart, get out. This is a trauma bay, not a training exercise.”

“If you come at him with that needle,” Riley said calmly, never breaking eye contact with the dog, “he will kill you. And if you force him down, you’ll destroy the one thing keeping him alive.”

“And what would a rookie know about a Tier One asset?” the vet shot back.

Riley didn’t answer. She took another step toward the corner—straight into the kill zone. The room fell silent. Unarmed. Unprotected. Armed only with certainty—and six words no one had ever heard outside a battlefield.

He wouldn’t let anyone near him. Not the medics, not the vet, not even the SEAL team that dragged him off the battlefield. The canine was wounded, bleeding fast, and every time someone reached for him, he snapped.

They called him dangerous. They said he was too far gone. They said he’d never work with humans again. That was until a rookie SEAL stepped forward. Young, unranked, and barely noticed, she whispered six words into the chaos. Six words only one unit on earth had ever used.

The dog froze, stared, and then slowly placed his injured leg in her hands. Because what no one else realized was that she knew exactly who he was, and exactly what he’d lost. When a canine refuses help from the world, sometimes all it takes is the right voice to bring him home.

It was nearly 2100 hours when the doors of the Bayside Emergency Veterinary Clinic slammed open. Two MPs backed in first, boots skidding on tile, uniforms streaked with dry dirt and what looked like blood. Between them, strapped to a sagging gurney, was a wounded Belgian Malinois. Muscles coiled, eyes wild. He wasn’t barking, and he wasn’t growling. He was just watching every movement, every shadow, like a bomb waiting for someone to trip the wire.

«Call sign: Ghost,» one of the MPs said, panting. «Shrapnel wound. Refusing approach. We tried field tourniquets, but…»

Ghost snarled suddenly, snapping the leather muzzle halfway off his snout with one brutal jerk. A nurse yelped and stumbled back.

«Jesus,» muttered the attending vet, already donning gloves. «What kind of dog is this?»

«A SEAL team dog,» the MP replied. «Was. His handler is KIA. We found him dragging himself toward the extraction zone.»

A junior tech stepped forward with a harness sling. Ghost lunged—not wildly, not without direction, but deliberate, aimed, and fast. The harness clattered to the floor. One tech ducked behind the X-ray machine; another reached for the sedative drawer.

«He’s going to lose the leg,» muttered a lieutenant from the doorway. «We can’t get near him. We can’t treat him. That’s all muscle bleeding.»

The vet cursed. «Full sedative load, three cc’s intramuscular. I’m not getting bit tonight.»

But Ghost heard the word sedative, or maybe he just sensed the shift, the tone, the hands reaching, and the confidence that came from underestimating him. He howled, a long, haunting noise that stopped everyone cold. Then he reared, claws skidding, and tore through the muzzle completely.

Foam flecked his jowls, and blood dripped in slow lines from his rear flank, painting the gurney red. Yet he never moved to run. He backed into the corner instead, tail low, chest heaving, ears pinned. His eyes never left the circle of humans trying to fix him without asking if he could be fixed.

«He’s unhandleable,» someone whispered.

«Too far gone,» another voice added, lower, edged with doubt. «It’s like he’s not just hurt, he’s terrified.»

No one moved to stop the vet prepping the syringe. That’s when a new silhouette filled the open doorway. Quiet, steady, arms folded. A woman in dusty SEAL fatigues, hair tucked into a regulation bun, boots scuffed from a recent op. No clipboard, no rank on her tongue—just stillness.

Nobody noticed her at first, except Ghost. His ears twitched just once, and then, for the first time in an hour, the growling stopped. She didn’t announce herself, didn’t flash credentials, and didn’t bark orders like the senior corpsman, who stomped through the clinic with too much noise and too little clarity.

Petty Officer Riley Hart just stepped quietly across the threshold, uniform wrinkled from field transport, sleeves rolled to the elbow, a smudge of dried blood still on her wrist.

«Back out, Hart,» the senior corpsman snapped the moment he spotted her. «This isn’t a sandbox for trainees.»

She didn’t move. She didn’t argue. Her eyes were locked on Ghost. The Belgian Malinois hadn’t looked away from her since she stepped in. Still panting, flank pulsing with blood, but his pupils had narrowed and focused. His body was still rigid but less braced, like he was trying to remember something buried under instinct and trauma.

Riley stepped one pace forward.

«Did you not hear the order?» the corpsman growled.

«I heard,» she said quietly.

But she kept her gaze on Ghost. She watched the way his ears kept swiveling—not in panic, but triangulation. She noticed the faint shift in his shoulders when someone walked behind him. The fact that he hadn’t snapped at the MPs, only at the clinic staff. She could almost hear it: not barking, not warning, but scanning, sorting, searching.

Her eyes dropped to the faint line of old scar tissue that ran across the side of Ghost’s muzzle, barely visible beneath the dried mud and flecks of foam. That wasn’t a recent injury. That was a tactical scar, tooth-marked, uniform, purposeful. She’d seen that pattern before on dogs trained to enter blast zones, on canines who could crawl under barbed wire with camera kits strapped to their backs. On war dogs. Not pets, not mascots—soldiers.

«Restrain him already,» someone said near the supply closet. «Catch pole, blanket, muzzle, anything.»

«They already tried that,» Riley murmured, half to herself. «That’s not what’s wrong.»

«What was that, Hart?» the corpsman snapped.

Riley blinked once. «Nothing.»

But it wasn’t nothing. It was everything. The way Ghost’s hind leg twitched when he heard the word handler. The way his eyes tracked movement, not faces. He wasn’t just reacting; he was filtering threats, recognizing patterns, mapping escape vectors—and failing, because the one voice he needed to hear was gone.

«He’s too far gone,» someone muttered behind her. «Retired canines don’t come back from this.»

Riley’s jaw tightened. They didn’t understand. They were trying to treat a legendary war dog like a feral rescue. She said nothing, but then Ghost looked at her, really looked, and something flickered in those bloodshot eyes. Not trust, not fear—memory.

The next mistake came from a tech who hadn’t seen Ghost lunge earlier. He moved too fast, holding a muzzle out like a peace offering, voice high and sweet, the kind people used with golden retrievers and house cats.

«It’s okay, buddy. I’m not gonna hurt you.»

Ghost’s body didn’t flinch; it detonated. A blur of teeth and muscle snapped up toward the muzzle, not biting, but shattering the space between them. The tech dropped the muzzle and staggered back, knocking over a tray of sterile tools. Scalpels clattered to the floor; saline bottles shattered. The room broke into chaos.

«Back! Everyone back!» an MP shouted, stepping in front of the gurney.

Ghost dropped to all fours and whirled to face the door, eyes locked, body lowered. Not to run, but to hold ground. The clinic doors slammed shut. Officers scrambled to block exits; staff grabbed poles, dart kits, restraints.

«He’s going to rip someone open!»

«His vitals are tanking. Get a dart in him now!»

In the corner, the senior veterinarian loaded a heavier sedative into the syringe. «Three more minutes of this and he’ll bleed out anyway. We sedate or we lose him.»

«No,» Riley said from the far wall. «You put that in him, you stop his heart.»

No one listened. Not with that tone, not from her. Ghost was panting now, tongue lolling, blood still leaking in slow pulses from the torn muscle around his hind flank. But he wouldn’t let anyone near. Every time someone stepped close, he backed toward the metal exam table, head turned sideways—not to bite, but to brace. Like he thought the next hand would strike, or worse: inject, restrain, replace.

Riley stepped forward. «Stop. Just stop.»

A Major raised his voice. «Hart, you are not cleared to enter the containment zone!»

Ghost’s ears twitched at the shout. Riley didn’t blink.

«Look at him,» she said. «Look closer.»

The room froze, if only out of exhaustion.

«His hackles aren’t raised. His pupils aren’t dilated from rage. He’s not defensive. He’s scared. He’s waiting for something.»

«Yeah, waiting to bite the next person who tries to save his life.»

«No,» Riley said. She stepped forward once. «He’s not being aggressive.» Her voice dropped. «He thinks you’re the ones who hurt him.»

Ghost’s eyes locked on hers. The growling stopped. Riley didn’t raise her voice, she didn’t argue or demand authority. She simply walked to the edge of the chaos, knelt down just outside the perimeter where Ghost crouched, still braced for war, and started observing. No clipboard, no monitor—just her eyes.

She didn’t look at the teeth. She looked at the way Ghost’s paws were planted, slightly angled outward—a textbook stance from low-profile recon drills. She watched how his ears never fully relaxed, how his nostrils flared every time someone moved behind him. Not alertness for a threat, but looped scan behavior. A trained cycle.

Then she caught it. A faded number inked along the inside of his right ear, smudged by time, nearly rubbed out by age and salt, but still there. Riley’s heart clenched. She recognized the format immediately. The serial code didn’t belong to this base. It didn’t even belong to this division. That sequence was part of a now-defunct Tier Shadow SEAL canine unit, used only for black site infiltration dogs.

Ghost had once been part of something most people at this base didn’t even know existed.

«Do you know what this number means?» she asked over her shoulder.

The senior vet barely glanced up. «It means we’ve got ten minutes to save the leg, and I don’t care what kennel he came from.»

Riley’s mouth tightened. She looked at the MPs still standing near the wall. «Where’s his handler?»

The two men exchanged a glance. One of them hesitated, then said quietly, «Didn’t make it. KIA two nights ago.»

And just like that, she understood. Ghost wasn’t resisting because he was wild. He wasn’t lashing out because he was untrained. He was resisting because the only voice he’d been conditioned to trust was gone. Everything that came after—gloved hands, sterile voices, strangers shouting—registered as a threat, not help.

The word handler reached him. Ghost let out a low, broken whine, his body dipping a half-inch, just like it had earlier when he’d seen her.

Riley turned, her voice low. «Has anyone even tried his original command set?»

The vet snorted. «Commands? Hart, he’s a dog, not a soldier.»

That was when Ghost lunged again, this time not at anyone but at the cabinet beside him. A slam of paw against metal sent an entire tray of surgical prep kits crashing to the floor. The room scattered again. Riley didn’t move. She stood slowly, eyes still on the canine, and said in a voice that was just above a whisper:

«He’s not just a dog.»

The room stilled. Riley stepped forward once more.

«He’s one of ours.»

The silence didn’t last long. A sharp voice cut through the tension like a bone saw.

«Who the hell let a trainee override a trauma lockdown?»

Everyone turned. A Lieutenant Commander, face flushed with frustration, stepped into the room. Brass on his collar, authority in his voice. He looked directly at Riley like she was the problem, not the screaming dog in the corner or the pool of blood thickening beneath the gurney.

«I asked a question.»

No one answered, not even the vet. Riley turned slowly.

«Sir, with respect, the dog’s not combative. He’s confused. He’s reacting to—»

«You’re not cleared to make that assessment,» he snapped. «Back out before I write you up for obstruction.»

A few heads nodded behind him. No one said it, but everyone thought it: Who did she think she was?

Ghost, still crouched in his corner, tracked the tension like a current. His body coiled again, eyes darting from the Lieutenant to Riley to the medics arming up with sedation gear.

«We’re wasting time,» the vet said. «Every second, he’s losing blood. I’m done arguing.» He snapped a glove on and pointed toward the sedation tray. «Double the dose. If he’s as aggressive as she says he is, the normal cocktail won’t hold.»

«You’ll stop his heart,» Riley said again, louder this time.

The vet scoffed. «Then maybe you should come up with some magic words.»

Her mouth opened, then closed. She could feel the weight of every eye in the room, not just doubting her, but daring her. Prove it. Fix it. Or get out of the way.

«Well?» the Lieutenant Commander barked. «Say something useful or step aside.»

Riley stared at Ghost. For a long moment, she said nothing. Someone in the back chuckled under their breath. «Didn’t think so,» a corpsman muttered.

But she wasn’t silent because she was scared. She was silent because what she knew wasn’t supposed to exist anymore. The code phrases, the command trees, the psychological safety protocols built for Tier Shadow canines who’d lost their handlers—they were all supposed to be buried with the teams who’d never come home.

She inhaled once, then stepped forward.

«I may know something.»

It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t dramatic. But Ghost’s head tilted just slightly. For the first time since he was dragged off the battlefield, he didn’t growl. Every pair of eyes locked on her.

The Lieutenant Commander’s brows knit. «What do you mean you know something?»

Riley didn’t answer him. She took one slow step toward Ghost. Then another.

«Don’t go near him,» the senior vet barked. «I’m not signing off on that.»

But Ghost hadn’t moved. He wasn’t panting anymore. His ears were perked, his eyes locked onto Riley’s. No growling, no lunging. Just tension wound so tight it looked like it would snap with a whisper.

Riley kept her hands down, palms empty, movements deliberate. She knelt two feet from him, resting on the sides of her boots. Not dominance, not submission either. Just neutral. Just present.

And then, without looking at anyone else in the room, she whispered a phrase. Six syllables. Soft, measured, clipped like a radio call. It wasn’t English. It wasn’t even dog training speak. It was code from a classified phrasebook, written in blood and sand for one unit only. The kind only canines trained under Tier Shadow understood. The kind spoken when a dog’s handler had fallen, and nothing—no muzzle, no leash, no voice—could reach him.

Ghost froze. His back legs trembled once, then settled. His front claws clicked gently on the tile as his stance softened. And then, like muscle memory, he shifted forward. Slow, low. Not crouching, not threatening. He closed the gap between them inch by inch until his injured leg slid out, extended in Riley’s direction.

It wasn’t obedience. It was a surrender of trust. A silent offering: I’ll let you treat me, but only you.

Behind them, the room fell deathly still. Someone exhaled hard. A surgical nurse muttered, «What the hell just happened?»

Riley whispered again, the second half of the code sequence. Ghost lowered his head fully—not to the floor, but to her knee. The blood still pulsed from his wound, but his breathing slowed. The shaking stopped. His whole body deflated like a soldier coming off a 24-hour perimeter watch.

And then, impossibly, he crawled into her lap. Not seeking warmth, not protection—recognition. She placed one hand on his neck, just behind the scarred collar line, and Ghost let out a long, soft whine. One that cracked halfway through, like a memory had just broken loose from somewhere too deep to reach without pain.

No one moved. No one spoke. Riley looked up once, and in the silence that followed, every person in the room—from the MPs to the senior vet to the smug corpsmen—understood they’d just witnessed something no protocol could explain.

Riley didn’t ask permission. She didn’t wait for orders or glance back at the room frozen in disbelief. She simply looked at Ghost’s wound, really looked, and shifted into the one version of herself she’d tried to bury since the day she left field medicine.

«Gauze,» she said calmly.

Nobody moved.

«Gauze,» she repeated, eyes still on Ghost. «Suction. Saline. No sedation. No anesthetic. I’ll local flush and pack.»

The senior vet blinked, then motioned for the tray to be passed. Riley rolled up her sleeves as the supplies arrived. Her forearms were already streaked with Ghost’s blood, but her hands moved with total control. She flushed the wound once, clearing out most of the dried grit and caked debris, then again more slowly, watching how the blood flow changed with each irrigation.

«Entry here, but no deep puncture,» she murmured. «Shrapnel. Looks like tungsten flechette. Not high caliber. He’s lucky.»

Ghost didn’t flinch. He didn’t growl. He lay still, pressed half against her knee, letting her fingers work the edge of the torn muscle like he remembered what her hands were trained for.

«I need light. Someone hold it here.» She pointed. A surgical nurse moved forward without speaking, lifting the LED overhead.

«I need pressure here. Light but constant, not over the artery.» Another tech stepped in. One by one, the clinic staff gathered closer. Quiet now, focused. Their earlier mockery was gone, replaced by something that looked uncomfortably close to respect.

«The dog’s responding to her,» someone whispered.

«No, he’s obeying her,» someone else corrected.

As Riley packed the wound and clamped the bleed, she kept talking. Not to the room, but to Ghost. Her tone was low and rhythmic. Not cooing, not calming—a cadence. Familiar. Field language for pain control. She’d used that same cadence with human SEALs before, when morphine was limited and there was no evac bird in sight. When your voice had to convince the body to wait one more hour, one more breath.

«Pressure here. Carotid stable. Draw a CBC, let’s check for clot profile. I need a vitals monitor on this leg.»

A nurse handed over the lines. Riley snapped them on without pause. And through it all, Ghost didn’t twitch. Not once. His eyes stayed locked on hers.

The vet finally stepped closer, voice soft. «He shouldn’t be this stable.»

«He’s not,» Riley said. «He’s just holding still for me.» She looked up then, at the vet, the techs, the Lieutenant Commander still half-shocked near the back wall. «He’s doing it because I asked.»

The monitor blipped once, then again. Steady. Ghost’s breathing evened. His color, what little could be seen beneath the fur, began to shift from pale ash to something stronger, warmer. The worst was over. The room, for the first time all night, wasn’t bleeding. And the only reason was a woman they’d written off as a rookie thirty minutes ago.

Ghost’s breathing had settled. Not calm—never fully calm—but slower now, steadier. Enough that the heart monitor beeped in quiet rhythm, not alarm. Enough that the staff had backed off, giving Riley just enough space to clean the last of the wound without interruption.

Still crouched beside him, Riley began to secure a compression bandage around the thigh. Her hands were efficient and practiced. No shaking, no hesitation. But there was something taut behind her eyes, something everyone noticed now that they were finally paying attention.

The senior vet cleared his throat. «Where’d you learn that code, Hart?»

She didn’t answer right away. A younger corpsman, still holding the light, glanced between them.

«That wasn’t just a code. That was Tier Shadow phrasing, wasn’t it?»

Riley’s shoulders froze. For a moment, the only sound was the slow rhythmic buzz of the overhead light and the distant hum of base generators.

Tier Shadow. It wasn’t supposed to be spoken aloud. Not by civilians, and not by enlisted personnel who hadn’t served under its shadow. That name had existed only in fragments, rumors, and training tapes redacted into black screens. It was the kind of unit whose missions were sealed behind so many layers of clearance that even their dogs had code names more secure than their handlers.

Ghost’s ear twitched. He hadn’t taken his eyes off her since she knelt.

«I didn’t just learn it,» Riley said finally, her voice low, level. «I wrote parts of it.»

Silence.

«I wasn’t just a field medic. Before I rotated out, I worked with Ghost’s unit. I didn’t train him directly, but I helped design the handler override protocols. I helped write the distress re-engagement sequences.»

The vet blinked. «So he… knows you?»

She shook her head, eyes burning slightly now. «No. He knows my voice. He remembers the echo of the people who trained him. His real handler…» Her voice cracked for the first time all night. «His handler was my closest friend.»

The room stayed frozen. Ghost nudged her hand with his muzzle—gently, purposefully. Riley swallowed hard. She didn’t move, didn’t speak, but her free hand rose and rested on his head.

«I left after our last mission. I didn’t want to serve again after… after what happened. I thought if I stayed quiet long enough, the past would stay buried.»

The Lieutenant Commander spoke for the first time since the reversal. His voice was softer now. «What mission?»

Riley didn’t answer. But Ghost did. He slowly curled his body closer around her, pressing into her boot like it was the only thing left that made sense.

By the time the Night Commander arrived, the glass outside the trauma room was crowded. MPs, medics, and a few off-duty corpsmen who’d heard rumors of a dog going feral in the clinic—all of them watched through the narrow pane, silent now as Ghost, once untouchable, rested with his head on Riley’s lap. Bandaged, monitored, breathing.

The Commander stepped inside with a clipboard and impatience.

«Who authorized this override?» he snapped, eyes scanning the room until they landed on Riley.

She didn’t answer. She didn’t flinch. Ghost did. The instant the man raised his voice, the canine’s head lifted, his ears flattened slightly, and the muscles across his shoulders rippled. Then he growled—low, warning. Every tech in the room froze.

The Commander blinked. «Did that dog just growl at me?»

Riley didn’t move. «Sir, he’s still in recovery. He reacts to raised voices. He thinks you’re a threat.»

«I outrank everyone here!» the Commander barked.

Ghost took one step forward. Not aggressive, not threatening, but protective. It wasn’t instinct; it was memory.

Riley finally stood, placing a calm hand on the dog’s flank. «Stand down,» she said softly. Not to Ghost—he was already alert but under control. She said it to the room, to the posture, to the hierarchy that didn’t know what to do when the chain of command bent towards something unexplainable.

The senior vet stepped in beside her, clearing his throat. «Sir, if she hadn’t intervened, Ghost would have died.»

«I don’t see your name anywhere on the surgical board,» the Commander replied stiffly.

One of the MPs by the door quietly approached with a tablet in hand. «Sir. Her record.»

The Commander took it, scanned briefly, and froze. His eyes jumped to Riley.

«You served under Tier Shadow,» he said. It wasn’t a question.

She met his gaze. «I supported them. Until the unit disbanded.»

He glanced at Ghost, then back to her. «This file’s partially sealed.»

«Because some things don’t belong in headlines,» Riley replied.

The Commander paused. Then, slowly, he straightened his back, shifted his posture, and, in front of the entire clinic, saluted. Not to her rank, not to her badge, but to her work—to what they had all just seen.

Riley didn’t return the salute. She stepped aside and nodded toward Ghost. «He’s the one who deserves that.»

There was a long, heavy silence. Then the Commander lowered his hand and did something no one expected. He saluted the dog. Formally, quietly. And one by one, the rest of the room followed.

The room had settled. Ghost’s vitals were stable, fluids were running, and his breathing was even, save for the occasional hitch in his chest that Riley knew wasn’t from pain. It was from memory, the kind no bandage could fix.

Riley sat quietly beside him, cross-legged, one hand still resting on the dog’s shoulder. She hadn’t said much since the salutes. Hadn’t needed to.

That’s when the base CO stepped in, calmer than the others, clipboard tucked under his arm, ribbons lined perfectly on his chest.

«I was briefed,» he said simply. «And I’m not here to ask what you did, or how you knew what to do.» He looked at Ghost. «I’m here to ask what comes next.»

Riley didn’t answer right away.

The CO continued. «Canine units like this… they don’t get reassigned easily. But after tonight, it’s clear Ghost won’t tolerate a standard handler.» The pause said the rest. «We need someone he already chose.»

Riley looked down. Ghost was watching her. Not staring, just waiting. And then, without a sound, he rose. Slow, stiff, limping slightly on the bandaged leg, but upright. He walked three steps, then pressed his head gently against her boot.

The CO watched the gesture with quiet understanding. «Looks like he made the call.»

Riley swallowed. «I left combat work for a reason,» she said quietly. «I told myself I wouldn’t go back.»

The CO didn’t respond. He didn’t have to. Ghost did. He circled once, then sat beside her. Not leaning, not asking, just waiting. The way he would have waited for his handler’s hand signal under gunfire.

Riley looked around the room. The staff who had doubted her, the techs who now stood still as statues, the vet who hadn’t stopped watching since she’d spoken the first code. And then she nodded.

«Then I’ll train with him,» she said. «As long as he needs.»

The CO gave a slow nod of approval. The senior vet smiled faintly. «Looks like you’ve got a new assignment.»

Ghost thumped his tail once. Not eager, not excited. Sure. Certain. He’d made his choice.

Riley leaned down, stroked the back of his neck, and whispered the same six-syllable phrase. Not to calm him this time, but to promise him something. That he wasn’t going back to the cage. He wasn’t going back to the dark. He’d never be alone again.