His eyes locked on Danielle. And what he saw wasn’t confusion. It was recognition. Something ancient and unfinished stepped into the room and stood between them like a story written long ago and never ended.

The cadets froze as the colonel walked the aisle, each step deliberate. Like punctuation at the end of sentences this base had been getting wrong for years. He stopped right in front of her. The air snapped tight. Then he spoke—voice low, solid, final: “Iron Wolf… stand by…”

Danielle doesn’t blink. The title rolls across the room like thunder behind a drawn breath. Iron Wolf. The code name wasn’t common knowledge. Hell, it wasn’t supposed to exist anymore. Yet here he is—Colonel Jack Rourke, the legend who disappeared after an op gone sideways in Helmand, standing before her with eyes that know exactly what she’s capable of.

The silence fractures as Connors clears his throat. “Sir, this is—”

“Dismissed,” Rourke says without looking at him.

“Excuse me?”

Rourke’s gaze finally shifts. Just enough to pin Connors in place like a boot on a snake. “I said dismissed, Lieutenant. Or do you want me to explain to command why someone with your clearance just questioned a classified directive in front of forty cadets?”

Connors’s face drains. He swallows whatever pride had puffed up inside him and retreats like a dog suddenly aware of its leash. One by one, the cadets follow, but their heads twist as they leave—curiosity burning behind every backward glance.

Danielle stays.

Rourke tilts his head slightly. “Walk with me.”

They cross the base in silence, boots crunching gravel, the wind threading between barracks and breaking apart overhead. He leads her to a hangar, locked and dust-dull from disuse. No one speaks. No one dares.

Inside, the lights flicker on. What she sees pulls the breath from her lungs.

Iron Wolf Unit 7.

Or what’s left of it.

Crates stenciled with obsolete ops codes. A wall lined with encrypted lockers. An old mission board covered in faded red string and photos worn pale by time. And in the center, the wolf crest—her crest—scorched into the concrete.

Rourke closes the hangar door behind them. “I was told you were gone.”

“I was told you were dead,” Danielle answers.

His jaw tightens. “Close enough. After Prague, they folded the unit. Claimed we went off-script, cost too many assets. I kept some of the gear. Some of the files. Just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“In case Iron Wolf needed to howl again.”

She crosses the floor, running her gloved hand along a sealed tactical locker. Her fingers rest on the bio-lock scanner. Without hesitation, it hisses open. Inside, a matte-black medpack with her old call sign etched in red: WRAITH.

Her pulse stutters. “This shouldn’t exist.”

“Neither should you,” Rourke says, his voice softer now. “But here we are.”

Danielle turns to face him. “Why now?”

Rourke pulls a crumpled folder from inside his coat and tosses it on the table. She opens it.

Photos. Satellite images. Burned safehouses. Personnel listed MIA—people they trained with. A map with coordinates circled in ink that isn’t standard issue.

One word scrawled across the bottom page: Reaper.

Danielle stiffens.

Reaper was the codename of the man they failed to kill five years ago. He was a phantom then—a high-level rogue operative with ties to internal corruption, linked to a betrayal that shattered their entire team. She remembers the explosion. The screaming. The bodies.

“I saw him die,” she whispers.

“So did I,” Rourke replies. “But he’s back. And he’s not working alone.”

She closes the folder, the edges trembling in her grip. “Does command know?”

“They buried the last op so deep even the NSA doesn’t talk about it. We go to them, they bury us too.”

Danielle lets out a slow breath. The old weight is back, heavy and cold, but familiar. “Then what’s the play?”

Rourke taps a keypad on the wall. A false panel opens to reveal a terminal—coated in dust, but active. As it boots up, the wolf insignia pulses faintly onscreen.

“We rebuild Iron Wolf,” he says. “From scratch. Off the grid. Every trace of this stays black. You and me, we start with intel. I’ve got assets in D.C. and a tracker in Seoul. But I need boots in the field. I need you.”

Danielle nods once. No ceremony. No hesitation. Just the rhythm of a pulse syncing with old instincts.

That night, she doesn’t sleep.

She doesn’t need to.

By morning, she’s already decrypted two of the files. Reaper’s movement patterns, erratic but deliberate, always circling what used to be classified Iron Wolf drop sites. It’s not just revenge. It’s reclamation. He’s pulling something from the ashes.

On her way across the courtyard, Connors intercepts her. “Where exactly do you keep disappearing to, Sergeant?”

Danielle looks up at him, smile razor-thin. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

He smirks. “Try me.”

She leans in. “Have you ever hunted a ghost?”

That shuts him up.

She moves past without breaking stride.

Rourke is already in the hangar, prepping gear. “We got a ping. Abandoned comms station in the Black Hills. Static bursts came through with the Iron Wolf encryption. No one else would know that sequence.”

“Then we go,” Danielle says, loading her kit without another word.

Two hours later, they’re off base in a nondescript SUV, silence stretching long and steady. Rourke drives like a man who’s done it too often—eyes always checking the mirrors, hands never relaxing. They don’t talk much. They don’t need to.

The station is worse than expected.

Burnt out. Tagged with strange symbols. But someone’s been here recently—there’s a thermos still warm near the edge of the desk. And on the wall, scratched in with something sharp:

I SEE YOU, IRON WOLF.

Danielle’s blood chills.

“Tripwire,” Rourke mutters, and drops just in time to yank her down with him as the roof explodes.

They hit the floor hard. Ears ringing. Dust choking the light.

Gunfire erupts outside.

Danielle rolls behind the console, pulls her sidearm, and checks the clip.

Three hostiles breach the side entrance—tactical, fast, but not coordinated. Mercs, not pros.

She drops the first with a clean shot to the chest. The second tries to flank but Rourke flattens him with a shock baton. The third goes down in a tangle of limbs and shattered glass after Danielle lures him into a blind corner.

When the smoke clears, Rourke drags one of them into the open and peels off the mask.

Not just a merc.

Tattoo on the neck: Omega Loop. Ex-Iron Wolf, turned sellout.

Danielle curses under her breath.

“They’re not just coming after the unit,” Rourke says grimly. “They are the unit. What’s left of it.”

Her stomach flips. “They’ve rebuilt Iron Wolf, too.”

“No. They’ve corrupted it.”

In the dead man’s pocket, they find a drive. Encrypted. Danielle plugs it into her field tablet. After two minutes of bypassing, the files open.

A target list.

Names.

Her name.

Rourke’s.

And one more.

“Who’s ‘Echo’?” she asks, scrolling to the last entry.

Rourke stiffens.

“She was our analyst. Ghost-level clearance. Went missing the day Reaper vanished. We thought she was dead.”

Danielle locks eyes with him. “You don’t think that anymore, do you?”

His silence says everything.

They return to base under cover of night, bypassing main gates. No questions. No reports. Danielle’s hands shake just once—when she sees her own name on that list again. Highlighted. Flagged.

Marked.

By the time the sun rises, Rourke activates the final sequence on the hangar terminal. A system long buried reboots.

Iron Wolf Protocol: REFORGE.

One by one, encrypted files unlock. Identities. Safehouses. Cache points. A message sent through quantum relay—silent, invisible, unmistakable to those who know how to listen:

The Wolf howls again.

Cadets at the base begin to whisper. Something’s changed. Danielle walks the halls like she owns them—not out of arrogance, but certainty. Connors notices, and so does the rest of command.

Within days, strange things begin to happen. A corrupt captain is arrested after an anonymous leak. A shipment of classified tech is intercepted before it goes missing. And one night, the flag above Camp Ironridge waves against a wind no one can feel, casting its shadow across a courtyard where legends are born.

Danielle steps out into that light, alone.

Until she hears it.

Boots behind her.

Not marching.

Assembling.

Ten shadows emerge from the mist. Former ghosts. Forgotten soldiers. Some scarred, some hollow-eyed. All answering the call.

Rourke steps forward last, silent, proud.

Danielle nods, voice low but strong.

“Iron Wolf… stand ready.”

And this time, the world will hear them howl.