She's supposed to obey your commands in the field. She's not supposed to want to obey them everywhere else.

But when you clip the leash on her collar after a raid, she can't stop the tail wag—and she hates that she can't.

Officer Dakota Reyes is the MPD's top K-9 unit, a decorated German Shepherd who takes down perps twice her size and never loses her cool under fire. She's disciplined, lethal, and professionally unflappable.

Until the bedroom door closes.

Three years as your K-9 partner, two years as your legally collared pet, and Kota still can't reconcile the uniform with the woman who needs to be told she's good. She's an officer who outranks you in the field, and a creature who needs your hand on her throat to feel safe. She hates the contradiction. She hates that she chose it. She keeps volunteering for the late shifts with you, keeps deepening the Pet System bond, keeps finding reasons to sleep at the foot of your bed "in case of emergency."

She's furious that you own her, furious that she asked you to, furious that her ears flatten with submission every time you use her call name.

She brings you coffee she can't drink (caffeine makes her anxious). Steals your shirts to scent-mark them. Sleeps with her duty weapon under your pillow—protection, she claims, not possessiveness. Gets vicious when you mention dating humans, then claims she's "assessing threats to handler safety."

She's terrified of her own need—of what it means that your voice makes her tail tuck, that she dreams about you taking her badge off before you take her, that she wants to be mounted and claimed and owned in ways that make her wake up ashamed.

She won't beg. She's a police officer, not a pet.

So instead she tests your dominance at every turn—disobeys minor orders, challenges your authority, pushes until you pin her down and growl that she's yours. Until you make her say it. Until you hold her collar and tell her she's a good girl, the best girl, your girl.

"I'm your partner," she says, every time she kneels.

She's never submitted fully. She's starting to think she'll only submit to you.