10

TIAGO'S POV

 

I left Camila back at the safehouse with Cam posted rigidly outside her door like a granite gargoyle, my hands gripping the steering wheel so hard the leather groaned under my palms. The taste of my own unfinished sentence still sat bitter on the back of my tongue—everything in me has already chosen someone else.

Brilliant. Just magnificent. I hadn't meant to say it that plainly. I had planned to give her a measured, professional, entirely unromantic warning, and had somehow, in the span of one unguarded morning, confessed more to an investigative human journalist than I had voluntarily muttered to anyone in eleven years. If I kept this up at this rate, I would be picking out matching throw pillows and a golden retriever by next Tuesday, followed swiftly by signing up for couples pottery classes.

My phone hummed in the console, but I ignored it, my jaw locked so tight my back teeth ached.

The council chamber sat in a deliberately unmarked building in the old quarter—all worn stone, arched ceilings, and suffocatingly careful neutrality. The emergency session had been called for eleven sharp, which gave me precisely enough time to drive into the city, swallow my rising panic, and compose myself into something resembling an Alpha capable of accounting for a kidnapping attempt broadcast on live television to half the continent.

I walked in expecting a firing squad, and I wasn't far off.

"Explain to me," Alpha Emerita Isadora Vaz said from the head of a massive wooden table, flanked by territorial leaders vibrating with various states of controlled, aristocratic fury, "how a Cup Final kidnapping attempt against a human journalist managed to end up partially captured on an international broadcast."

"The attempt was not mine to prevent from outside the tunnel," I said, sliding into my seat and resisting the powerful urge to check my watch every five seconds. "By the time I understood what was happening, the only choice available was speed, not subtlety."

"Speed," rumbled a northern Alpha named Bastos—a heavyset, perpetually scowling bastard whose pack held entirely too much weight on this council, "that half the continent may have witnessed. Do you understand the sheer exposure risk you have created for every single pack in this room, Marques?"

"I understand it entirely."

"Do you?" Bastos leaned forward, his heavy forearms hitting the table, his eyes narrowing into cold slits. "Because from where I am sitting, it looks like you allowed your pathetic personal feelings for a human woman to compromise decades of careful concealment."

"My personal feelings," I snapped back, keeping my voice level through sheer, agonizing willpower while every primitive instinct under my skin screamed to rip his throat out right across the mahogany, "are not the reason someone attempted to kidnap her from a secured tunnel during a nationally televised match. That reason belongs to whoever ordered it, and I would gently remind this council that identifying them remains considerably more urgent than litigating my judgment."

The chamber instantly erupted into absolute, deafening chaos.

Several regional Alphas started shouting over each other, demanding answers I did not have, while others banged their fists on the table demanding containment guarantees I could not fully give. It took nearly a full hour of diplomatic verbal fencing, thinly veiled threats, and tactical stonewalling before Isadora finally banged her heavy silver ring against the mahogany to call the session to order. Her expression gave away precisely zero indication of which way her personal guillotine was swinging.

She caught me in the corridor afterward, alone, the other Alphas having already bolted for their luxury cars like they were late for an open bar and worried the appetizers would run out.

"Walk with me," she said. Not a request.

We fell into step along the narrow, damp stone corridor, the sound of our footsteps echoing off the walls. Isadora waited until we were well out of earshot of the lingering council guards before speaking again. "I am not going to condemn you outright. Not yet. Whatever is between you and this little journalist of yours is, for the moment, still your own business."

"I appreciate that."

"Don't," she snapped, her sharp, ancient glance slicing right through me. "I am not doing you a kindness, Tiago. I am telling you a brutal fact. This council will not be able to protect you much longer if she keeps pulling threads that lead back toward things certain parties would prefer remained buried, regardless of your personal feelings toward her."

"Henrique," I said flatly, the name tasting like ash and old pennies.

"Henrique already has allies quietly building a case that your judgment has been compromised," Isadora confirmed, her voice dropping to a low, gravelly hum. "That you are no longer fit to hold Lisbon territory with the necessary detachment the position requires. It isn't a formal motion yet. It will become one the moment he believes he has enough votes to survive the attempt."

My jaw ticked so hard a muscle cramped. "And you? Where does the council's Emerita stand on all this?"

Isadora stopped walking, turning to study me with an unreadable expression—sharp, calculating, and, underneath it all, touched with something almost like sympathy. "I have been watching both the Marques and Cabral packs for a very long time. Longer than you have been alive. I have my own history with Henrique, and I will tell you plainly: I am not entirely opposed to seeing his grand ambitions checked."

"But you won't say so publicly."

"Not yet. The timing isn't right, and I am not in the business of losing wars I haven't finished preparing to fight." She studied me a moment longer. "But if you survive long enough to need my help, Tiago, you may find you have it. That is not a promise. It is an offer, and offers expire."

She left me standing alone in the dim hallway with that cryptic little parting gift, looking like a man who had just been handed a loaded gun with no safety and a very short fuse.

I drove back into the city alone, replaying the conversation from every angle, trying to determine if I had just gained a tactical ally or simply been handed a longer, more elegant leash to hang myself with.

My phone buzzed sharply somewhere past the old bridge. An unknown number, routed through three separate layers of encryption my own high-end security team hadn't managed to catch in time.

I pulled over immediately, tires biting hard against the gravel. Some old, primal instinct warned me not to look at a glowing screen while doing eighty down the highway.

A single photograph loaded slowly on the screen.

Camila. Asleep. Curled up deep beneath the heavy linen curtains of the safehouse bedroom, looking entirely too peaceful, too vulnerable. The angle of the shot was low and slightly off-center, clearly taken from directly outside her second-story window.

Beneath it, one single line of text:

-She is not as protected as you think she is.-

I sat perfectly still in the stopped car for three agonizing seconds. My pulse roared in my ears, drowning out the hum of the engine, and every single careful, polished piece of the corporate Alpha I had presented to the council not an hour ago burned away entirely—leaving behind something considerably older, darker, and violently, terrifyingly territorial.

I slammed the car into gear so hard the transmission protested with a metallic screech.

I didn't obey a single speed limit on the drive back to the safehouse.