6

CAMILA's POV

Three weeks after the maintenance building—three weeks of careful, suffocating, guilty distance that neither Tiago nor I had managed to maintain completely despite our best intentions—I stood frozen in the high press box at the Iberian Cup final. My palms were slick and clammy against the cold metal railing, a thick stack of investigative evidence heavy enough to end at least one major executive career sat securely inside my leather bag, and a threatening, blackmailing text message from an unknown number still sat unread and unanswered on my phone screen. The stadium air was heavy with the artificial ozone smell of pre-match pyrotechnics and the collective, roaring breath of sixty thousand screaming fans packed tightly into the concrete bowls around us.

"You're doing that thing again where you look like you're about to throw up on international television," Lucía said, sliding into the press seat beside me and carefully adjusting her long telephoto camera lens without looking up from her viewfinder. "Is this big-match nerves, or is this strictly Tiago-shaped nerves?"

I kept my eyes fixed straight ahead on the wide, manicured green expanse of the pitch below. "Can it honestly be both?"

"It's always both with you lately, Cami. Though to be fair, if a man looked at me the way Tiago looks at you every time you ask a tough question in the mixed zone, I'd probably need a paper bag to breathe into as well."

"He doesn't look at me like that," I muttered, my cheeks flushing hot despite the freezing wind sweeping through the open-air box.

"Right. And I'm currently winning a Pulitzer for my action shots of corner flags," Lucía snorted, finally lowering her camera to give me a dry, knowing look. "You published the Osório piece yesterday. Diego's officially been suspended by the league pending a full ethical investigation. That's real impact. That's five years of your relentless hard work landing a direct hit right where you wanted it to go."

"It's not enough," I whispered, the words tasting bitter and dry like ash in my mouth as I stared down at the players warming up. "Osório was just a disposable pawn in a much larger game. Henrique Cabral is the actual mastermind and architect behind the entire cover-up, and I still can't prove his direct involvement without exposing everything else alongside it."

"Meaning Tiago."

"Meaning Tiago." I closed my eyes briefly, an unbearable weight of exhaustion, grief, and gut-wrenching dread settling heavy in my chest. "I don't know how to finish this investigative piece without destroying him completely in the process, Lucía. And honestly, I don't know when, exactly, destroying him stopped feeling like an acceptable cost of doing my job."

"Well, if it helps your journalistic conscience, he looks entirely ready to commit arson for you right now," Lucía noted, nodding her chin toward the pitch. "Look at him. He's glaring up at the press box like our laptops personally insulted his lineage."

I snapped my eyes toward the turf. Sure enough, Tiago was standing near the center circle during the final tactical briefing, his dark hair damp with sweat, chest heaving under his red club jersey. But his amber-flecked eyes weren't looking at the coach. They were locked dead onto our press seat with a fierce, possessive intensity that made my breath catch in my throat.

"See?" Lucía whispered, elbowing me gently. "Total boyfriend material, right up until he shifts into a multi-ton apex predator and eats the referee."

"He is not my boyfriend," I hissed, though my traitorous heart gave a violent, joyful lurch at the memory of his scorching hands burning against my skin three weeks ago in that cramped shed. "We are in the middle of a deeply complicated, highly illegal corporate conspiracy."

"Same difference in modern dating, Cami. Now, whatever you ultimately decide to do about his murderous billionaire boss, you need to decide it quickly," Lucía muttered, nudging my elbow sharply with her own. "Look down there. The teams are walking out of the tunnel."

The match kicked off moments later to a deafening, wall-to-wall wave of sound—Clube Atlântico facing off against Henrique Cabral’s formidable, star-studded Spanish squad in a final that had been building toward a violent, explosive collision for months. Down on the grass, I watched Tiago command the pitch with the same impossible, terrifying athletic grace that had first tipped me off months ago when I started digging into the club's suspicious financial records and player transfers. I gripped the press railing until my knuckles turned stark white, trying desperately not to think about his mouth dragging rough and hot down my throat, or the low, desperate sound he had made when he drove into me in that dark, cramped shed.

"He's playing with an unusual amount of aggression today," Lucía observed, tracking his movements through her heavy telephoto lens. "Look at his posture. He's not even watching the ball half the time; he's constantly scanning the lower stands."

"He's looking for security threats," I said quietly, my heart hammering a frantic, painful rhythm against my ribs. "Henrique has been moving his private enforcers into the city all week."

"Great. Nothing screams 'family-friendly sports entertainment' quite like corporate mercenaries in tailored wool coats," Lucía muttered, adjusting her shutter speed.

Then came the sixty-third minute.

It was the exact same minute Mateo had collapsed five years ago on this very pitch under mysterious, unexplained circumstances that the club's administration had ruthlessly swept under the rug.

A sudden, sharp chill ran straight down my spine—some ancient, sharpened journalistic instinct screaming that something in the stadium had gone violently, irrevocably wrong. My eyes darted away from the ball, abandoning the play entirely as I scanned the crowded lower stands near the away section.

I spotted them before my brain could even fully process what my eyes were seeing. Three broad-shouldered men in heavy dark wool coats were moving through the dense, cheering crowd with a focused, terrifying purpose, completely ignoring the match unfolding on the pitch. As one of them turned his head under the blinding glare of the overhead floodlights, his pupils flared with the exact same unearthly, liquid-gold fire as Tiago's.

"Lucía," I gasped, my voice barely escaping as a thin thread of sound amid the stadium roar. "We need to get out of here. Right now."

"Cami, what is it? The team is right in the middle of an attacking play—"

"Henrique's people. They're right there in the crowd."

We didn't even make it three steps toward the narrow press box exit before a heavy, stone-cold hand clamped down hard and unyielding on my upper arm. I twisted on pure instinct, slamming my elbow backward—five years of chasing dangerous, shady stories having taught me the basic, essential mechanics of not going quietly into the dark.

"Miss Serrano," a smooth, cultured voice purred right beside my ear, its grip like an inescapable steel vise. "Alpha Cabral would like a quick word with you. Right now, if you don't mind."

"I mind enormously," I snapped, wrenching my arm forward and opening my mouth to scream at the top of my lungs for stadium security. "And for the record, your grip is atrocious and entirely unprofessional."

The man didn't even blink at my sarcasm. "Your professional curiosity has been an ongoing nuisance, Miss Serrano."

Before I could fire off another retort, the stadium's massive overhead floodlights flickered violently, once, twice, before plunging half the arena into deep, unnatural shadow. The sound that followed was not the triumphant roar of a football crowd celebrating a goal.

It was screaming. Real, shrieking human terror spreading through the lower stands like wildfire.

Wolves. Actual, massive, terrifying wolves—beasts the size of small cars, fully shifted and snarling viciously—were crashing through the concrete barricades near the pitch, tearing straight through the advertising hoardings. Beneath the terrifying chaos of fleeing fans and shattering plastic, I caught one crystal-clear glimpse of Tiago on the field below. He was no longer running plays or tracking the ball. He was mid-shift himself, his club jersey tearing apart violently across his expanding shoulders, his eyes blazing a brilliant, furious gold as he abandoned the game entirely.

"Camila!" His roar tore across the roaring stadium, raw, primal, and agonizingly furious, cutting through the bedlam like a razor-sharp blade.

I watched him charge across the turf, tearing through Henrique's advancing wolves with a desperate, terrifying speed that had nothing to do with football and everything to do with a predator protecting what belonged to him.

"Move!" the man holding my arm growled, his pleasant facade dropping instantly as he yanked me violently backward toward the dark press exit tunnel.

"Get your hands off my editor!" Lucía shouted out of nowhere, suddenly launching herself forward and beating the burly enforcer over the head with her heavy, professional-grade camera body with zero hesitation.

"Lucía, run!" I shrieked as the man stumbled back from the blow, releasing my arm for a split second.

I fought against his remaining grip with every ounce of physical strength I possessed, twisting, clawing fiercely at his face, and screaming Tiago's name into the absolute bedlam of the stadium. Human panic and supernatural war were colliding in real-time, which wasn’t ideal for Henrique's delicate cover-up, but broadcast cameras were still rolling overhead, reporting this absolute nightmare to millions of unsuspecting homes across Europe.

"You're making a massive mistake," I choked out, kicking wildly as the man hauled me off my feet and dragged me deeper into the pitch-black shadows of the concrete tunnel, away from the light, away from Tiago, away from any chance of surviving the night.

"The only mistake was ever letting you publish that article," the man muttered coldly, hauling me further into the dark as the emergency exit doors swung shut behind us, cutting off the noise of the stadium.

Then, right behind us in the dark, windowless corridor, a terrifying, earth-shaking roar echoed, vibrating through the solid concrete beneath my boots and freezing the blood in my veins.

The last thing I saw before the tunnel's pitch-blackness swallowed me whole was Tiago leaping over the stadium wall, his blazing gold eyes locked dead on the exact spot where I was being taken, sprinting full speed into the darkest, most dangerous place either of us had ever stood.