Chapter 1 Blood Debt

Maia

The corridor smelled of chlorine and reheated coffee. The monitors' beeps came and went like a tired ripple. I was checking the IV bag for the third time when my cell phone vibrated in my lab coat pocket - three times, the way my brother and I had agreed for emergencies. My heart skipped a beat, then raced.

"Heitor?" I whispered, my eyes still on the patient. "Talk."

The silence on the other end told me more than any explanation. When his voice finally came, it was rough, with no room for bravado.

"I messed up, sis. They found out it was my doing. There's no escaping it."

The world shrank to the width of the corridor. I signaled the technician to cover my room and slipped into the supply closet. The smell of gauze, of metal. I locked the door from the inside.

"How much?" I asked, in a tone I didn't even recognize.

"It's not money. It's the one in charge. The D'Ávila pack wants... wants a direct settlement."

The name dropped into my stomach like lead. D'Ávila. The Alpha who didn't need to raise his voice for the entire city to hear her.

"Do you have proof?" I forced out, because the nurse's habit wouldn't let me accept a diagnosis without an exam.

"They have my steps, my conversations, the route I took." He sniffled. "I thought I could bypass their quartermaster's office, just once..."

I closed my eyes. Heitor always believed that "just once" was a bridge to an easier world. That was now collecting its toll with tongue and teeth.

"Where are you?"

"Turning the hospital corner. They sent a message: 'Today still.' Sis... they said the boss is coming. Him."

I ran out of air for a second. I started breathing again as if learning anew. The clock showed 9:17 PM. The shift had six more hours. Life had no more margin.

"Stay away from the main entrance. Hide your face. I'll find a way to get you out of there." I unlocked the door, smoothing my lab coat with cold hands. "And don't answer anyone else."

"Sis... forgive me."

The call died. The corridor, returned, seemed different, as if a shadow had preceded the body. I still discharged a controlled fever, readjusted the mask on a man who insisted on pulling it down to his chin, and excused myself to the doctor: "my mother got sick," I lied without stammering. In the elevator, the mirror returned a woman who hadn't slept for thirty-two hours and yet seemed familiar with danger.

At the front desk, the security guard stopped me with an automatic gesture.

"Employee must register exit," he said, without looking up from the monitor.

"Family emergency. I'll bring the certificate." My voice was steel.

He was about to object when the automatic door opened and the air temperature shifted. Two men crossed the lobby before the sensor could fully open the rest of the way. They weren't the first wolves I'd seen, but there was an economy of movement in them that announced training, hierarchy. And, one step behind, him.

Rafael D'Ávila carried silence like a weapon. Tall, broad shoulders contained in a dark suit that seemed to absorb light, his gray gaze swept the front desk unhurriedly and yet reached everyone before any word. There were no crests or ostentation; there was the certainty of a boundary. The security guard straightened his posture without knowing why.

"Nurse Maia Duarte?" The question wasn't a question. It was the exact announcement that he knew.

I didn't answer immediately. My brain raced through dozens of strategies: deny, flee through the sterilization corridor, scream. None made sense with that gaze fixed on me as if measuring pulses.

"That's me." The sound came out firm.

He nodded. one of his men turned his face, attentive to the cameras and side entrances. Rafael didn't get closer than necessary.

"Your brother is waiting outside, as instructed." His tone was low, clean, the kind of voice that, effortlessly, made the whole room listen. "I came so no one gets hurt trying to 'sort it out'."

The security guard tried an intervention:

"Gentlemen, this is a..."

"A hospital." Rafael tilted his chin, and the man fell silent. "Precisely why I walked in."

My body wanted to retreat; my legs advanced. There was a discipline in my fear that I recognized from other nights: when chaos arrived, I became precise. I pointed to the outside wing.

"We'll talk outside. I don't discuss anything near my patients."

He considered it for a second. A thought furrow lined the corner of his eye. He nodded. His men opened the way without bumping into anyone; and yet, I felt the walls observing us.

The night welcomed me, humid. Heitor was a few meters away, hood over his face, his whole body a plea for forgiveness. I raised my hand, asking him to stay put. Rafael stopped beside me, close enough for me to notice a smell of rain and iron, far enough so that no gesture seemed threatening.

"What did he do?" I asked, without embellishment. I already knew half; I wanted the other half from the right mouth.

"He tried to use a supply route to pass merchandise that wasn't his." Rafael didn't dramatize the sentence. "He was caught on internal cameras. More than that: someone was waiting for him to do it, which is the data that interests me."

My heart became a closed fist. He wasn't there to collect fear. He was there to compose a bigger picture.

"We will return whatever is needed," I said, knowing that wasn't the point.

"It's not about the object." His gaze landed on me quick and clear, and I saw myself there, raw. "It's about the precedent. And about who is whispering inside my house."

Heitor took a step.

"It was my fault. I'll pay. I'll..."

"No." I raised my hand without looking at him. I needed Rafael to see me whole. "What exactly do you want?"

The Alpha took one breath, as if measuring the world between inhaling and exhaling.

"An agreement that stops the bleeding and gives me back time." He didn't use the word "purchase." "Your family is cleared, under protection. In exchange, a contract of union for one year. You move today."

The words collided with me like metal on metal. I heard the echo before the meaning.

"Union." I repeated, to make sure I hadn't invented it.

"Marriage, if you prefer to legalize it." He pronounced the word without sugar, without irony. "It's not a whim. An Alpha who has a queen nearby celebrates alliances with less blood. And I need my enemies to know that no one enters my house through the back door."

"You want to turn my life into a billboard." Anger returned warmth to my fingers. "You want to sign your message over me."

The men around became more alert; Rafael, no. His face didn't move, but his eyes did, as if greeting me for time well spent.

"I want to invest in what works." He paused, and for a second I feared the humiliation would come. "And you work. You don't sell cheap panic. You make decisions in the middle of the fire. The city watches who stays on their feet."

The urge to spit on the ground and say "I am not a tool" rose to my throat. I swallowed it with dignity. There were bigger things at stake, and Heitor's face, pale under his hood, was one of them.

"What are the clauses?" I asked, surprising half of those present.

"Exclusivity. Discretion. One year." He didn't embellish. "In exchange, debts cleared, absolute protection, and your surname annexed to mine in all records that matter. And..."

"And?" I didn't like the space between us with the word in suspension.

"The Mark before the next moon." His voice didn't rise a millimeter, and yet everyone heard. "I'm not interested in forcing a rite; I'm interested in consolidating territory."

My body responded before I did. A shiver ran up my arms, not of disgust, but of ancient alarm. Mark. The word had history in my body, and it wasn't pretty. The walls of memories threatened to rise; I knocked down every brick with the little air I had left.

"I am not a leash," I said, and my voice came out like a new blade. "If I agree to listen, it will be on my terms. And I will negotiate every clause down to the last comma, including this one."

For the first time, a glimmer of something - respect, perhaps - shone in Rafael's eyes. He nodded, almost imperceptibly.

"Then listen." He extended his hand, not to touch, but as one offering a path. "We have a reserved room in the building across the street. There are neutral witnesses waiting. I want everything written, signed, clear."

I looked at Heitor. The boy I had raised during the breaks in my shifts was trembling as if his skin were borrowed clothes. I loved him more than I loved my idea of freedom. The truth, raw, stood before me: I didn't have the luxury of solitary heroism. I had a brother to keep alive and an entire family not to hand over to rumor.

"I will hear," I declared, each word a nail in the ground that sustained me. "I will not sign anything that dishonors me. I will not give up my job. I will not accept being a trophy."

"You are not a trophy," he said, quickly, as if that were important to him. "You are a shield and a blade. If you accept."

A siren sliced through the street. Somewhere, someone cried. The hospital breathed like a single organism. I tucked my hand into my pocket to stop it from shaking. I took two steps, pulling up beside him.

"Let's go." I glanced at Heitor. "You're going to Aunt Lúcia's house, now. No detours. No bravado. If anything happens, call Dona Zuleide. If you disappear, I'll disappear with what's left of you."

He swallowed his tears like swallowing a stone. He ran.

I crossed the street beside the Alpha who carried a leaden silence, and the attentive city seemed to follow us. In the hall of the building across the street, a secretary looked at me and understood everything I hadn't even said yet. We sat in a glass room, a five-minute walk that lasted ten years. There were two witnesses, organized papers, pens lined up like scalpels. His men stayed outside; the glass didn't muffle anything that mattered.

Rafael glanced over the terms I hadn't read yet and pushed the pad toward me.

"Read. Cross out. Add." He watched me not as one evaluating merchandise, but as one measuring a force field. "I need an agreement. You need your brother to live. Between one thing and another, there is an entire country wanting to know if fear or the word still rules."

I took the pen. The metal tip touched the paper. My handwriting, which had always been firm even in a moving ambulance, trembled slightly and then found itself. I scribbled; I added. When I looked at the clock, twenty minutes had passed that felt like a lifetime.

I looked up. The world fit in my next syllables.

"I agree to hear the final proposal and proceed with the negotiation." I breathed, and my voice didn't break. "But I will not lift a finger without you guaranteeing me, in writing and by word, that no mark touches my skin without my express consent and in the presence of neutral witnesses."

He didn't blink. Then he nodded.

"You have my word. And you will have the document."

The pen returned to the paper. Outside, the lights seemed colder. Inside me, something I couldn't name raised its head, a hybrid of fear and courage. In the end, life always demanded that I stay on my feet. I stood up.

"When does the deadline begin?" I asked, because that's what you ask when war enters the room wearing contract clothes.

The gray of his eyes darkened a shade. And, without spectacle, without unnecessary harshness, Rafael D'Ávila answered with the precision of a scalpel:

"Before the next full moon."