Chapter 1: The Midnight Triage
2:00 AM. Valemont.
Torrential rain strafed the building’s massive floor-to-ceiling windows like a barrage of bullets. The water merged into a blurry waterfall against the glass, warping the neon lights outside into shattered patches of color.
Inside the lobby of the Aetheris Animal Emergency Center, the stark white fluorescent lights hummed with a faint electric buzz.
Chloe Vance sat behind the stainless steel triage desk. Fourteen consecutive hours on shift had left her nerves numb, yet her spine remained perfectly straight. The top two buttons of her lab coat were undone, revealing a black turtleneck underneath.
She was looking down, flipping through a thick stack of medical records. Her nails were clipped short and impeccably clean, the side of her index finger bearing a thin callus from years of gripping a scalpel.
Quiet. The only sound in the entire space was the dull drone of the overhead AC vent.
Then, the ear-piercing shriek of tires tearing across wet asphalt ripped through the rainy night.
It wasn’t just one car; it was the synchronized hard braking of an entire convoy.
Blinding high beams from armored SUVs pierced the sheets of rain and glass, rudely sweeping across Chloe’s face.
She didn’t panic or raise a hand to shield her eyes from the glare. Chloe simply lifted her gaze, her mind making a rapid, clinical assessment: Armored vehicles. The synchronized hum of modified engines. This isn’t a standard hit-and-run emergency.
Trouble had arrived.
Crash—
The double glass doors of the clinic were battered open by brute physical force. Gale-force winds, laced with freezing mist, instantly flooded the confined space, scattering several prescription slips off the triage desk.
Over a dozen men in solid black suits surged in. They were towering, muscles coiled tight, the cold, hard outlines of shoulder holsters faintly visible beneath their soaked jackets.
The lead man strode up to the triage desk, slamming a mud-splattered palm onto the stainless steel surface.
“Doctor. Now.”
He spoke at a rapid-fire clip, exuding an aggressive arrogance that brooked no refusal.
Chloe cast a look of mild distaste at the muddy puddle forming on her counter. Ignoring the man’s terrifying tone, her gaze bypassed him entirely, locking onto the massive, shadowy figure corralled in the center of the men in black.
Her veterinary radar instantly flared to life.
It was an exceptionally rare purebred Snow Mastiff. The size of a full-grown male lion, its pristine white coat was now matted with mud and blood. It let out a frantic, guttural snarl, the sound in its throat tearing like a broken bellows.
Chloe’s eyes swept over its body like a scanner: cyanotic mucous membranes, extreme agitation, abnormal abdominal distension. Probable Gastric Dilatation-Volvulus (GDV). Another twenty minutes, and it would die right here from internal bleeding and shock.
Two heavily muscled bodyguards flanked it, desperately anchoring the reinforced leather leash fastened around its thick neck. Their combat boots screeched against the tiled floor, nearly skidding forward as the beast dragged them.
The air immediately thickened with the heavy metallic tang of blood, the smell of rain, and an intensely dangerous, suffocating physical pressure.
An ordinary night-shift vet might have already hit the panic button under the desk and bolted for the back safe room.
But not Chloe. In this room, medicine was the only absolute law.
She set down her ballpoint pen, the tip leaving a sharp black dot on the medical chart.
“Get it onto Operating Table Two.”
Chloe stood up, casually grabbing a pair of white latex gloves from a nearby medical tray. Head down, she snapped the gloves over her slender fingers with practiced efficiency, the rubber cuffs snapping sharply against her wrists.
“And the rest of you, step behind the yellow line. I don’t need unsterilized people standing in my ER.”
Chloe’s voice wasn’t loud. It was frigid, steady, and laced with an unquestionable air of command.
The bodyguards froze for a split second. In Valemont, absolutely no one gave them orders.
“Do you not understand English?” Chloe looked up, her icy gaze sweeping over their gun holsters. “If you want to watch it die, keep standing there looking stupid.”
She picked up the largest syringe, expertly drawing a clear sedative from a vial.
Right then, the chaotic crowd abruptly fell dead silent.
As if driven by some invisible force, the men in black parted down the middle, carving out a clear path.
Leather shoes stepped onto the waterlogged tiles, making a heavy, muted sound.
Click. Click.
A man walked in.
The barometric pressure in the lobby seemed to plummet to freezing in an instant. Chloe registered a highly dangerous scent mingling in the air—cold fir and cedar—so oppressive it made breathing difficult.
He was exceptionally tall. At over six-foot-three, his height made the already claustrophobic ER feel even more cramped. His bespoke black suit, thoroughly drenched by the rain, clung tightly to his broad shoulders and back, tracing the explosive lines of his musculature.
Water rolled down the razor-sharp cut of his jawline, dripping onto a black silk tie. On his left wrist, a phenomenally expensive metal watch caught the harsh light, glinting with a cold, metallic luster.
The man stopped half a meter from the triage desk. Looming over her, he lowered his gaze to the woman in front of him.
They were eyes utterly devoid of warmth. Dark, ruthless, studying her as if she were an object—a gaze carrying a born predator’s instinct.
“You can treat it.”
It was a statement of fact, leaving absolutely zero room for doubt. His voice was a low, distinctly gravelly baritone.
Chloe met his eyes. Even under such suffocating proximity, her spine remained perfectly straight. She sneered inwardly: Just another rich b*st*rd who thinks his money makes him God at the operating table.
“I’m the emergency doctor here.” Chloe flicked the barrel of the syringe, bleeding out a few tiny drops of the solution. “As long as it’s still breathing, I can treat it. But only if you control your dog—and these people in my way.”
The man’s eyes darkened a fraction.
His gaze swept from her impassive face down to the ID badge clipped to her chest—Chloe Vance. Then, his eyes locked onto the hand holding the syringe.
It was a remarkably steady hand, without the slightest tremor.
The man tilted his chin up slightly. In the dim light, the bob of his Adam’s apple was starkly visible.
“Let go,” he ordered coldly.
The bodyguards restraining the Mastiff paled, hesitating for a second. “Mr. Zane Blackwood, it’s completely lost its mind right now. If it gets too close, it will bite you...”
“I said, let go.”
Zane didn’t raise his voice a single decibel, but the oxygen in the room seemed to vanish instantly. The bodyguards dropped the leather leashes as if shocked by a live wire.
The moment the restraint was gone, the massive dog—named Thor—didn’t calm down as expected.
The unfamiliar environment, the pungent smell of antiseptic, and the tearing agony in its gut completely triggered the beast’s surviving feral instincts.
A deafening, savage bark erupted from Thor’s throat.
Its eyes were bloodshot, a terrifying, raging crimson. With a violent thrust of its thick hind legs against the tiles, its muscles exploded into action.
It cleared the yellow warning line on the floor in a single bound, its massive frame launching into the air.
Its target: Chloe, standing behind the triage desk, syringe in hand.
