Intro. The Monster Awakens The city under Max's command never slept, and neither did he. By the time he was 30, Max had become the Alpha of an empire built on silence and fear. Yet within the walls of his own mansion, the silence hid a betrayal that even his spy network had not detected. His parents, the same ones who taught him that power is everything, had turned their own home into a nightmarish laboratory. For years, Max searched for his younger sister, Sapphire, believing the lies that she was being treated abroad for an incurable disease. But one stormy night, driven by a chest-burning hunch, Max ignored the official blueprints and knocked down a false wall on the top floor. There, in a suffocating and hidden attic, he found her. Zafiro, 22, was not the woman full of life he imagined. It was a vision of absolute fragility: fair skin with a soft tan hue, tangled brown hair