Irina’s POV

I stared at Roman.

"How bad?" I asked.

Roman was quiet for a second. That second told me everything.

"Bad enough that they took him straight to emergency," he said. "They’re working on him now."

I nodded. I didn’t know what else to do.

The walkway felt too still around us. Below, the sounds of cleanup were winding down — boots dragging across stone, low voices calling out positions, the occasional clatter of something being moved. The training ground that had been a war zone twenty minutes ago was turning back into just a room.

But Andrei was in an emergency room somewhere.

Because of wounds that weren’t closing.

I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth for a second. Just a second. Then I pulled it away and made myself stand straight.

"Can I go see him?" I asked. "The injured. All of them."

Roman looked at me.

"You don’t have to," he said, which wasn’t a no.

"I know." I met his eyes — something I still didn’t do easily, with anyone. "I want to."

He studied me for a moment the way he always did, like he was trying to calculate whether I was a variable he’d already accounted for or a new problem. Then he exhaled.

"I’ll take you."

---

The room they’d set up as a field recovery ward was at the far end of the east corridor — a long, low-ceilinged space that smelled like antiseptic and something older underneath it. Iron, maybe. Old stone. The kind of smell that soaks into walls and never fully leaves.

Roman pushed the door open and stepped back.

I walked in.

And stopped.

There were more of them than I’d expected. Far more. Cots lined both walls in two rows, and almost all of them were full — men lying flat, most of them unconscious, a few shifting slightly against whatever pain was still working through them. IV lines and bandaging and the muffled, too-quiet sounds of people breathing wrong.

A few of the medics looked up when we entered. Roman gave a small nod, and they went back to what they were doing.

I stood in the doorway and just looked.

Some of the bandages were still dark with blood. Some of the faces were so still they looked carved. One of the younger ones — he couldn’t have been more than twenty — had his arm wrapped from wrist to shoulder, and even in sleep his jaw was clenched tight.

I made myself move. One step, then another, slow down the narrow aisle between the cots.

I didn’t know most of these people. I’d seen faces in passing — in hallways, at the edges of training sessions I’d watched from windows — but I didn’t know their names. I didn’t know who they’d been before today, or what they’d been fighting for.

But they’d been fighting. And they were here now.

The back of my throat ached.

I kept walking.

I found Andrei near the far wall.

I almost missed him. He was in a bed set slightly apart from the others, closer to the back corner, and his face was turned away from the door. I recognized his hair first — the dark brown that always looked slightly unstyled, always a little out of place against the precision of everyone else around him.

My feet slowed.

I made myself go the rest of the way.

He was unconscious. Pale in a way I didn’t like. The sheet across his torso was pulled back slightly on one side, and I could see the bandaging underneath, white gauze layered thick over his abdomen. Even covered, the shape of the wound underneath was obvious. Long. Deep.

*Nasty,* was the word that came to me. A nasty wound.

I stood there and looked at it. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

My hand found the edge of the cot. I wrapped my fingers around the metal rail.

Andrei.

I looked at his face.

My eyes burned.

I didn’t cry. I hadn’t cried in — I couldn’t remember how long. Somewhere along the way my body had stopped bothering with it, like it had decided tears cost too much for what they gave back. But I felt it now, pressing up behind my eyes, pressing against the inside of my chest.

*Don’t,* I told myself. *It won’t help him.*

But my throat was closing up anyway.

He’d insisted on finishing the escort. Roman had said that — *insisted on it, wouldn’t hand off until it was done.* Even hurt. Even bleeding. He’d stayed until Alexei was secured, and only then had he let them take him here.

That was so Andrei.

I tightened my grip on the bed rail. The metal was cold.

*You’re going to be okay,* I thought, like thinking it hard enough could make it land somewhere. *You’re going to wake up and make some stupid joke and I’m going to be annoyed that you’re already acting fine.*

He didn’t move.

Of course he didn’t.

I exhaled slowly. Counted my breaths. One. Two.

I didn’t know why I was still standing here. There was nothing I could do. The medics were doing everything they could. Roman was somewhere near the door, giving me space, which was its own strange kindness. And Andrei was just — lying there. Beyond anything I could reach.

I’d never been able to do anything. That was the thing about being who I was, what I was — no wolf, no healing, no strength. I was the one people moved around, not the one who moved things. I was the one who’d stood on a walkway with a borrowed gun and shaken afterward and nearly slid down the wall.

What did I have to give here?

Nothing.

My eyes were burning harder now. I pressed my lips together and looked down at my own hand, still curled around the railing.

And that’s when I saw it.

A faint glow at the center of my palm. Soft. White. Like something lit from inside.

I didn’t move.

I just stared at my hand as the light pulsed, slow and quiet, between my fingers.