Nicholas’s POV

The howl was still ringing in my own ears when the door burst open.

Both of them. At the same time. Andrei hit the doorframe shoulder-first, Roman a half-step behind him, and for one second they just stood there staring at me like they’d seen a ghost climb out of its own grave.

Then Andrei crossed the room in four strides and slammed into me.

A full hug. Arms around my shoulders, the kind of grip that didn’t leave room for argument. I sat there and let it happen because my body still weighed about twice what it should and because — honestly — I didn’t have the energy to push him off.

"You’re awake." His voice came out rougher than usual. He pulled back and looked at me like he was checking for damage, eyes scanning my face. "You actually woke up." 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

"Obviously." My voice came out like gravel. I cleared my throat. "How long."

"Four days," Roman said from the doorway. He hadn’t moved. He was standing there with his arms crossed and an expression on his face I couldn’t read — which was unusual. Roman’s face was usually an open book of exactly how disapproving he was of everything. Right now it was something else. Something heavier.

Four days.

I didn’t have time to sit with that.

"Where’s Irina."

Not a question. It didn’t come out like one. It came out like something I already needed the answer to before I’d even finished saying it — because the mate bond was doing something wrong in my chest, something it had no business doing from inside this room, and I needed someone to explain to me right now why it felt like trying to grab a rope that had been cut most of the way through.

Andrei blinked. He straightened up, turned toward the door, glanced around like she might materialize out of a corner somewhere. "She’s — yeah, good question. She’s usually here. Every night she’s been—" He looked back at me. "Huh. I actually haven’t seen her tonight."

"She’s not here?" I said.

"She’ll be around somewhere. Maybe she went to get food, or—"

"She’s not in the building."

My voice came out flat. Certain. Because I knew. The bond doesn’t lie. It had been pulling tighter and tighter since before I’d even opened my eyes, a thin wire stretched toward something that kept moving farther away. I knew the difference between a woman three hallways over and a woman who had crossed a border.

I looked at Roman.

Roman, who had been standing in that doorway since the moment they’d walked in. Roman, who hadn’t moved, hadn’t smiled, hadn’t said a single word beyond telling me how long I’d been out.

"Roman."

He met my eyes.

"What do you know."

A muscle jumped in his jaw. Andrei looked between us, the lightness draining out of his expression.

"What’s going on?" Andrei’s voice had shifted. He wasn’t performing casual anymore. "Roman. What’s that face."

Roman unfolded his arms. He looked like a man who had been rehearsing something and had just decided the rehearsal was over.

"Alexei talked," he said.

Andrei went still.

"When?" I said.

"Two days ago. I went in to question him about the poison, the uprising, the whole thing." Roman’s jaw was tight. "He cooperated. More than I expected. He gave up names, he gave up details—" A pause. "And then he gave up one more thing."

"What?" Andrei’s voice had gone very quiet.

"He said Irina was involved." Roman said it clean. No softening it, no cushioning it. Just said it. "He said she’d been giving you the poison. Directly. Over a period of weeks."

The room went silent.

Andrei moved first. He laughed — a sharp, disbelieving sound that didn’t have any humor in it. "Absolutely not. No. That’s insane, Roman, he’s a cornered animal trying to throw us off, he’s trying to—"

"I arrested Sofia."

That shut Andrei up.

"Alexei’s mate," Roman continued, "the one who had been serving as Irina’s personal attendant. We’d already been watching her. When I brought her in she didn’t hold out for long." He reached into his jacket. "She surrendered this."

He held out a small glass vial.

I stared at it for a second.

Then I took it.

It was light. Almost nothing in my palm. The glass was dark, the stopper still in place, and there was maybe a third of the contents left — a fine powder that shifted when I tilted it, pale and dry and faintly iridescent under the light.

I pulled the stopper.

I brought it to my nose and inhaled.

The scent hit the back of my throat like a needle.

Strange. Medicinal. Faint underneath it — something almost sweet, almost botanical, something that had no business being in a poison but was there anyway, layered in like a signature.

My wolf went rigid.

Because I knew that scent.

Not from a vial. Not from a lab report or a toxicology briefing.

From her.

From the curve of her neck, the warmth of her skin when I’d had my face pressed against her pulse point, the specific way she smelled when I had her pulled close in the dark and she’d stopped flinching every time I moved. I’d registered it a dozen times and never questioned it — told myself it was something in whatever soap they used, something in the palace water, something that was just uniquely Irina — that faint thread of something unusual woven through her natural scent.

It was this.

She’d had this on her, in her, all those nights.

All those mornings.

The vial was still in my hand. I hadn’t dropped it. I didn’t drop things. My fingers had locked around it with the kind of stillness that comes right before something breaks.

Andrei wasn’t talking anymore.

Roman was watching me the way you watch a thing that’s about to detonate — carefully, from a reasonable distance.

"She ran." My voice didn’t sound like mine. It was too quiet. Too even. "That’s what the bond is doing. She crossed the border."

No one answered. Which was answer enough.

She’d waited until I was down and she’d run.

She’d been the one putting me down in the first place.

I sat with that for exactly as long as it took me to breathe in once and breathe out once.

And then something that had been sitting quiet and cold at the center of my chest for four days — for four days while she’d apparently sat in this room and cried and acted like she was terrified of losing me, while the bond had pulled me toward consciousness because some part of me kept reaching for her, while my wolf had been howling into an empty space where his mate should have been — that thing cracked.

Wide open.

"Get out." My voice came out low. Still that flat, even tone, but there was something underneath it now, something that made both of them take a half-step backward before they’d consciously decided to.

"Nicholas—" Andrei started.

"Get out of this room." I stood up. My legs were not entirely cooperating but they held and I didn’t give them the option of not holding. "Get every man we have. Get the trackers. Get whoever is on the border watch and find out exactly when she crossed and which direction she went." I set the vial down on the nightstand. Carefully. Like it was something I might reconsider throwing through the wall. "And then."

I looked at them.

Roman’s face had gone carefully neutral. Andrei looked sick.

"Go find her." The words came out through my teeth. "Go. Find her. Bring her back."