Nicholas’s POV

My knuckles cracked when I made a fist.

Loud. Too loud. The kind of sound that only happens when a body’s been lying still for four days — joints complaining, tendons stiff, everything protesting the sudden demand to function again. I flexed my fingers. Then I made a fist again, harder this time, until I felt the resistance settle into something solid and familiar.

Still there.

Still mine.

I stood up from the bed.

The room tilted slightly — not enough to drop me, just enough to remind me what four days unconscious will do to a person. I breathed through it. Waited. The dizziness passed, and when it was gone I rolled my neck until something along my spine released with a long, grinding pop that shouldn’t have felt as good as it did.

Better.

Not right. Not yet. But better.

I crossed to the window and stood there for a moment, looking out at nothing. The city below was moving. People and cars and all the ordinary machinery of a world that hadn’t stopped while I was down. The sky was overcast, pale grey, the kind of morning that didn’t commit to anything.

The mate bond was a low, constant pull in my chest.

Outward. Away. Thinning at the edges like something stretched past what it was meant to hold.

She was still moving.

I turned away from the window.

---

Roman was waiting outside the door.

He looked at me.

I looked back at him.

"Update," I said.

"Trackers are deployed." His voice was careful. That specific careful that meant he was measuring every word before it left his mouth. "Border watch confirmed she crossed on foot, approximately two hours before you woke up. Direction is consistent with the main transit corridor into Clearwater. Human territory." He paused. "No further sightings yet." 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

"Keep looking." I moved past him into the hallway. "Focus the search on the human side. She doesn’t have the pack bond anymore — she’s not going to behave like one of us. She’ll blend in. She’ll look for crowds, public spaces, places with foot traffic." I didn’t slow down. "She’s not hiding in the woods, Roman. She’s trying to disappear into a city."

A beat.

"You know how she thinks," he said.

"Yes." I kept walking. "Get more men on it."

---

I went to the lower levels.

Not because anyone told me to. Not because it was on any list of things that needed doing before I chased down my fleeing mate. I went because the bond was pulling outward and I couldn’t follow it yet, and I had to do something with my hands, and there was only one thing left in this building that deserved them.

The cell block was cold.

It was always cold down here. That specific, bone-deep cold of stone and fluorescent light and no windows. My footsteps were the only sound in the corridor. The guards I passed stepped aside without a word — took one look at my face and suddenly found the wall very interesting.

I didn’t need to be announced.

I took the keys from the guard at the end of the corridor, unlocked the door, and walked in.

---

Alexei looked exactly like what he was.

A man at the end of something. Silver chains. Bruises gone deep purple along his jaw and cheekbone. His clothes still from the day of the riot, still torn, still bloodstained at the shoulder where the bullet had gone through. He was sitting with his back against the wall, head tipped back, eyes half-closed — and when the door opened he didn’t flinch. Didn’t straighten up.

He just looked at me.

And then, slowly, a smile started spreading across his ruined face.

"Well," he said. His voice was hoarse. Satisfied. Like a man who’d been waiting for something to arrive and was genuinely pleased it had shown up. "The king’s awake."

I didn’t say anything.

I walked in, let the door fall shut behind me, and stood there. Looking at him. The way I looked at most things — quiet, unhurried, cataloguing. He was chained. He was injured. He had no leverage, no exit, nothing left to bargain with. He knew all of that.

He was smiling anyway.

That was interesting, in the way that things are interesting right before they stop being interesting entirely.

"Let me guess," Alexei said. He shifted slightly, chains rattling. The smile didn’t move. "Your mate’s gone."

Silence.

"She is, isn’t she." He tilted his head. His eyes were bright, the specific brightness of someone burning through the last of something.

He laughed.

"*Pathetic*," he said, and he put something into the word — something warm and delighted and genuinely entertained. "You know how long she was right here? Sitting next to your bed every night, holding your hand, playing the devoted little luna while she was poisoning you. That’s commitment." He shook his head like he was genuinely admiring it. "Should’ve seen her face when she realized the blood worked. Almost looked sorry about it. Almost."

"Where did she go."

My voice came out level. Flat. The kind of flat that wasn’t calm — it was the sound of something being pressed down by a very large weight.

Alexei blinked.

Then he laughed harder.

"You’re *asking me*." He sounded genuinely delighted. "The king. The Mad King. You stood there and let me talk and now you’re *asking me* where she went." He leaned forward as far as the chains allowed. "I don’t know, actually. She didn’t tell me her plans. We weren’t exactly close." He grinned. "But I hope she ran far. I really do. I hope she got so far you never—"

"Alexei."

"—never find her. I hope she’s somewhere right now laughing about the look on your face. I hope she—"

I crossed the room.

He didn’t scramble. I’ll give him that. He watched me come toward him with those bright, fractured eyes and he didn’t beg and he didn’t cry and he didn’t try to pull away from the chains. He stayed exactly where he was, back against the wall, chin up.

I grabbed him by the throat.

One hand. Easy. The chain connecting his wrists to the floor had enough slack that he could straighten slightly, and he did — like he wanted to be at eye level, like he wanted to be able to see my face for whatever came next.

"You want to know what I think?" His voice was strained now. He was working to keep it conversational, and not entirely succeeding. "I think you’re going to spend the rest of your life wondering if she ever—"

I tightened my grip.

He stopped.

His hands jerked against the chains. His feet shifted against the floor. His eyes had gone wider, that brightness in them shifting into something different, something rawer, and there it was — the fear that had been underneath the whole performance the entire time.

I looked at him.

He looked back at me.

I squeezed.

Alexei’s eyes went wide.

His mouth opened.

My hand didn’t move.

One second.

Two.

The brightness in his eyes changed one final time — the specific, absolute change that only happened once, that had no after — and then it was gone.