Irina’s POV

The white light faded.

The rushing sound in my ears shifted. It sharpened. It turned into a steady, rhythmic beep.

A heart monitor.

I breathed in. The air tasted different. It didn’t taste like the metallic fear of the ambulance. It didn’t taste like the blood that had been soaking through my clothes. It tasted like sterile alcohol, clean sheets, and the faint, unmistakable scent of rain.

Rain. That was her. My wolf.

She was here. She was awake. She was humming beneath my ribs, a deep, resonant vibration that pulsed with every beat of my heart.

I was not dying anymore.

The blinding, tearing agony of the delivery was gone. It had been replaced by a dull, heavy ache. A manageable soreness.

I was alive.

I opened my eyes.

The world was blurry for a second. Blinking against the harsh light, the shapes slowly came into focus. A white ceiling. Pale yellow walls. This was not the back of the ambulance. This was a private room. A hospital room.

"Irina?"

A voice. Close to my right side.

I turned my head. It felt heavy, like it was made of lead, but I could move it.

Mia was sitting in a plastic chair drawn right up to the edge of the mattress. Her dark hair was a tangled mess. Her mascara was smeared beneath her eyes, leaving dark, jagged tracks on her pale skin. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days. She looked terrified.

When she saw my eyes open, she gasped. Her hands flew to her mouth, covering a sharp sob.

"Mom!" Mia’s voice cracked, loud and desperate in the quiet room. She shot up from the chair. "Mom, she’s awake! Her eyes are open!"

Footsteps. Fast and professional.

Dr. Elena Vasquez appeared on my left side. She wore a white coat over her clothes. She still had that calm, clinical expression on her face, but her dark eyes were wide with a relief she couldn’t hide. She reached for my wrist, pressing two warm fingers against my pulse.

"Irina," Elena said softly, leaning closer. "Can you hear me? Can you focus on me?"

I stared at her.

I tried to nod. My chin moved a fraction of an inch against the pillow.

"Good." Elena exhaled a long breath. The tension in her shoulders dropped slightly. "That’s very good. You gave us a terrifying scare, sweetheart. You lost so much blood in the ambulance. Your pressure bottomed out. We thought we were losing you."

She stopped. She shook her head, as if trying to clear away the memory.

"It doesn’t matter," Elena said, her thumb gently stroking my wrist. "Your vitals stabilized twenty minutes ago. Completely out of nowhere. It’s medically impossible, given the hemorrhage, but I’m not going to question it right now. You’re stable."

I didn’t care about my vitals.

I didn’t care about the hemorrhage.

There was only one thing that mattered. One singular, deafening thought screaming in my brain.

My baby.

Where was my baby?

I tried to speak. My throat felt like it was lined with shattered glass. The sound that came out was a broken, raspy wheeze.

"Shh," Mia hovered over me, her eyes brimming with fresh tears. She reached out and lightly touched my shoulder. "Don’t try to talk. You’re okay. You’re safe now."

"No." I forced the word out. It scraped agonizingly against my vocal cords.

I tried to sit up.

"Whoa, hey." Elena put a firm hand on my chest, pressing me gently but securely back down into the mattress. "Don’t move. You just went through massive physical trauma. You need to stay flat."

"My..." I swallowed hard. It felt like swallowing ash. "My baby."

Panic flared in my chest. A cold, sharp spike of absolute terror. The wolf stirred immediately, rising to meet it, her presence heavy and protective in my mind.

*Where is he?*

Did he survive? Was the crying I heard real, or was it just a hallucination as I bled out?

"Please," I choked out, tears instantly pooling in my eyes and spilling down my temples. "Where is he? Where is my baby?"

Mia let out a watery laugh. She wiped her face with the back of her sleeve, sniffing loudly. "He’s here, Irina. He’s right here."

She stepped back, moving out of the way.

For the first time, I saw the clear plastic bassinet parked in the corner of the room. It was positioned next to a humming monitor, bathed in the soft glow of a small lamp.

My heart stopped.

Then, it started hammering violently against my ribs.

Elena smiled. A real, warm, exhausted smile that reached her eyes. She moved away from my bed and walked over to the bassinet.

"He is a fighter," Elena said softly, looking down into the plastic tub. "Just like his mother."

She reached into the bassinet.

My breath caught in my throat. I couldn’t blink. I couldn’t look away. Every muscle in my body locked tight. I gripped the edges of the bedsheets with trembling fingers.

Elena turned around.

She was holding a bundle of white hospital blankets. It was so small. Impossibly small.

She walked back to my bed, her steps slow and incredibly careful.

"Look at him," Elena murmured, leaning down so I could see. "He just fell asleep. He’s very small, Irina. You need to be gentle."

I nodded frantically. My hands were shaking uncontrollably. I raised my arms, ignoring the tug of the IV line taped to the back of my hand.

Elena lowered the bundle into my arms.

I took the weight.

He weighed almost nothing. He was as light as a feather. But the moment his weight settled against my chest, he became the heaviest, most significant thing I had ever held in my life. He anchored me to the earth. He was the center of gravity in the entire room. In the entire world.

I pulled him close.

Warmth. Real, living warmth radiated through the thin cotton blankets, seeping into my skin.

I looked down.

A tiny face. His skin was slightly red and a little swollen from the delivery. He had a dusting of dark hair on the top of his head. A tiny button nose. Little fists tucked securely under his chin, holding onto the edge of the blanket. His chest rose and fell in a rapid, even rhythm.

He was breathing.

He was perfect.

I couldn’t breathe. I was so overwhelmed I thought my heart might actually burst out of my chest.

This was him.

He was mine.

A sob ripped through my throat. I pressed my lips tightly together to muffle the sound, terrified of waking him. I brought him closer, resting his tiny head near my collarbone.

He smelled like milk and clean skin.

My wolf howled in my mind. Not a howl of grief. A howl of absolute, earth-shattering joy. She recognized him. She recognized the pup we had fought so hard to protect in the dark.

I traced his little cheek with my index finger.

So soft. So fragile.

How could something this perfect come from so much pain?

"He’s beautiful," Mia whispered from the foot of the bed. She was wiping her eyes again with a tissue. "He really is. And he’s perfectly healthy. Mom ran all the tests while they were working on you."

"His lungs are remarkably strong," Elena added quietly, stepping back to give me space. "He’s small because he was early, but he’s breathing entirely on his own. He’s a miracle, Irina."

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him.

I had thought I was broken. I had spent a year believing I was nothing but a useless, shattered omega. A punching bag. A ghost meant to be ignored. I had let Maxim and his cruelty convince me that I was worthless.

But I had made this.

I had protected him.

My hands, the hands that were covered in faded bruises and old scars, were holding something completely pure.

"Hi," I whispered. My voice was a broken rasp, barely audible, but I didn’t care. "Hi, little one."

My chest hitched. A single tear slipped down my cheek and landed silently on the edge of the white blanket.

"I’m your mom," I whispered, the word feeling strange and terrifying and unimaginably wonderful on my tongue. "I’ve got you. I promise. I’ve got you."

The baby stirred.

His tiny forehead wrinkled. His little lips parted, making a soft, smacking sound as he shifted in his sleep.

I froze, holding my breath. I was afraid I had spoken too loudly. I was afraid my shaking was disturbing him.

He moved his little head, turning slightly toward the sound of my raspy voice.

Then, his tiny eyelids fluttered.

Slowly, groggily, he opened his eyes.

The room went completely silent. The hum of the medical machines faded away into nothing. The presence of Mia and Elena vanished from my awareness. It was just me and him.

He blinked, adjusting to the dim, yellow light of the hospital room.

He looked up at me.

He didn’t cry. He didn’t fuss. The corners of his tiny mouth lifted in a soft, involuntary reflex.

He was smiling.

My heart shattered and stitched itself back together in the exact same second. I let out a breathless sound, part laugh, part sob.

I stared into his eyes.

They weren’t the unfocused, cloudy blue of a typical newborn. They were sharp. They were piercing. They were devastatingly clear.

They were green.

Not just green. A deep, impossible, mesmerizing forest green.

The exact shade of the trees in the deep woods at midnight. The exact shade of an apex predator lurking in the dark.

Nicholas’s eyes.

The breath vanished from my lungs.

I couldn’t stop the tears from falling.