Nicholas’s POV

Months.

It had been three agonizing, blood-soaked months.

Every single day, I woke up with the thin, burning pull of the mate bond stretched across my chest. It was a physical ache. A wire pulled so tight I was terrified it would snap and take my sanity with it. She was out there. She was alive. But the trail was completely, impossibly dead.

Roman had scoured the continent. He had dispatched our best trackers, turned over every rock in every human city, interrogated every border patrol, and bled every underground informant dry. Nothing. Irina had vanished like smoke. It was as if the earth had swallowed her whole.

My wolf paced endlessly. He didn’t sleep. He didn’t eat. He wanted blood. He wanted *her*. The palace had become a walking graveyard. No one dared to look me in the eye. No one dared to speak unless spoken to. They could feel the violence rolling off me in waves.

I was standing at the tall window in my study, staring blindly at the city skyline, when Roman walked in.

"We caught someone," Roman said. His voice was flat. Professional. But I could hear the sharp edge of tension beneath it. "Not her. But someone who might know."

I turned slowly. "Who."

"Sofia."

The name hit me like a physical blow. The omega maid. The girl with the dimples and the bright smile. The only person in this godforsaken palace who had actually treated Irina like a human being. The girl who had brought her a simple pair of jeans and a t-shirt instead of a slave’s dress.

"She was trying to cross the eastern border," Roman continued, his eyes watching my reaction carefully. "She had fake papers. High-level smuggler contacts. She was running, Nicholas. Someone financed her escape."

"Where is she?" My voice was a low rumble.

"The holding cells in the basement."

I didn’t say another word. I walked past him.

The air in the basement dungeons was thick and freezing. It smelled like damp concrete, rust, and generations of old blood. It was the place where I broke people. Where the Mad King did his worst work.

Sofia was sitting on the steel chair in the center of the main interrogation room. Her small wrists were cuffed to the heavy metal table.

When I pushed open the heavy iron door, she looked up.

I expected terror. I expected her to shrink back into the chair, to drop her eyes to the floor, to beg for mercy like every other omega who had ever sat in that seat. I expected her to tremble before her King.

She didn’t.

Her chin was lifted high. Her eyes were hard and steady. There was no trace of the cheerful, gossiping girl who used to arrange flowers in Irina’s room.

I closed the door behind me. The loud clang echoed off the stone walls. Roman stood silently by the entrance, his arms crossed over his chest.

I walked slowly up to the table. I let my aura flood the room. The oppressive, suffocating weight of an Alpha King. It was enough to make a grown warrior drop to his knees and vomit.

Sofia held my gaze. She actually sneered.

"Where is she," I said. My voice was dangerously quiet. I didn’t need to yell.

Sofia didn’t blink. "I don’t know."

I slammed both hands flat onto the metal table. The sound cracked like a gunshot, echoing violently in the small space.

"Do not lie to me," I snarled. My wolf surged to the surface, my eyes bleeding into pitch black. "You were her maid. You served her. You were caught fleeing with fake papers that an omega could never afford. Who helped you? Where did she go?" 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

"I said, I don’t know." Sofia didn’t flinch. She looked at me with pure, unfiltered disgust.

Something inside me snapped completely.

Months of dead ends. Months of staring at an empty, cold bed. The constant, gnawing agony of knowing my mate was out there in the world, pregnant, vulnerable, hiding from me. I had held back my rage for too long.

I lunged.

My hand clamped around her throat. I yanked her out of the chair, the handcuffs rattling violently against the table, and pinned her against the cold concrete wall.

"Nicholas!" Roman stepped forward, alarmed by the sudden violence.

"Stay back!" I roared, the sound vibrating the very walls.

I tightened my grip. Not enough to crush her windpipe, but enough to cut off her air. Enough to let her know exactly how close she was to the end.

"I am the Alpha King," I hissed, my face inches from hers. "You are an omega. You will tell me where my mate is, or I will tear you apart piece by piece."

Sofia gasped for air. Her fingers scrambled uselessly against my wrist. But her eyes—they didn’t change.

She wasn’t looking at me with the respect a king demanded. She was looking at me like I was a monster. A pathetic, rabid dog.

"I... don’t... know," she choked out, her face turning red.

I squeezed harder. My sharp claws pricked her delicate skin. A single drop of dark blood rolled down her neck.

"Why were you running?" I demanded, my chest heaving. "Tell me!"

"Because of you!" she managed to spit out, spraying saliva on my cheek.

I loosened my grip just a fraction. Just enough for her to breathe. Just enough for her to speak.

Sofia sucked in a harsh, rattling breath. And then, impossibly, she laughed. A broken, wet, mocking sound that sent a cold chill straight down my spine.

"You think she told me?" Sofia sneered, her voice raspy but dripping with venom. "You think she would trust anyone in this hellhole? After what you let happen to her?"

"Watch your mouth, omega," Roman warned darkly from behind me.

Sofia ignored him completely. Her eyes were locked onto mine. The disgust in them shifted into pure, unadulterated pity.

That hit me harder than the defiance. It tore right through my chest.

"You’re a monster," Sofia whispered, glaring right into my black eyes. "You are so brutal. So cruel. You destroy everything you touch."

My chest tightened. The air left my lungs. Her words perfectly mirrored the darkest, most hateful fears screaming in my own head for the last ninety days.

"Shut up," I growled, my hand shaking against her neck.

"You terrified her!" Sofia shouted. Her voice echoed off the bloodstained walls. "She was broken, and you just kept breaking her! Even your own mate abandoned you! She ran away because the unknown out there was safer than being in a room with you!"

The truth in her words was a jagged knife twisting deep into my gut. My wolf whimpered. A pathetic, wounded sound.

"You will never find her," Sofia said. A twisted, triumphant smile spread across her face. "You will never find your lover. You will never find your child."

I let her go. I couldn’t touch her anymore.

She dropped heavily back into the steel chair, coughing violently, rubbing her bruised neck.

I stood over her, breathing hard. The fury was blinding, but beneath it was a void so dark and deep it threatened to swallow me alive.

Sofia looked up at me, still smiling that twisted smile.

"You are destined to die alone," she said softly, her voice echoing in the quiet room. "And you completely deserve it."

I stared at her. The silence in the room became heavy. Toxic.

My hands clenched into fists at my sides.

"You are sitting in my dungeon," I said, my voice completely devoid of emotion. Cold. Dead. "You have nowhere to run. Aren’t you afraid I’ll kill you?"

Sofia stopped rubbing her neck.

She looked at me. The disdain on her face was absolute. It was the face of someone who had already won the war.

She smiled disdainfully.

Then, she moved her mouth. A small, sharp crunch echoed from between her teeth.

My eyes narrowed. "What did you—"

Her eyes rolled back into her head.

Sofia lurched forward violently. She opened her mouth and spat out a massive mouthful of fresh, dark blood. It splattered violently across the metal table, dripping onto the concrete floor. Her body seized once, a terrible, rigid spasm, and then she collapsed over the table like a puppet with its strings cut.

Roman quickly came over to check.

"Dead. She just bit open a highly toxic poison."