Nicolas’s POV

For a second, he didn’t say anything.

Then he laughed.

"Can we not go to war." He repeated it back to me like he was trying to figure out if I’d actually said it. "You’re asking me that."

I didn’t answer.

He pushed himself up slightly. Shifted his weight. His eyes were still on my face in the dark, reading something I wasn’t sure I wanted him to read.

"How are you asking me that?" he said. "What made you think that was a conversation we were going to have tonight?"

My hand had found the edge of the pillow.

My fingers curled.

The vial was right there. That small, cold, impossible weight.

I didn’t answer his question.

"I just—" My voice came out careful. Measured. Like I was walking across ice and testing each step before I put my weight down. "I don’t want to see a war. It scares me."

Something shifted in his expression.

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Scares you," he repeated.

"Yes."

"War scares you."

"Is that—" I pressed my lips together. "Is that surprising?"

He was quiet for a second. His gaze moved across my face. Something in his expression was harder to read than usual. Not cold. Not dismissive. Something more complicated than either of those things.

Then he exhaled.

Rolled slightly, so he was no longer looming directly over me but beside me, his weight on his forearm. Close. Still close.

"Fine," he said.

I blinked. "Fine?"

"Fine." His voice was flat. Not angry. Just—settling the point. "You want a promise? I’ll give you a promise. No wars after this. No more expansion. I’m not adding another fucking territory after this one. Happy?"

I stared at him.

He looked back at me like he’d just said something completely ordinary.

"You’re—" I stopped. Started again. "You’re promising me that."

"That’s what I said."

"Just like that."

"Just like that." His jaw moved. Something crossed his face. Less easy than the words had been. "But your father—and Maxim—" He stopped. Said it again, quieter. More deliberate. "They answer to me. That’s not negotiable. I already swore it. It’s done."

I didn’t say anything.

"I don’t make promises and unmake them," he said. His voice had dropped. Gone somewhere lower. Not a threat—something steadier than that. "They hurt you on my territory. They hurt you while you were my mate and they didn’t know it yet, which doesn’t change the accounting. I’m the alpha king. If I let that stand—if I look away—every single person under me knows what it means." His eyes held mine. "They’ll think I can’t protect what’s mine."

*What’s mine.*

The words landed in the center of my chest.

My fingers were still resting against the edge of the pillow.

Against the place where the vial was hidden.

I thought about what Sofia had said.

*You’re his mate. You’re supposed to be there.*

*One cup of coffee. And it would be over.*

I thought about the last six months she’d spent carrying this. The photograph in Pavel’s pocket. Twenty-three years old. Gone for a piece of land.

And then I thought about what Nicolas had just said.

*I can promise you no more wars.*

Simple. Flat. Like it wasn’t even hard to say.

Like he’d just—decided. Because I asked.

Something moved in my throat. Slow and hot and confused.

My father was going to be punished. Maxim was going to be punished. Those were facts I couldn’t change, and if I was honest—if I sat alone in the dark and stripped away every complicated layer of it—I wasn’t sure I wanted to change them.

But he’d said no more wars.

He’d said it just like that.

My fingers loosened.

I didn’t plan it. I didn’t decide. My hand just—opened. Let go of the pillow. Moved away from the edge.

The vial stayed where it was.

Just under the pillow. Still there.

But my hand wasn’t touching it anymore.

Nicolas was still watching me. That unreadable expression. Those green eyes that caught the dark and held it.

"Okay," I said.

He blinked. "Okay?"

"Okay." My voice was steadier now. Quieter. Something had settled in my chest that had been unsettled for hours. Days. Longer. "I understand."

He looked at me for a second longer.

Then something in his face shifted. Almost imperceptibly. Some small tension going out of it.

"Go to sleep," he said.

I thought about Sofia. Her hands wrapped around mine, warm and desperate. *You deserve to be free.*

I thought about the vial.

I thought about what I’d almost done.

The guilt hit me somewhere I wasn’t prepared for. Low and heavy and specific. Not the general, shapeless guilt I’d carried for the last year—the guilt of surviving things that should have broken me, of being too small and too quiet and too easily forgiven when I should have fought back.

This was different.

This was the guilt of having held something in my hands and considered it. Of having stood in the dark of my own head and genuinely weighed it.

He’d just promised me no more wars.

And I’d been lying here with my fingers curled around a vial of poison, calculating angles.

My chest felt scraped open.

I lay there and stared at the ceiling.

*I’m not doing it.*

The thought arrived fully formed. Quiet. Certain.

I’m not doing it. I was never going to do it—I knew that now, had known it somewhere underneath all the back-and-forth and the what-ifs and Sofia’s red eyes and the weight of her brother’s name. I’d known it the moment I looked at his face this morning over breakfast, that half-there almost-smile that had disappeared before it could become anything real, and felt something complicated happen in my chest that had nothing to do with fear.

I’d known.

I just hadn’t admitted it yet.

The vial would have to go.

I’d figure out what to do about Sofia. What to do about all of it. There was no clean answer. There was no path through any of this that didn’t hurt someone or require something from me that I didn’t know how to give.

But I knew what I wasn’t going to do.

Nicolas shifted behind me.

His arm came around my waist again. That familiar weight. Heavy. Solid. His hand pressed flat against my stomach, pulling me back into him the way he had at the beginning of the night before everything went complicated.

His breath was warm against the back of my neck.

He didn’t say anything else. No questions. No demands.

Just—that. His arm around me. His warmth at my back. The slow, even rise of his chest.

I lay still and stared at the wall and felt the guilt moving through me like water finding its level. Settling. Staying. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

His arm tightened slightly. Not deliberately, I thought. Just the unconscious shift of someone dropping further into sleep. His fingers flexed against my stomach and then went still.

Something in my throat pulled tight.

I exhaled slowly. Carefully. Felt it move through me and let it.

Then, slowly, I turned over.

He stirred slightly. His eyes opened—just barely. Half-awake. That green gaze, dark and unfocused, finding my face in the dim.

I pressed my face into his chest.

My arms went around him. Careful at first. Then less careful. My palms flat against his back, holding on.

His heartbeat was steady under my ear.

"Thank you," I said.