Nicolas’s POV

His other daughter.

I sat with that for a second.

"Mikhail has been searching for his other daughter. Not Irina. A girl named Katerina. His stepdaughter from his second marriage." He glanced at the folder. "She disappeared approximately fourteen months ago. Left the territory without authorization and cut the pack link. He’s been tracking her since."

I said nothing.

"Based on the inquiry he filed," Roman continued, "the trail leads here. To the palace grounds."

Andrei had gone quiet. That was how I knew it was serious. Andrei was never quiet unless something was actually wrong.

"She’s here," I said. Not a question.

Roman paused for half a second. "That’s his claim, yes. We haven’t verified—"

"She’s here." I leaned back in my chair. "Fourteen months. Pack link severed. Living under a different name." I looked at the ceiling for a moment. "She changed her name."

"Almost certainly."

"And she’s been here long enough that nobody flagged her."

I stared at the desk.

*Katerina.*

The name hit something. Something I hadn’t been thinking about, hadn’t connected—and then all at once it clicked.

Irina. The bathroom. The way she’d been muttering, half-delirious with fever and blood loss, her head tilted against the tile. I’d barely registered the words at the time. Just sound. Just the particular broken-record quality of someone too far gone to control what came out of their mouth.

*Sister. Sister. Where did you go.*

I pressed two fingers against the bridge of my nose.

I sat forward. "And Katerina was Maxim’s girlfriend before she ran. She found her real mate, ran off, and Maxim spent the next year taking it out on Irina."

Silence.

Complete, total silence.

Andrei exhaled slowly through his nose. "Oh."

"Yeah."

"So Irina got beaten half to death for an entire year because her stepsister—"

"Left," I said. "And didn’t take her with her." 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

The room sat with that.

I picked up my coffee. It had gone cold. I drank it anyway.

The thing about information was that it rearranged things. You’d think you had a picture—you’d been building a picture of Irina for weeks now, filling in the edges, trying to make sense of someone who didn’t make sense—and then you got a new piece and suddenly the whole picture shifted. Settled differently. Into a shape that felt worse and also more true.

She’d had a sister here. In this building.

She hadn’t said anything.

I thought about that. About what it meant. Whether it meant she didn’t know, or whether it meant she did know and had decided to—

The bathroom. The mirror. Her voice, half out of her own head.

She hadn’t known. She’d been surprised. She’d been *muttering about it* like she couldn’t stop thinking about it.

And she still hadn’t said anything.

Because she was protecting someone. Same reason she didn’t say anything about anything—she calculated the risks first and then she calculated them again and then she swallowed whatever she’d been about to say because the cost of being wrong was too high.

I knew that pattern. I recognized it.

I’d built my whole empire on knowing what it looked like when someone had been taught that speaking was dangerous.

"So Mikhail is coming," I said. "To pick up his runaway daughter."

"That appears to be the situation," Roman said carefully.

"And Maxim is coming to be formally acknowledged."

"Yes."

Andrei tilted his head. "You could decline the visit. You’re the alpha king. You don’t technically have to—"

"I know what I’m technically required to do." I set the cup down. "I also know what happens to a king who hides things. Who looks like he’s keeping people away for personal reasons." I met Andrei’s eyes. "You let them come. You control the terms. You never let anyone see you scrambling."

Andrei nodded slowly.

"Mikhail." I turned the name over. Thought about the file. The man who’d looked away for a year. Who’d told himself stories and gone back to his comfortable life and let his daughter get systematically destroyed because the alternative was inconvenient. "He wants his stepdaughter."

"So it appears."

I stood up.

Roman and Andrei both tracked the movement. Andrei slid off the desk.

I moved to the window. Stood there for a moment and looked out at the grounds. The pale morning light. Two guards doing a rotation. A gardener moving along the eastern hedge, methodical and slow.

Everything ordinary. Everything normal.

I rubbed the back of my neck.

"Okay," I said.

"My lord?"

"Send the reply." I turned around. "Tell Maxim and Mikhail both—they’re approved. They can come."

Roman’s expression shifted. Not quite surprise. Something more controlled than that. "And the terms?"

"Standard acknowledgment protocol for Maxim. Formal. Full ceremony. I want every family who needs to see it in attendance." I met his eyes. "I want him to have to bow in front of witnesses."

Roman’s jaw moved. "Understood."

"Mikhail." I paused. "He wants his daughter. Fine. He can have her." I looked back at the window. "She’s been here months under a false name. She made her choice when she ran. If she wants to go back with him, that’s between her and whatever’s left of her conscience." I picked up my coffee cup and realized it was empty. Set it back down. "He comes, he does the protocol, and he takes home whatever daughter he came for."

"And if she doesn’t want to go?" Andrei asked. Quiet. Genuinely curious.

I looked at him.

"Then that’s also between her and whatever’s left of her conscience," I said.

A beat.

"Let them come," I said. "And let him take home the daughter he came to find."