Nicolas’s POV

She set the cup on my desk.

Didn’t spill a drop. Hands completely steady. Eyes somewhere slightly to the left of my face.

I looked at the cup.

Then at her.

Then at the cup again.

There was a tray by the door. Two cups on it. She’d walked in here past midnight with a tray and made tea and she was standing across my desk from me with that carefully neutral expression and something was wrong with this picture, and I couldn’t figure out what, and that was—that was the problem. With her. Always with her.

"Irina."

"It’s good tea," she said. "The bergamot kind. I found it in the east corridor kitchen."

"I don’t care about the tea."

"I know." She looked at the cup. "You should drink it anyway."

I leaned back.

Watched her face.

There was something happening behind those eyes. Had been since she’d walked through the door. She’d pushed it down, whatever it was. Had that particular stillness she defaulted to when she was managing herself—chin level, breathing even, the version of her that had learned to take up the minimum possible space in a room.

But her hands.

Her hands had done something when she set the cup down. Something small and quick. Like she’d needed to put it down and step back from it at the same time.

I looked at the cup.

Looked at her.

Thought about the scent issue from this morning. The way it had been off when I’d walked in. The way it had cleared by morning. The way she’d looked at me when I’d said *your scent is different* like she was doing rapid math behind her eyes.

I didn’t pick up the cup.

"Sit down," I said.

She looked at the chair across my desk. The formal one. The one every person who came into this office needing something from me sat in.

"That one’s for people who want favors," I said. "Come here."

She came around the desk.

I pushed back from my chair, turned, and before she could figure out what I was doing I reached out and pulled her in. Both arms. Her back to my chest, her feet barely touching the floor, the whole slight, warm weight of her anchored against me.

She made a startled sound.

Her hands came up immediately, grabbing my forearms. Holding on. Not pushing away—just holding.

"Nicolas—"

"Quiet." I dropped my chin onto the top of her head. "Stay there."

She was very still.

I could feel her heartbeat. Fast. Too fast for someone who’d just walked down a corridor with tea. The kind of fast that meant something had been going on before she got here, something she’d been sitting with alone for hours.

Three weeks of this. Three weeks of her being one room away from me and still somehow—*elsewhere.* Managing. Calculating. Running some internal equation I couldn’t see the variables of.

I tightened my grip.

She exhaled. Long and shaking. Like something had finally stopped holding.

Her head tipped back against my shoulder.

We stayed like that.

The lamp threw long shadows. Outside, the city kept moving—indifferent, ordinary, ten million people with no idea. In the east wing, two cells sat occupied. The eastern border was on fire. Roman had seventeen reports he wanted me to read.

None of it mattered. Right now, in this office, it mattered approximately nothing.

Her heartbeat was slowing.

Mine was not.

"Nicolas," she said again. Quieter this time.

"Still here."

She turned. In my arms, turning around until she was facing me, and she had to tilt her head back to see my face and this close I could see every detail—the bruise finally fading, the eyes that had about seven different things in them at once, the way her mouth pressed together like she was deciding something.

"I went to see Maxim today," she said.

"I know."

"I had things to say to him."

"I know that too."

She studied my face. Whatever she was looking for, she seemed to find it, because some of the tension went out of her shoulders.

"And after," she said. "After I came back." She paused. "I was thinking about things. Wrong things. The kind of things Maxim is good at putting in your head." She looked down at my chest. "He’s very good at it. He knows exactly where the cracks are."

My jaw tightened.

"He’s not going to do that to you anymore."

"I know." She said it simply. Like it was already settled. Like somewhere between the cell and this office she’d crossed some line and left that whole calculation behind. "That’s why I came. Because I know."

I looked at her face.

"Say that again."

She looked up. "I know you’re not going to let him anywhere near me again. I know—" She pressed her mouth flat. "I know you’re going to handle it. Whatever that means." A pause. "And I don’t need to know the details."

Something moved in my chest.

"You trust me with that," I said. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

It came out slower than I meant it to.

"I’m *choosing* to trust you with that," she said. "There’s a difference." She held my gaze. Steady. "You didn’t send me back. I kept thinking you were going to and you didn’t. You told me their time was short and I understand what that means. And I—" She stopped. Started again. "I’m not afraid of you right now."

"Right now," I repeated.

"Give me time." The corner of her mouth moved. Almost a smile. "I’m working on the rest."

God.

I had no idea what to do with her.

That was the thing. I’d ruled forty-two families. I’d killed my own blood for this throne. I’d sat across from men who’d had decades to cultivate their cruelty and I’d out-waited every single one of them. I didn’t get *confused.*

I was confused.

I pulled her closer. My hand came up to her jaw, tilting her face up, and she let me—she *let* me, didn’t flinch, didn’t brace, just looked at me with those blue eyes that had too much in them.

I kissed her.

She made a sound against my mouth. Something soft. And then she kissed back—not the desperate, I-might-be-out-of-options kind from last night. This was different. This was her choosing it. Her hands on my jacket, her fingers curling into the lapels, pulling me in.

I felt it in my spine.

I pulled back enough to see her face.

Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes were slightly dazed. She looked—

She looked like herself. Like some version of herself I hadn’t seen before. Like whoever she was before all of it.

"What made you change your mind?" I said.

"About what?"

"About—" I paused. It was a stupid question. But I wanted the answer. "This. Coming here. Being—" I looked at her face. "Here."

She thought about it. Actually thought about it, which was one of the things about her—she didn’t give you the easy answer. She gave you the real one even when the real one was harder.

"Maxim," she said finally.

I raised an eyebrow.

"Not—not like that." She shook her head slightly. "When I was in his cell. Looking at him. He said all the things he always says—the things he knows how to say to make you feel like nothing." She looked at my chest. "And I was standing there listening to it, and I thought—"

She paused.

"I thought: you’re in a cell. In *his* building." She glanced up. "And then I thought about you. And all the ways I expected you to be terrible and the ways you weren’t." She shook her head. "You gave me a room. An actual room, not a closet. You sent a doctor. You sat on a bathroom floor at two in the morning and didn’t—" She stopped. "You didn’t do the things I thought you were going to do."

My hand was still on her jaw.

"That’s a low bar," I said.

"Yes." No apology for it. Just fact. "It is. But it’s the bar I’m working from." She met my eyes. "And from where I’m standing, you clear it."

I kissed her again.

Longer this time. My hands in her hair, the desk at her back, and she leaned into me like she’d decided to stop calculating the angle. Like she was just—present. Here. This room, this moment.

When I pulled back she was breathing harder.

I rested my forehead against hers.

"The moon goddess," I said, "didn’t make a mistake."

She blinked. "What?"

"Giving you to me." I looked at her face. "I thought so at first. An omega with no wolf, no pack—I thought she’d lost her mind." I watched something move across her expression. "She hadn’t."

Her throat worked.

"Nicolas," she said. Quiet. Almost a warning.

"Too much?"

"No." She pressed her mouth flat. "Just—give me a second."

I gave her the second.

She looked down at her hands on my jacket. Back up.

Something in her face had gone soft. Not weak-soft. The other kind. The kind that meant something real had gotten in.

"Do you actually believe that?" she said.

"I don’t say things I don’t mean."

She looked at me for a long moment.

Then she pushed up onto her toes and kissed me. Quick and firm and completely deliberate. When she pulled back she was almost smiling—the real kind, the rare kind, the one that reached her eyes.

"Okay," she said.

"Okay."

I wrapped my arms around her again, both of them, and she settled into my chest like she’d run out of reasons to hold herself separate. Her hands slid around my waist. Her face against my shirt.

We stayed like that for a minute. Maybe more.

Outside, the city. The empire. The forty-two packs and the eastern border and everything that never stopped moving.

Inside: just this.

"I want to ask you something," I said.

Her grip shifted slightly. Listening.

"Maxim," I said. "And your father." I felt her go still. "What do you want to happen to them?"

She was quiet for a long moment.

"I don’t want to know the details," she said.

"That’s not what I asked."

Another pause.

"I know." She lifted her face. Looked at me. Clear and steady and absolutely certain in the way she got sometimes when she’d already worked something through to the end. "Whatever you decide, Alpha. I trust you to decide it."

Her eyes didn’t waver.

"I just don’t want to see them again."