Irina’s POV

Something was wrong with my body.

I’d been trying to ignore it for three days. That was my default setting—ignore it, push through, wait for it to pass. It had always worked before. Pain, hunger, exhaustion. You waited it out and eventually something else took priority.

This wasn’t passing.

I woke up in the middle of the night and lay there with the ceiling tilting slightly above me, the nausea sitting low in my stomach like a stone. Not bad enough to make me move. Just bad enough to keep me awake, staring at the dark, running through the list of things I’d eaten that day and coming up with nothing that explained it.

The dizziness had started four days ago.

I’d thought it was stress. Then low blood pressure—I’d always run low, even before the pack house, before everything went bad. Sofia brought food every morning and I ate it, most of it, more than I used to. That was supposed to help.

It wasn’t helping.

I sat up slowly. Let the room settle. Pressed one hand flat against my stomach.

*Just tired,* I told myself.

But even the thought felt unconvincing.

---

Nicolas had started coming to my room in the evenings.

Not always. Not in any pattern I could predict. Sometimes it was late, past midnight, and he’d come in quietly and I’d already be awake and we’d lie there in the dark without talking much. Sometimes it was earlier—seven, eight—and he’d sit at the end of the bed and tell me things about the day in that flat, factual way of his, like he was reading a report aloud to himself and I happened to be in the room.

I’d stopped pretending to be asleep when I heard his footsteps in the corridor.

That had happened sometime in the last week without me deciding it. One night I’d heard him and I’d just—rolled over. Faced the door. Let my eyes stay open.

He’d noticed.

He hadn’t said anything about it. But I’d seen the shift in his face. Small. The specific version of his expression that meant he’d registered something and filed it away.

Tonight he came in at nine.

I was sitting at the small desk by the window with a book open in front of me that I hadn’t actually been reading. He took one look at me and crossed to the desk and turned the book the right way up.

I’d been reading it upside down for forty minutes.

"I was going to fix that," I said.

"When?"

"Eventually."

He pulled the chair from the corner and sat down across from me. No jacket tonight—shirt untucked, sleeves rolled up. It still looked formal on him somehow. Like he didn’t know how to look like anything other than himself.

"You look terrible," he said.

"You’re the second person to tell me that this week."

"Who was the first?"

"Sofia. She’s more diplomatic about it."

He looked at my face. That close, reading look. "You haven’t been sleeping."

"I’ve been sleeping fine."

"Irina."

I looked away. "I’ve been sleeping some."

"Are you sick?"

The question landed and I felt my stomach do a slow, uncomfortable roll in response. I pressed my hand against my abdomen under the desk, where he couldn’t see. "Probably just tired."

He was quiet for a second.

"I’ll send Nadia—"

"I don’t need Nadia."

"I’ll send Nadia tomorrow," he said. Like I hadn’t spoken. Like he’d already decided it and was just informing me. "She’ll take a look. Tell us what’s wrong."

I started to argue and then—didn’t.

The nausea was still there. Low and persistent and strange. Three days of it. Something that didn’t feel like stress anymore.

"Fine," I said.

He looked at me. "That was easy."

"Don’t make it weird."

The corner of his mouth moved. Almost. He reached across the desk and turned the book over again, set it in front of me right-side up.

"What happened in that office," he said. "Three days ago." He didn’t look at the book. Looked at me. "With Mikhail."

I was quiet for a moment.

"I said what I needed to say."

"Which was?"

"That I deserved better." I ran my thumb along the edge of the book’s spine. "That what happened wasn’t my fault. That I’m not—" I stopped. Found the end of the sentence. "That I’m not going to carry it around like it was."

He watched me.

"How did that go," he said.

"He cried." I said it flat. "He started to explain and I told him not to and then he cried."

"And?"

"And nothing. I gave him Katerina’s letter. I told him I wasn’t asking for anything on his behalf. I came back upstairs."

Nicolas was still watching me. That quiet, unreadable version of watching that meant he was sitting with something.

"You don’t want to know what happens to him," he said.

"No." I looked at the desk. "I told him already. It’s your call."

"It is." A pause. "I want you to know what I’m going to do."

Something in my chest shifted.

I looked up.

"Maxim," he said. "And Mikhail. I’ve been collecting everything. Every documented incident. Every cover-up. The gaps in the medical records, the dates, the witnesses who didn’t say anything because it wasn’t worth their lives to say anything." He sat back. "I have all of it."

My hands were still on the desk.

"What are you going to do with it?"

"There’s a formal proceeding," he said. "For situations like this. When an alpha or a senior rank has systematically abused their position." He looked at me. "I call the packs. The ones involved—Iron Thorn, anyone with a claim. I present the evidence. Publicly."

I stared at him.

"Publicly," I repeated.

"In front of everyone. The other alphas. Their betas. The families." He held my gaze. "Maxim will be stripped of his alpha rank. Your father will be stripped of his beta status—which he already effectively lost, but it gets made official. Both of them formally expelled." A pause. "No pack to go back to. No protection. No backing." He said it the way he said most things. Clean. Matter of fact. "They’ll be released. But there won’t be a corner of this continent where they’ll have any standing."

The room was very quiet.

"When," I said.

"Four days. Maybe five." He looked at the window. "There’s been unrest in Iron Thorn. Some of the pack members aren’t happy that I’m holding Maxim. They don’t have the full picture yet. Once they do—" He shrugged. One shoulder. The specific shrug that meant *this problem will correct itself.* "The proceedings happen before it escalates."

I thought about it. About what it would look like. Maxim standing in front of every alpha on the continent and having his entire performance taken apart piece by piece.

I thought about the year in that pack house.

"Okay," I said.

He looked back at me. "Okay?"

"I think it’s—yes. Okay." I met his eyes. "It’s the right way to do it."

He was quiet for a second.

"I want you there," he said.

I blinked.

"At the proceedings." His voice didn’t change. Still even, still flat, still that particular factual register. "I want you to be present."