Irina’s POV

The first thing I was aware of was warmth.

Not the fog-meadow kind. Not the white, impossible softness of that other place. This was real warmth—heavy, close, the kind that came from a room with the heating turned up too high and a body nearby.

I didn’t open my eyes right away.

I lay there and let the world come back in pieces. The weight of blankets. The dull ache in my shoulder—present but muted, like someone had wrapped it in cotton. My ribs, doing something unpleasant every time I breathed too deep. The specific smell of the medical wing—antiseptic and clean linen and that faint herbal note that was Nadia’s doing.

And something else.

His scent.

I turned my head. Slowly. The pillow was too soft. Everything here was too soft—it still caught me off guard sometimes, the fact that things were allowed to be soft.

Nicolas was in a chair beside the bed.

Asleep.

That took a second to process. I’d seen him in a lot of states by now—angry, controlled, that particular quiet that was worse than anger, the occasional almost-smile that he didn’t seem to know he was doing. I’d seen him bloody. I’d seen him mid-shift.

I had never seen him asleep.

He looked—

Different. Not softer. That was the wrong word for him and it would always be the wrong word. But the tension that lived in his jaw, in his shoulders, in the permanent set of his mouth—it was less. Dialed down. Like his body had finally stopped scanning for threats long enough to let him close his eyes.

His chair was pulled right up against the bed. Close enough that his knee was touching the mattress frame. His head was tipped back at an angle that was going to make his neck hurt when he woke up, one arm stretched across the gap between the chair and the bed, his hand—

His hand was on the mattress. Right next to mine. Not touching. An inch away. Like he’d fallen asleep reaching for me and stopped just short.

Something in my chest did a thing I didn’t have a name for.

I looked at his face.

The cut on his shoulder was closed. Healed. Of course it was—he healed fast, faster than anyone, that was one of the things that made him what he was. But his shirt was still wrecked. The same one from the hall. Torn at the shoulder, blood dried dark into the fabric. He hadn’t changed.

He’d been here the whole time.

I moved my fingers.

Barely. Just a curl—my pinky shifting a quarter inch across the sheet, brushing against the side of his hand.

His eyes opened.

Instant. One second closed, the next second open—those green eyes sharp and alert and locked onto my face like he’d been waiting for exactly this even while unconscious.

He sat up.

The chair scraped against the stone floor. His hand found mine—not gentle, not careful, just *grabbed,* his fingers closing around mine like he was checking I was solid.

"Irina."

His voice was rough. The specific roughness of someone who hadn’t used their voice in hours and was using it now on pure reflex.

"How do you feel? What hurts? Talk to me."

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came out for a second. My throat was dry. The words had to travel a long way to get anywhere. I shook my head instead—small, careful, because moving my head too fast made the room want to spin.

"’M fine," I managed.

His hand tightened on mine.

"You collapsed," he said. "In the hall. You went down and you didn’t—" He stopped. His jaw worked. The tension was back. All of it, all at once, flooding into his face like it had never left. "Don’t tell me you’re fine. Tell me what hurts."

"Shoulder," I said. "Ribs. Little bit." I swallowed. "Mostly just tired."

"You were unconscious for eleven hours."

I blinked. "Eleven—"

"Hours. Yes." He was looking at me with that expression—the one I’d seen right before everything went dark. Not anger. Not the controlled blankness he showed everyone else. Something underneath all of that. Something raw.

He was still holding my hand.

I looked down at it. His fingers around mine. The size difference—his hand swallowing mine completely, knuckles still rough, still scarred, still the hands of someone who broke things for a living.

They were very careful right now.

His thumb moved across my knuckles. Once. I don’t think he knew he was doing it.

"Don’t do that again," he said.

"Do what?"

"Step in front of a shifting alpha when you weigh a hundred and ten pounds and don’t have a wolf."

"I wasn’t thinking," I said. "I just—moved."

The door opened.

Roman came through first. He was dressed immaculately. Not a wrinkle. Not a hair out of place. He looked like he’d stepped out of a board meeting, which he possibly had.

Andrei was right behind him. Grinning.

"She’s awake," Andrei said. Not to anyone in particular. Just announcing it to the room like it was breaking news. "She’s alive, she’s awake, and Nicolas hasn’t killed anyone in the last eleven hours, which I think is actually a record."

"Twelve," Nicolas said flatly. "And the night’s not over."

"See, that’s the spirit." Andrei crossed to the other side of the bed. He looked at me. His face was doing the thing where he was smiling but his eyes were doing something sharper underneath—checking, cataloging, the way he always did. "How are you feeling?"

"She says she’s *fine,*" Nicolas said, in a tone that communicated exactly how much credibility he assigned to that claim.

"I am fine."

"You were unconscious for eleven hours."

Roman cleared his throat.

Everyone looked at him.

"It’s good to see you awake," he said. Stiff. Formal. The way Roman delivered anything that might accidentally sound like warmth. Then he looked at Nicolas. "You need to eat something. You haven’t eaten since yesterday."

Andrei snorted.

Roman closed his eyes for exactly one second. The expression of a man who had been managing this particular individual for years and had accepted that it was, fundamentally, a losing battle.

"I’ll have someone bring food," Roman said. "For both of you."

"I could eat," I said.

Nicolas looked at me. Something loosened in his face. "Good."

"Amazing," Andrei said. "She’s been awake for ten minutes and she’s already more cooperative than you’ve been in a decade." He leaned against the wall, arms crossed, that easy posture that looked casual and wasn’t. "Roman’s been pacing the corridor since hour four, by the way. In case anyone was wondering who the real worrier is."

"I was not *pacing,*" Roman said.

"You were absolutely pacing. I counted. Fourteen laps."

I looked at Nicolas. He was watching them with an expression that was almost—almost—fond. The way you watched something familiar. Something that had been happening for a long time.

Andrei caught me looking and winked.

"She deserves *rest,*" Roman said. Then he looked at me. The formal stiffness wavered for a second. Something human underneath. "Truly. It’s good to see you awake."

Something warm moved through my chest.

"Thank you, Roman," I said.

He nodded once. Brisk. Looked away. Possibly embarrassed—it was hard to tell with Roman, but there was a slight color at the tips of his ears that hadn’t been there before.

Andrei pushed off the wall. Stretched. Rolled his shoulders like he’d been carrying something heavy and was only now setting it down.

"Right," he said. "So. The important things." He held up fingers. "One—Maxim is in the wind. We’re tracking him. Roman has every resource on it and he’s doing that thing where he doesn’t sleep until the problem is solved, which means he’ll be insufferable for approximately a week. Two—the proceedings are officially on the record. Every alpha on the continent has the full picture now. Maxim’s done. Doesn’t matter where he runs." He put down the second finger. Looked at me. His expression shifted. Still warm, still Andrei, but something gentler in it. "Three."

He paused.

"Three," he said again. "And this one’s important, so listen."

I waited.

"You need to take care of yourself, Irina." His voice was quieter now. Not joking. The sharp thing behind his eyes coming to the front. "I mean it. Properly. Eating, sleeping, not throwing yourself in front of alpha wolves—the whole thing. Because even if you feel fine, even if everything seems okay—" He looked at me steadily. "Your body’s got more going on than just you right now. And whatever you think you can push through, the little one in there might have a different opinion about it."

The room went very still.

I stared at him.

"The... little one," I said.

Andrei blinked. Looked at Nicolas. Then back at me.

"Oh, *shit,*" Andrei said softly.

I looked at Nicolas.

He looked at me.

The room was spinning again but not from the shoulder, not from the ribs—from something else entirely, something that was rearranging every single thing I thought I knew about this moment, this bed, this room, this body.

"What," I said. My voice came out very small. "What is he talking about."