Nicolas’s POV

The Iron Thorn territory looked worse than I’d expected.

We crossed the border at dawn. Roman in the front seat, Andrei driving, me in the back watching the landscape change through the window. The city gave way to industrial zones, then suburban sprawl, then the specific kind of decay that happened when a pack’s leadership went to shit and took everything else with it.

Abandoned storefronts. Boarded windows. Graffiti that wasn’t artistic—just territorial markings from smaller packs testing the edges, seeing how far they could push before someone pushed back.

No one was pushing back.

"It’s worse than the reports suggested," Roman said quietly.

I didn’t answer. I was looking at a building that used to be a community center—I could tell from the faded sign—and was now just a shell. Windows smashed. Door hanging off its hinges.

"How long has it been like this?" I asked.

"The decay? Years." Roman glanced back at me. "Stepan’s been losing control for a while. Maxim taking over was supposed to fix it." He paused. "Obviously that didn’t happen."

"Obviously."

We drove deeper into the territory.

The pack house—Maxim’s residence, technically, though it had been his father’s before him—sat on a hill overlooking the river. Big. Ostentatious. The kind of place that screamed *I have power* to anyone who looked at it.

It looked empty now.

The gates were open. No guards. The front entrance had its doors pulled wide like someone had left in a hurry and hadn’t bothered to close them behind them.

Andrei pulled the car to a stop in the circular driveway.

"This feels wrong," he said.

"It is wrong," Roman said. "Stay alert."

We got out.

The house was quiet. Not the good kind of quiet. The kind that came after something had already happened and everyone who could leave had left.

I walked through the front door.

The foyer was a mess. Furniture overturned. A painting hanging crooked on the wall. Someone’s coat abandoned on the floor like they’d shrugged it off mid-stride and kept running.

"Sir." Roman’s voice from deeper in the house.

I followed it. Through the foyer, down a hall, into what looked like it had been a sitting room. Roman was standing in the center of it, looking at something on the floor.

I crossed to him.

A woman. Middle-aged. Omega, from the scent. She was sitting against the wall with her knees pulled up, arms wrapped around herself. She looked up when I entered and her face went through several things very fast—fear, recognition, more fear.

"Please," she said. Her voice shook. "Please, I didn’t do anything. I just work here. I just—please—"

"I’m not here to hurt you," I said.

She stared at me. Like she was trying to calculate whether that was true and coming up short.

Roman crouched down. Put himself at her eye level. His voice went softer—the specific softness he used for civilians, the voice that said *I am not the threat here.*

"We need information," he said. "That’s all. Just information. Can you help us with that?"

She nodded. Fast. Desperate.

"Where is everyone?" Roman asked.

"Gone." She swallowed. "They all left. Two days ago. Maybe three. I don’t—I lost track."

"Maxim’s parents," I said. "Stepan and his mate. Where are they?"

Her face crumpled.

"Dead," she whispered. "Stepan is dead. Killed. Three nights ago. Someone broke in. I heard the screaming but I didn’t—I couldn’t—" She pressed her hands over her face. "I hid. I’m sorry. I hid and I didn’t help and I’m sorry—"

"You did the right thing," Roman said quietly. "Hiding kept you alive." He paused. "Who killed him?"

"I don’t know." She lowered her hands. Her eyes were red. "I didn’t see. But when I came out—after—everything was gone. The safe. The vault in his study. All of it. Empty."

Roman looked at me.

I looked back.

"Maxim," I said.

"Has to be," Roman agreed. "He came back. Killed his father. Took everything liquid he could carry."

"And ran," Andrei said from the doorway. He’d been doing a sweep of the rest of the house. "There’s no one else here. Just her. And two more in the kitchen—also omegas, also terrified."

I looked at the woman.

"What about his mother?" I asked.

"She left," the woman said. "The night it happened. She took a car and left. I don’t know where."

Smart woman.

I turned to Roman. "Find her. Make sure she’s safe. She’s not part of this."

"Understood."

I looked around the room. At the overturned furniture. The broken glass. The specific kind of destruction that came from violence, not from looting.

Maxim had come back here.

He’d killed his own father—probably for refusing to help him, probably for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time—and he’d taken everything that wasn’t nailed down and disappeared.

Again.

"We need to move," I said. "If he’s got cash, he’s mobile. He could be anywhere by now."

"Already on it," Roman said. He was typing something into his phone. "I’ve got people checking border crossings, train stations, airports. If he surfaces, we’ll know."

"Good." I looked at the woman. "You can go. Find somewhere safe. This house isn’t safe anymore."

She nodded. Scrambled to her feet. Ran.

I watched her go.

"Sir," Andrei said. "There’s something else you should see."

---

The "something else" was in the basement.

A cell. Barred. Empty now, but the smell—

I knew that smell.

Blood. Old fear. The specific scent that got embedded in stone when someone had been kept somewhere against their will for a very long time.

I stood in the doorway and looked at it.

"This is where he kept her," Roman said quietly. "Isn’t it."

"Yes."

I didn’t elaborate. Didn’t need to. The cell explained itself. The chains mounted to the wall. The bare floor. The bucket in the corner that had been used for—

I turned around.

"Burn it," I said.

Roman blinked. "Sir?"

"The house. All of it." I looked at him. "Burn it to the ground. I don’t want any of this standing when we’re done here."

"Understood."

I walked back up the stairs. Out of the basement. Through the sitting room. Out the front door into the daylight.

The air was better out here.

I stood on the front steps and looked at the territory spread out below. The city. The river. The buildings going to rot because no one had bothered to maintain them.

This whole place was a graveyard.

Maxim had been ruling it for three years. Before that, his father had been letting it slide into decay for a decade. And now—

Now it was mine to fix.

I pulled out my phone. Typed a message.

*How are you feeling?*

The response came back in under a minute.

*Fine. Sofia brought breakfast. Ate most of it. Shoulder’s better.*

I exhaled.

*Good. Keep eating. I’ll call tonight.*

*Okay. Be safe.*

I looked at those two words for longer than I should have.

*Always,* I typed back.

Another lie. But it was the kind she needed to hear.

I put the phone away.

"Roman," I said. "We’re going to her old house next."