Irina’s POV

I stared at her.

The little maid was still talking — her voice pitching up, hands fluttering, words tumbling over each other — but I’d stopped hearing her the moment she said *alpha collapsed*.

"Say that again," I said.

She flinched. "The alpha — he was on the training field, and he — he threw up blood, and then he just — he fell down, and nobody could wake him up, and everyone is — "

I was already moving.

I didn’t think about it. I didn’t make a decision. My body just went — shoved past the maid, past Sofia, past the doorframe — and I was in the hallway, and then I was running.

"Irina — " Sofia’s voice came from behind me. "Irina, wait — "

I didn’t wait.

---

The hallway felt twice as long as it usually did.

My feet hit the floor and the sound echoed wrong, too loud, and the walls blurred at the edges as I went. I took a corner too fast and my shoulder slammed into the stone, bounced off it, kept going. I didn’t feel it.

*He threw up blood.*

The words wouldn’t stop repeating. They circled around in my skull like something trapped, something that couldn’t find a way out, and every time they came back around they hit harder than the last.

*He threw up blood. He fell down. Nobody could wake him up.*

My lungs were already burning. I wasn’t built for this — I’d never been built for this, my body had always been too thin and too worn-out and too broken to do much of anything at a run — and the baby made everything heavier, made my center of gravity feel wrong and unpredictable. My legs wanted to slow down.

I didn’t let them.

I passed two of Nicholas’s men going the other direction, both of them moving fast with their faces set and grim. One of them said something to me — I caught the shape of it, not the words — and then they were behind me and I was still going.

*He was fine this morning.*

Was he? Had he been? I tried to think back. He’d been at the training ground. He’d been running drills. That was normal. That was what Nicholas did, that was every morning, every afternoon, it was unremarkable. He was never sick. He didn’t get sick. Alphas didn’t get sick like that, not from a morning’s training under the sun, not from a few hours of sparring.

*Alphas didn’t get sick like that.*

Something twisted in my chest.

My hand went to my stomach without thinking. I pulled it away.

*Keep running. Keep running. Just get there.*

---

The main corridor that led to Nicholas’s rooms was already crowded.

I could see it from thirty feet away — the cluster of bodies, shoulder to shoulder, voices low and urgent, the particular hush that fell over a group of people when something had gone very wrong. Two guards flanking the door. A handful of senior men I recognized from the training yard, still in their exercise clothes, still dust-stained. A physician’s assistant carrying a metal case, moving quickly.

I pushed through.

Nobody tried to stop me. They moved, or I made them move, shoving through the gap between bodies with my elbows until I was near enough to see the door — closed — and near enough to hear the voices.

Roman’s voice.

I spotted him before I saw his face: the set of his shoulders, the rigid line of his back, the way he was standing like he was holding himself together through sheer force of will. He was facing the doctor, and his voice was low and controlled in a way that somehow sounded more frightening than shouting would have.

"What do you mean you’re not certain," he said. "You’ve examined him. Give me something."

The doctor — a man I’d seen once or twice in passing, older, gray at the temples — looked like he hadn’t slept in years. He held his clipboard against his chest and kept his voice very quiet.

"I’ve run the initial assessment. His vital signs are — abnormal. For an alpha of his age and condition, they shouldn’t be. His heart rate is irregular, his temperature is elevated, and there are a number of markers that I would typically associate with — "

"With what." Roman’s voice was flat. "Say it."

The doctor looked at the clipboard.

He looked at Roman.

He looked at the closed door.

Then he opened his mouth, and I stopped breathing.

"There are signs," the doctor said carefully, "of prolonged systemic deterioration. Not from an injury. Not from overexertion." He paused. "The presentation is consistent with poisoning. A slow-acting compound — something administered in small doses over an extended period. That kind of exposure accumulates. It takes time to manifest acutely, but when it does — "

The hallway went very quiet.

Roman didn’t move for a moment. Then he turned, very slowly, and the expression on his face was something I had never seen from him before. Not anger. Not the cold disapproval he usually wore. Something worse than either of those things — something controlled and careful and dangerous, like a held breath before a gunshot.

"Someone," he said quietly, "has been poisoning the alpha."

The doctor nodded once, grave as a funeral.

"It looks like someone has been giving him a slow poison."