Claimed by My Mafia Alpha King Chapter 109

Irina’s POV

The walk back felt longer than it should have.

Sa corridors. Sa fluorescent glow. Sa guards straightening when they saw , sa cold stone sll that never quite left this part of the building no matter how far up you went.

But everything felt like it was pushing back tonight. Like the air had gotten heavier while I was down there.

*The cure is you, sweetheart. It’s been you this entire ti.*

I pressed Alexei’s voice flat and kept walking.

*Your blood. Your mother’s blood. The Healing Tribe’s queen.*

I didn’t know if it was true.

I didn’t know if any of it was true.

But I’d pressed my hands to Nicholas and nothing had happened. The light that had co out of in the dical wing — the warmth, the way Andrei’s wound had closed like it had never been there — none of that had worked on him. And the doctors were running out of careful words to say. I could see it in their faces every ti I walked into that room. The way they’d stopped eting my eyes.

Nicholas’s room was quiet.

Soone had left the lamp on the low setting — just enough light to see by, not enough to feel like daylight. The curtains were pulled. The machines beeped in their slow, even rhythm, the sa rhythm I’d been asuring the last few days like a kind of prayer.

I stood in the doorway for a mont.

Then I walked in and let the door close behind .

He looked the sa as he had this morning. Sa stillness. Sa pale set to his face, the kind of pale that didn’t belong there — Nicholas was not supposed to look like this. He was supposed to be sharp and dangerous and taking up all the air in a room without even trying. He was supposed to make people’s knees go soft just by existing.

Like this, he just looked like a person.

A person who was running out of ti.

I sat down beside the bed.

I reached out — slowly, the way I always did, like sudden movents might break sothing — and laid my palm flat on his chest.

His heartbeat was there. I felt it imdiately.

Steady. Even.

But slower than it used to be.

He was fading.

Not fast. Not like a cliff’s edge. More like a tide going out — slow and steady and almost unnoticeable until you looked up and realized how far the waterline had dropped.

My hand pressed down harder, like pressure would help.

It didn’t.

"You’re so stubborn," I said quietly. "Even this. Even being unconscious. You’re still doing it slowly, deliberately, like you’re making a point."

He didn’t answer. Obviously.

I let out a breath.

---

I looked at Nicholas’s face.

I thought about the first ti he’d looked at — in that auction room, with all those people watching and that terrible light overhead, and his eyes finding across the crowd and not letting go. I’d been terrified. I’d been terrified of everything back then. I hadn’t known the difference between soone wanting to hurt and soone just wanting , because those two things had always co packaged together.

I thought about the morning he’d told what he was planning for my father and Maxim, the careful way he’d said *I already promised you, no war*, and how I hadn’t known what to do with that. Nobody had ever kept a promise to before. I hadn’t had a reference point.

I thought about how he’d held my hand in the hospital after I’d taken that hit from Maxim’s wolf. The way he hadn’t said anything, hadn’t made it about him or about what had happened or about anything at all — just held on.

My eyes started to burn.

I blinked it back.

*Stop it*, I told myself. *This isn’t the ti.*

---

The knife was in my pocket.

I’d taken it from the dical kit in my room — small, clean, the kind they used for procedures. I’d put it there yesterday, after I’d co back from trying and failing to heal Nicholas with my hands, after I’d sat in the chair beside his bed and tried to figure out what else I had.

I pulled the knife out.

Looked at it for a second.

Then I pressed the blade to the center of my palm and cut.

It wasn’t deep — I didn’t need it deep, just enough. The pain was sharp and quick, and then the blood ca, welling up fast, running down my wrist before I’d even moved my hand.

I leaned over.

I pressed my palm to Nicholas’s lips.

For a mont, nothing.

I held my breath.

Then — sothing.

His color changed first. Just slightly, just at the edges — the waxy pallor giving way to sothing warr, sothing that looked more like him. Like blood rembered where it was supposed to be.

The machines beeped.

And then again. Faster.

His heartbeat — I felt it change under my other hand, still resting on his chest. Like sothing had been winding down and now soone had touched the chanism, and it was finding its rhythm again. Stronger. More present. Less far away.

I made a sound I hadn’t ant to make. Sothing halfway between a breath and sothing else.

His eyelids moved.

Just slightly. Just the faintest flutter, the kind that ant he was sowhere between wherever he’d been and coming back. His brow creased. His jaw shifted. The machines beeped again, and again, steady now, insistent.

He was coming back.

He was actually coming back.

I pulled my hand away. I wrapped it in the edge of my sleeve, pressing down on the cut, watching his face. His cheeks had color again. Real color — warm and alive, not that awful gray that had been sitting there for days like sothing had already given up.

My chest hurt.

I hadn’t expected it to hurt like this. I don’t know what I’d expected — relief, maybe. Or nothing. I’d been so braced for it not to work that I hadn’t thought past that part. Hadn’t thought about what it would feel like to watch it actually work. To watch him co back.

His fingers moved.

Small. Just a twitch. But I saw it.

I pressed my eyes shut for a second.

When I opened them again, he was still unconscious, still not quite there, but closer. Definitely closer. The machines said so. His whole face said so — the tension that had gone out of it when he’d fallen, that particular slackness that had made him look wrong, it was shifting back. He was in there.

I stood up.

My legs were unsteady. I held onto the side of the bed for a mont, just to make sure, and then I let go.

I leaned down.

I pressed my lips to his — gently, barely there, just a breath. His mouth was warm now. That was the thing I noticed most. He was warm again.

I stayed there for a mont.

Just a mont.

"I’m sorry," I said against his lips.

I straightened.

"Goodbye."