Nicholas’s POV
The howl was still ringing in my own ears when the door burst open.
Both of them. At the sa ti. Andrei hit the doorfra shoulder-first, Roman a half-step behind him, and for one second they just stood there staring at like they’d seen a ghost climb out of its own grave.
Then Andrei crossed the room in four strides and slamd into .
A full hug. Arms around my shoulders, the kind of grip that didn’t leave room for argunt. I sat there and let it happen because my body still weighed about twice what it should and because — honestly — I didn’t have the energy to push him off.
"You’re awake." His voice ca out rougher than usual. He pulled back and looked at like he was checking for damage, eyes scanning my face. "You actually woke up."
"Obviously." My voice ca out like gravel. I cleared my throat. "How long."
"Four days," Roman said from the doorway. He hadn’t moved. He was standing there with his arms crossed and an expression on his face I couldn’t read — which was unusual. Roman’s face was usually an open book of exactly how disapproving he was of everything. Right now it was sothing else. Sothing heavier.
Four days.
I didn’t have ti to sit with that.
"Where’s Irina."
Not a question. It didn’t co out like one. It ca out like sothing I already needed the answer to before I’d even finished saying it — because the mate bond was doing sothing wrong in my chest, sothing it had no business doing from inside this room, and I needed soone to explain to right now why it felt like trying to grab a rope that had been cut most of the way through.
Andrei blinked. He straightened up, turned toward the door, glanced around like she might materialize out of a corner sowhere. "She’s — yeah, good question. She’s usually here. Every night she’s been—" He looked back at . "Huh. I actually haven’t seen her tonight."
"She’s not here?" I said.
"She’ll be around sowhere. Maybe she went to get food, or—"
"She’s not in the building."
My voice ca out flat. Certain. Because I knew. The bond doesn’t lie. It had been pulling tighter and tighter since before I’d even opened my eyes, a thin wire stretched toward sothing that kept moving farther away. I knew the difference between a woman three hallways over and a woman who had crossed a border.
I looked at Roman.
Roman, who had been standing in that doorway since the mont they’d walked in. Roman, who hadn’t moved, hadn’t smiled, hadn’t said a single word beyond telling how long I’d been out.
"Roman."
He t my eyes.
"What do you know."
A muscle jumped in his jaw. Andrei looked between us, the lightness draining out of his expression.
"What’s going on?" Andrei’s voice had shifted. He wasn’t performing casual anymore. "Roman. What’s that face."
Roman unfolded his arms. He looked like a man who had been rehearsing sothing and had just decided the rehearsal was over.
"Alexei talked," he said.
Andrei went still.
"When?" I said.
"Two days ago. I went in to question him about the poison, the uprising, the whole thing." Roman’s jaw was tight. "He cooperated. More than I expected. He gave up nas, he gave up details—" A pause. "And then he gave up one more thing."
"What?" Andrei’s voice had gone very quiet.
"He said Irina was involved." Roman said it clean. No softening it, no cushioning it. Just said it. "He said she’d been giving you the poison. Directly. Over a period of weeks."
The room went silent.
Andrei moved first. He laughed — a sharp, disbelieving sound that didn’t have any humor in it. "Absolutely not. No. That’s insane, Roman, he’s a cornered animal trying to throw us off, he’s trying to—"
"I arrested Sofia."
That shut Andrei up.
"Alexei’s mate," Roman continued, "the one who had been serving as Irina’s personal attendant. We’d already been watching her. When I brought her in she didn’t hold out for long." He reached into his jacket. "She surrendered this."
He held out a small glass vial.
I stared at it for a second.
Then I took it.
It was light. Almost nothing in my palm. The glass was dark, the stopper still in place, and there was maybe a third of the contents left — a fine powder that shifted when I tilted it, pale and dry and faintly iridescent under the light.
I pulled the stopper.
I brought it to my nose and inhaled.
The scent hit the back of my throat like a needle.
Strange. dicinal. Faint underneath it — sothing almost sweet, almost botanical, sothing that had no business being in a poison but was there anyway, layered in like a signature.
My wolf went rigid.
Because I knew that scent.
Not from a vial. Not from a lab report or a toxicology briefing.
From her.
From the curve of her neck, the warmth of her skin when I’d had my face pressed against her pulse point, the specific way she slled when I had her pulled close in the dark and she’d stopped flinching every ti I moved. I’d registered it a dozen tis and never questioned it — told myself it was sothing in whatever soap they used, sothing in the palace water, sothing that was just uniquely Irina — that faint thread of sothing unusual woven through her natural scent.
It was this.
She’d had this on her, in her, all those nights.
All those mornings.
The vial was still in my hand. I hadn’t dropped it. I didn’t drop things. My fingers had locked around it with the kind of stillness that cos right before sothing breaks.
Andrei wasn’t talking anymore.
Roman was watching the way you watch a thing that’s about to detonate — carefully, from a reasonable distance.
"She ran." My voice didn’t sound like mine. It was too quiet. Too even. "That’s what the bond is doing. She crossed the border."
No one answered. Which was answer enough.
She’d waited until I was down and she’d run.
She’d been the one putting down in the first place.
I sat with that for exactly as long as it took to breathe in once and breathe out once.
And then sothing that had been sitting quiet and cold at the center of my chest for four days — for four days while she’d apparently sat in this room and cried and acted like she was terrified of losing , while the bond had pulled toward consciousness because so part of kept reaching for her, while my wolf had been howling into an empty space where his mate should have been — that thing cracked.
Wide open.
"Get out." My voice ca out low. Still that flat, even tone, but there was sothing underneath it now, sothing that made both of them take a half-step backward before they’d consciously decided to.
"Nicholas—" Andrei started.
"Get out of this room." I stood up. My legs were not entirely cooperating but they held and I didn’t give them the option of not holding. "Get every man we have. Get the trackers. Get whoever is on the border watch and find out exactly when she crossed and which direction she went." I set the vial down on the nightstand. Carefully. Like it was sothing I might reconsider throwing through the wall. "And then."
I looked at them.
Roman’s face had gone carefully neutral. Andrei looked sick.
"Go find her." The words ca out through my teeth. "Go. Find her. Bring her back."
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