Irina’s POV

Light.

Pale gray light pressing through the curtains. Thin. Cold.

I lay there and stared at it.

My brain came back online slowly. Like a machine that had been left out in the rain.

The ceiling. White. Familiar.

Still here, then.

I exhaled. Long. Slow.

The sheets were tangled around my legs. My whole body ached—the deep, bone-level kind of ache that told you something had happened to it while you weren’t paying proper attention.

I already knew what had happened.

I made myself take stock. Methodical. Like checking inventory.

My hand. Bandaged. Tight. The cuts underneath throbbing steadily.

My wrists. Bruised. Both of them. The shape of his fingers.

Everything else.

I stared at the ceiling a little longer.

He was gone. I knew that before I even turned my head to check. The room had a different quality without him in it. Like the air remembered being crushed and was slowly expanding back to fill the space.

He was gone.

I was alone.

I should have felt relieved.

Mostly I just felt sticky.

I sat up carefully. The sheet fell away.

I didn’t look down at myself. Didn’t want to.

My feet found the floor. Cold marble. I stood.

My legs worked. That was something, at least.

I crossed to the mirror on the opposite wall—the full-length one. The bathroom mirror was still shattered. I remembered that much.

I looked at myself.

For a long moment I just stood there.

The girl in the mirror looked like she’d been through something. Hair tangled. Eyes flat and hollow. The faint blue shadows under them like bruises that hadn’t bothered to decide whether to bloom or fade.

My gaze moved downward.

His marks were everywhere.

Dark. Vivid. Scattered across my collarbones, my shoulders, my chest. Some places I’d have to think hard to remember when he’d put his mouth there. Others I remembered clearly enough that the memory made my stomach turn.

Kiss marks.

A constellation of proof.

I stood there and looked at it. At all of it. Like I was looking at damage to a car.

Cataloguing. Not feeling.

The not-feeling was easier. I’d gotten good at it.

Then something cracked somewhere in the middle of my chest.

Small. Almost silent.

I turned away from the mirror and walked to the bathroom. The broken glass had been cleaned up—someone had been in while I slept. The floor was spotless. White and immaculate like nothing had happened there. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

I didn’t look at the wall where the mirror had been. Just a rectangular void now. Empty plaster.

I turned the bathtub faucet on.

Hot. As hot as it would go.

I sat on the edge of the tub and watched it fill.

Steam curled up. Soft. Slow.

The sound of rushing water filled the room and drowned out everything else and I was grateful for that because the quiet was worse. The quiet let me hear the inside of my own head and the inside of my own head was not somewhere I wanted to be right now.

The tub filled.

I lowered myself in.

The heat was almost punishing. Good. Better to feel this than anything else.

I pulled my knees up. Made myself small. Let the water rise around me until it lapped at my shoulders.

Then I just sat there.

I’d thought I was out of tears. I’d cried so many times in the last year that I was pretty sure I’d dried up. Hit some kind of emotional bedrock where nothing more could surface.

Turns out I was wrong.

They came quietly this time. No heaving. No gasping. Just tears sliding down my face one after another, dropping into the bathwater. Absorbed.

Disappeared.

Like they’d never been there.

*Why.*

The word sat in the center of my chest. Heavy. Persistent.

Just—

*Why.*

Why everywhere I went it was the same. Why I kept ending up in the same place. Same position. Same powerlessness.

Different hands. Same result.

At my father’s house I’d told myself it was because of Maxim. Because he had power and I didn’t. Because the whole pack was afraid of him and I was the easiest target and it would end when I got away.

And here I was.

Different ceiling. Different hands leaving different bruises.

Same feeling.

The water cooled slowly.

I sat in it and watched the light change through the frosted window. Gray to pale gold to something brighter. Morning happening outside without me.

Nothing hurt right now. The bath had numbed everything. The tears had stopped again. I was just—blank. Quiet. Waiting to find out what happened next.

A knock at the door.

"Miss Irina?"

Sofia.

I didn’t answer immediately.

"Miss Irina, it’s been over an hour. Are you—are you alright?"

An hour. Had it been that long?

"I’m fine," I called back. My voice came out even. Steady. I was almost impressed.

A pause.

"Breakfast will be cold soon. And the alpha—" She hesitated. "He left word that you should eat this morning. Before you—before lunch."

I couldn’t eat in that dining room right now. Couldn’t sit across from him and look at his hands and—

"I’ll be out in a minute," I said.

---

Sofia had laid out something on the bed. Simple clothes. A cream-colored sweater, soft. Dark pants. She’d figured out early on that I didn’t want anything fussy.

I got dressed. Didn’t look in the full-length mirror again.

Sofia was hovering near the door when I came out of the bathroom. Her face was careful. Controlled. But her eyes gave her away.

I watched her for a moment.

"Sofia."

She turned. "Yes?"

"The women who work here." I kept my voice casual. Neutral. "The servants. The other omegas."

She nodded.

"Are there women from other packs? Other families?"

Sofia tilted her head. Thinking. "Yes, some. The palace takes people from different territories. Staff from other families, sometimes. Warriors’ mates who come to live here."

I pushed the toast around my plate.

"There’s a woman," I said carefully. "About my age. Maybe five or six years older. Dark hair. She’d have been here about a year."

Sofia’s brow furrowed slightly. "That could be a few people. What’s her name?"

I set down my fork.

"Katerina," I said. "Her name is Katerina."

Sofia went still. Just for a moment.

Then her expression shifted to something thoughtful. Searching. She pressed her lips together and looked toward the window.

The silence stretched.

I waited. My heart had started doing something strange in my chest. Slow and hard. Each beat deliberate.

Sofia thought for a long moment.

Then she shook her head.

"I don’t remember anyone by that name."