Irina’s POV

The darkness was heavy.

It pressed down on my chest. It filled my throat. I tried to breathe, but there was only cold, black water. Only the rushing sound in my ears.

The monitor. The steady, frantic beeping of the machine.

Dr. Vasquez’s voice. *Stay with me, Irina.*

The siren of the ambulance.

And then, the cry.

That thin, sharp cry.

My baby.

I wanted to reach for that sound. I wanted to open my eyes and pull that tiny, fragile thing to my chest. I needed to know if he was breathing. I needed to know if he was safe.

But my body refused to listen.

My arms were made of lead. My eyelids were sealed shut.

I was bleeding out. I knew that. I could feel the life draining out of me. A slow, inevitable leak that I could not stop. The tearing agony in my pelvis from the delivery was fading, replaced by a numb, creeping frost.

I was dying.

After everything. After running from the Iron Thorn territory. After surviving the palace of the Mad King. After surviving Maxim. After wandering the streets of this city until my feet bled. I was going to die on a stretcher.

*No.*

I tried to scream.

Nothing came out.

And then, the cold stopped.

The sirens cut off. The beeping vanished. The rushing in my ears went completely silent.

The darkness cracked open.

Light poured in.

Not the harsh, clinical light of the hospital. Not the blinding, terrifying headlights of a car on a rainy street.

Soft light. Warm. Golden at the edges.

I opened my eyes.

I was not in the ambulance anymore. I was not on a stretcher. I was not wearing a blood-soaked hospital gown.

I was standing on grass.

I looked down at my feet. Bare. The grass was tall, wild, shifting in a breeze I could actually feel against my skin. It smelled like earth. Like rain. Like something ancient and alive.

I touched my stomach.

Flat.

The heavy, aching weight of the pregnancy was gone. The tearing agony was gone.

I breathed in. My lungs expanded easily. No fluid. No blood. No pain.

"Where am I?" I whispered.

My voice did not crack. It sounded clear. Normal. Not the raspy, broken sound of an omega who spent a year apologizing to the floor.

The wind picked up, rustling the tall grass. The sky above was a swirling canvas of twilight colors. Deep purples. Burning oranges. Soft grays. It was not a real sky. It was a mindscape. An in-between place.

I started to walk.

The grass brushed against my calves. It felt real. Every step grounded me. But I was alone. The vastness of the meadow was terrifying.

*Am I dead?*

The thought sat heavily in my chest. If I was dead, where was the baby? Did my baby survive?

Panic flared. A hot, sharp spike in my throat.

"Please," I said out loud to the empty sky. "Please, no. Not my baby. Take me, but not the baby."

A sound broke through the wind.

A rustle. Heavy paws on dirt.

I froze. My breath hitched.

The survival instinct took over immediately. The instinct that had kept me alive in the Obsidian Claw pack house. The one that told me to shrink, to hide, to freeze. I pulled my shoulders in. I lowered my head. I waited for the blow.

The grass parted.

Something massive stepped into the clearing.

I stopped breathing entirely.

It was a wolf.

Not a normal wolf. It was huge, towering over me even on four legs. Its fur was the color of fresh snow, pristine and blindingly bright in the twilight. Its eyes were a deep, piercing blue.

My blue.

It stopped ten feet away. It did not growl. It did not bare its teeth.

It just looked at me.

I stared back. My hands started to tremble.

I knew this creature. I knew it in my bones. I knew it the way I knew my own heartbeat.

But it was not possible.

"You’re gone," I choked out. "You died."

The wolf did not move.

"Maxim rejected me." The words tasted like ash in my mouth. I forced them out anyway. "He rejected me on my eighteenth birthday. In front of everyone. He broke the bond. He broke me. You were destroyed."

For a year, I had lived as an empty shell. A human trapped in a monster’s world. A broken thing. I had felt the absence of her every single day. A gaping, bleeding hole in my chest where my soul was supposed to be. I had felt her die. I had felt the agonizing tear when she was ripped away from the surface of my mind.

The wolf took a step forward.

I flinched back.

She stopped. She lowered her massive head, making herself smaller. Less threatening.

Then, a voice echoed in my mind. Not a human voice. A presence. A feeling translated into words.

*I am not dead, little one.*

My knees gave out.

I collapsed onto the grass. I pressed my hands to my face and sobbed. Hard, violent tears that tore from my chest.

The wolf closed the distance.

I felt the heat of her before I felt the touch. She pressed her large, warm snout against my shoulder. She nudged my neck. The softest, gentlest movement.

I dropped my hands. I reached out, my fingers trembling violently, and buried my hands in her thick white fur.

It was real. She was real. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

"I felt you die," I sobbed, burying my face in her neck. "I felt it. It hurt so much. I was so alone."

*I know.* Her voice in my head was a low, soothing hum. Like a mother rocking a child. *I felt your pain. I felt every strike. Every cold night on the floor. Every terrified breath.*

"Then why did you leave me?" I cried, my fingers gripping her fur tight. "Why did you leave me in the dark? With him. With all of them. I was completely defenseless."

The wolf shifted, wrapping her large body around me. Shielding me from the wind.

*I did not leave.*

She pressed her nose to my forehead.

*I was sealed away.*

I blinked, the tears blurring my vision. "Sealed? By who?"

*By the Moon Goddess.*

The name sent a shiver down my spine. The deity that ruled our kind. The one who had supposedly cursed me. The one everyone in the Iron Thorn pack said had turned her back on me.

*She did not curse you, Irina. She saved you.*

The wolf’s presence grew stronger in my mind. *You are safe now. You are far from the ones who broke you. The immediate danger is passed. And the child... the child is born.*

Tears pricked my eyes again. "My baby. Is he okay? Tell me he is okay."

*He is beautiful. And he is breathing.*

A massive weight lifted off my chest. I slumped forward, burying my face in my hands. "Thank the Goddess. Thank you."

*Now it is time,* the wolf said.

Her presence expanded. The meadow around us seemed to glow brighter. The colors in the sky shifted from twilight to dawn. The dark purples gave way to brilliant golds and soft pinks.

*I can finally manifest. I can finally share this body with you again.*

I looked at my hands. They did not feel broken anymore. They felt strong.

"Can I heal?" I asked. "Like before I was rejected?"

*More than before.*

The wolf stood up fully. She was magnificent. Pure power radiated from her in heavy waves.

*You do not just possess the standard healing of a wolf, Irina. The Goddess sealed me away, but in doing so, she changed us. She concentrated our essence in the dark. We grew stronger while we hid.*

She paced in front of me, her blue eyes locked on mine.

*You can bring peace, Irina. To the King. To the empire. To the entire pack.*

The words washed over me.

Peace.

I did not know what peace felt like. I only knew survival. I only knew how to hide.

*You will learn,* the wolf promised. *This power is not just for you. It is the light that will push back the darkness consuming this world. You are not a broken omega, Irina. You never were.*

I looked down at the grass. "I don’t know how to do this."

*You do not need to know right now. You only need to accept me. Let me back in.*

"I want you back," I said fiercely. "I never wanted you gone."

The wolf stepped forward. She pressed her forehead against mine.

A rush of pure, blinding heat flooded my veins. It was not painful. It was like waking up from a year-long freeze. I felt my senses sharpen. I heard the wind a thousand times clearer. I smelled the damp earth. I felt the powerful, thumping rhythm of a second heart beating in perfect time with mine.

I was whole.

For the first time since my eighteenth birthday, I was completely, wonderfully whole.

But the light in the meadow was getting too bright.

The edges of the sky were starting to dissolve into blinding white. The rustling of the grass was being drowned out.

The rushing sound of the real world was returning. Faintly at first. A distant voice. A monitor beeping.

I panicked. I grabbed the wolf’s fur.

"Wait," I said, my voice rising in fear. "It’s fading. The meadow is fading."

*Your body is waking up.*

"No, wait." I held on tighter.

The fear of the real world crashed back in. The blood. The pain. The uncertainty. The King who was undoubtedly hunting me. Here, in the meadow, I was safe. Here, I was whole. If I woke up, I would be back in the nightmare.

"Will I still see you?" I asked, my voice breaking. "If I wake up, will you disappear again? Will I be alone?"

The wolf did not pull away. The warmth of her presence remained steady and solid in my mind.

*Of course.*

The white light consumed the grass. It consumed the sky.

*I am part of you now. Forever. I will never leave you again.*

"The baby," I whispered.

*And you’ll see your lovely child too.*

The light was blinding now. The sound of the monitor was a steady, rhythmic thrum in my ears. The cold of the hospital room was starting to bite at my skin, but beneath it, the deep, burning warmth of my wolf remained.

I could feel the life pumping back into my veins.

I could hear the crying. Real crying.

Go, believe in yourself, Irina, wake up.