Nikolai's POV
Awareness returned in shards of sensation, each one sharper than a knife.
The fire in his side. The deep, bone-aching cold that was slowly being pushed back by a surrounding warmth. The smell is antiseptic, animal musk, and a faint hint of lavender soap. Not the alley. Not the riverfront where the Orlov ambush had gone wrong.
He was inside. Somewhere soft. A floor.
The last thing he remembered… the alley. The woman. Her face was pale and worried in the beam of a flashlight. The feel of her small, strong hand pressing against the leak in his body. The instinctual, violent grab of her wrist. Her eyes were wide with fear but unwavering.
He had let go. A monumental act of trust, or of utter, helpless defeat.
Now, he lay still, keeping his breathing even and his eyes shut to slits. It was a trick he'd learned as a boy playing dead to avoid a beating. Assess. No sound of movement. One source of light above. Hum of machinery. Heater.
He risked opening his eyes a fraction more.
White ceiling tiles. Fluorescent lights. Metal shelves lined with medical supplies. An animal clinic. She'd told the truth.
A shadow fell over him. He tensed, every muscle coiling, but the movement sent a white-hot lance of agony through his side, forcing a silent gasp. He was in no shape to fight.
It was her. Elena. She was leaning over him; her brow furrowed in concentration. She had scissors in her hand, and for a heart-stopping second, he thought of a hundred different ways this could be a trap. But she wasn't looking at his throat. She was cutting away the ruined fabric around his wound, her movements clinical, efficient.
He watched her through his lashes. She was younger than he'd first thought, maybe late twenties. Her brown hair had mostly escaped its bun and fell in soft waves around a face that was all gentle lines, a small nose, full lips pressed together in focus, long lashes casting shadows on her cheeks. Not the face of a killer. The face of a… caregiver. It was disorienting.
He felt the cold air on his skin as she cut his shirt open. Then he felt her still. Utterly, completely still.
Her gaze had traveled upward from the wound. He knew exactly what she was looking at. The Volkov wolf. His family's mark. His identity was etched in ink and pride across his chest. To his men, it was a badge of honor. To his enemies, a target. To a civilian woman in a vet clinic in the middle of the night, it could only look like one thing: the mark of a monster.
He opened his eyes fully.
She jerked back, a small gasp escaping her. The fear was back in her eyes, but it was a different fear now. Not the immediate fear of a man grabbing her in a dark alley, but the deeper, colder fear of understanding. She knew. Maybe not the specifics, but she knew enough. The tattoo was not a gang scrawl; it was too intricate, too old-world. It meant organization. It meant power. It meant danger.
They stared at each other in the humming silence. He waited for her to run. To scream. To call the police. It's what any sane person would do.
Instead, after a heartbeat that felt like an eternity, she blinked. She looked from the tattoo to his eyes, and something in her expression shifted. The fear didn't vanish, but it was compartmentalized. Pushed aside by something stronger: professional duty.
"This is deep," she said, her voice remarkably steady. It was the same voice she'd used in the alley. The doctor's voice. "It needs stitches. I don't have anything for humans, but I have a local anesthetic for animals. Lidocaine. It'll numb the area. It'll work."
It wasn't a question. It was a statement of fact and the only plan available. She was proceeding as if the giant, terrifying tattoo on his chest was merely an interesting birthmark.
He gave the slightest of nods. What choice did he have? His own doctor was across town, and going to a hospital was an invitation for the Orlovs to finish the job in his sleep.
She turned away, gathering supplies. He used the moment to take a better look around. The room was small, clean, and functional. A metal exam table, scales, and a sink. Cages along one wall held a sleeping puppy and an old cat that watched him with bored yellow eyes. This was her world. Ordered. Caring. Simple.
She returned with a syringe. "This will sting."
He didn't flinch as the needle went in around the edges of the wound. The sting was nothing. He'd endured worse. He watched her face as she worked. Her concentration was absolute. There was no disgust as she cleaned the jagged cut, no hesitation as she blotted away the fresh blood. Her touch was firm but not rough. It was… caring. An alien concept.
"You're good at this," he rasped, the sound of his own voice strange in the quiet room.
She didn't look up, tying off the first stitch with a precise tug. "I've stitched up dogs who tangled with worse," she said, a hint of dry humor in her tone. "Though usually they're more grateful and less… grabby."
A sound almost escaped him, a puff of air that might have been the ghost of a laugh if he remembered how. It hurt his side. "I apologize," he said, the words unfamiliar and clumsy on his tongue. "For my hand. Instinct."
She paused, her needle hovering. "What kind of instinct gets you a hole in your side?" The question was out before she could stop it, laced with a curiosity that overrode caution.
He was silent. The truth was a minefield. The instinct to survive a power play. The instinct to eliminate a rival's enforcers. The instinct that failed when a traitor in my own ranks gave away my route. He couldn't say any of that. This world, his world, was a poison he had no right to spill into her clean, well-lit clinic.
"A world you don't want to know about," he said finally, his tone closing the subject like a vault door slamming shut.
She accepted it with a small, tight nod and went back to her stitching. She worked in silence after that, the only sounds the snip of the scissors and their breathing. He found himself studying her. The way a little line appeared between her eyebrows when she focused. The delicate strength in her hands. The quiet competence that filled the room. He had commanders, soldiers, and allies. He had never had someone simply take care of him.
It was unsettling. It was… profound.
She finished, taping a sterile bandage over the neat row of stitches. "You've lost a lot of blood. You need rest, fluids, and antibiotics. I have some pills that will work on humans. You really should go to a hospital."
"No hospital," he said immediately, the words a reflexive command. He tried to push himself up on his elbows, and the room spun violently. A wave of nausea and blinding pain made him collapse back with a grunt.
"Whoa, easy!" Her hands were on his good shoulder, holding him down. Her touch was warm. "You're in no shape to go anywhere. You can barely lift your head."
"I have to," he insisted, his vision swimming. "Before dawn."
The urgency wasn't just about the Orlovs. It was about her. Every minute he stayed here was a minute he endangered her life. If they tracked him here… He couldn't finish the thought.
She saw the genuine panic in his eyes. Not for himself, but for her. It confused her, he could tell. "At least drink this," she said, handing him a bottle of water. She shook out two strong antibiotic pills from a bottle. "And take these. It's the best I can do."
He took them, swallowing the pills obediently. His eyes never left her face. "Why?" he asked, the question tearing itself from a place he'd thought long buried.
"Why what?"
"Why help me? You saw the… mark." He couldn't bring himself to call it a tattoo. It was so much more. "You know what it means."
She busied herself cleaning her instruments, clattering them into a metal tray. Avoiding his gaze. "It means you're in a lot of trouble," she said softly. "It also means you're bleeding on my floor. My job is to stop the bleeding."
"Your job is animals."
She finally looked at him, and her gaze was direct, unwavering. "Tonight, you're my patient. That's all."
That's all. Two words that absolved him of everything he was. In her eyes, in this moment, he was not Nikolai Volkov, Vor of the Volkov family. He was a wounded creature needing help. The simplicity of it was a crushing weight. It was the first true kindness he'd received in twenty years that didn't come with a price tag attached.
He wouldn't forget it. He wouldn't forget her.
"What's your name?" he asked, though he already knew. He wanted to hear her say it.
"Elena."
"Elena," he repeated. Her name was a soft sound, a prayer in a language he'd forgotten. "I won't forget this."
An hour later, the black sky outside the high window began to soften to a deep, predawn gray. The antibiotics and water had cleared his head a little. The pain was a manageable thunder in his side. He insisted on standing.
It was a fight. The world tilted. She was there, a small, steady presence, offering an arm he refused to take. He shrugged on his ruined, blood-stiff coat over his bare, bandaged torso, hiding the wolf once more. He felt exposed without it, but in a different way.
At the back door, he paused. The winter dawn light was cold and blue on her face. She looked exhausted, worried, but resolute.
"Thank you," he said again. The words were still inadequate, but they were all he had. Then he turned and walked into the fading darkness of the alley, each step a fresh lesson in pain, moving toward the world where he belonged, leaving the one glimpse of light behind.
As she cleans his wound, she sees a scary tattoo on his chest, a sign of a powerful mafia family.