ROMAN - Khimki Factory, 0314 #2
He staggers back, hands flying to his shattered nose, and I follow because a wounded wolf is still a wolf, my knee driving into his gut while he’s still reeling.
When he doubles over, I wrap my left forearm around his throat and squeeze until his face goes purple, and his hands claw uselessly at my arm.
“You want to question my capability?” I tighten my grip and feel his struggles getting weaker, his body going limp against mine.
“You want to measure my leadership? I killed my first man when I was fourteen years old. I’ve put more bodies in the Moskva than you’ve had hot meals, and I didn’t use my hands for most of them. ”
The other men are frozen around us, weapons half-raised, watching their Pakhan choke the life out of a man twice his size with one arm and a broken body.
Adrenaline is the only reason I can move, the only reason I can lock my good arm and my dead one around his head and twist with everything I have left.
“My hands are damaged.” I release Yevgeni, and he drops to his knees, gasping and choking, blood streaming from his nose onto the concrete. “But I can still tear out throats with my teeth if I need to, and right now I’m feeling very fucking motivated.”
I step back, and Anya’s hand finds the small of my back again, steadying me because that display cost more than I want to admit, my shoulder screaming and my gut wound throbbing and my left arm shaking from the exertion.
“Anyone else want to question my capability?”
Silence.
“Good.” I scan the faces, memorizing which ones look afraid and which ones look hungry. “Then let’s talk about what happens next.”
“You swore to follow me.” I keep my voice hard, commanding, even though every word costs energy I don’t have. “Swore to take the throne and burn Vadim’s empire to ash. But building an empire requires more than guns and loyalty to one man.”
I let them process that.
“Before we move on Volkovskaya, I’m giving you a choice. Walk away now—no consequences, no hunting, you disappear, and we never speak of you again—or stay and swear blood oath to two Pakhans.”
More confusion. Glances exchanged. Weapons shifting.
“Anya Nikolayevna Volkova.” I reach back and pull her forward, her hand finding mine even though my grip is shit. “My wife. My Tsaritsa. She will rule beside me with equal authority. Her word carries the same weight as mine.”
A younger soldier near the back—Petya, twenty-two and too stupid to know when to keep his mouth shut—laughs out loud.
“The chemist?” His voice drips with contempt. “She’s a fucking scientist, not a—”
Anya is moving before he finishes.
She crosses the distance in three strides, and her hand closes around his throat before he can react, slamming him back against a rusted support column. His head bounces off the metal with a sound that echoes through the factory.
“I spent two hours with my hands inside your Pakhan’s gut.” Her voice comes out quiet, controlled, and somehow that makes it more terrifying than if she’d been screaming.
She tightens her grip, and Petya’s face goes from red to purple, his feet kicking uselessly against the column.
“What exactly have you done lately that makes you qualified to question whether I belong here?”
He can’t answer. Can’t breathe. Can’t do anything but claw at her wrist while thirty-two men watch.
Mine. The thought burns through me like wildfire, watching her choke a man twice her size, watching her prove that the Tsaritsa title isn’t courtesy—it’s a warning.
“Anya.” I let a note of command into my voice. “We need him breathing.”
She holds for one more heartbeat, letting him feel how close to death he is, and then releases.
Petya drops to his knees beside Yevgeni, both of them gasping and bleeding on the concrete floor, and Anya looks down at them with something cold and final in her expression.
“When you question whether I have a place in this empire, remember that your Pakhan kills with bullets.” She steps back, straightening the tactical vest that doesn’t fit her right, her voice carrying to every corner of the factory.
“I kill with chemistry. Chemistry is quieter. It’s also much, much harder to trace. ”
Nobody laughs this time.
I reach for my knife with my left hand—fumbling, clumsy, my weakened fingers barely able to close around the handle—and drag the blade across my palm. Blood wells dark and immediate, dripping onto the concrete.
“Blood oath.” The words come out hoarse but certain. “I bind my life to this empire. I bind my death to its defense.”
I hold the knife out to Anya.
She takes it from my shaking hand and cuts her own palm in one clean motion, blood welling bright against her skin, and holds her bleeding hand beside mine.
“Blood oath.” Her voice carries steady and strong, no tremor, no hesitation.
“I bind my life to this empire. I bind my death to its defense.” She claps my hand—her grip firm, mine dead, but the blood mixes anyway, her warmth sliding against my palm and sealing something between us that goes deeper than words.
“She is mine,” I tell the men gathered around us, and I let every ounce of possessive violence I’m feeling bleed into my voice. “My wife. My Tsaritsa. My equal. You serve her as you serve me. Anyone who forgets that—anyone who touches her, threatens her, disrespects her—answers to both of us.”
Movement in my peripheral vision, sudden and fast.
I turn just as Yevgeni lunges from his knees with a knife in his hand, blood still streaming from his shattered nose, and he’s not coming for me—he’s going for Anya, blade aimed at her exposed throat while her hands are occupied with mine.
My body moves without thought.
I throw myself between them, my damaged shoulder taking the impact as I barrel into Yevgeni’s charge, and the knife meant for Anya’s throat buries itself in my left arm instead, punching through muscle and scraping bone in a burst of white-hot agony that makes me roar.
But I don’t stop.
I grab his head with my left, squeezing with my right biceps, and I twist, pouring every ounce of rage and fear and desperate love into the motion, and his neck snaps.
Yevgeni drops.
I stand over his body, swaying, knife still embedded in my arm and blood running down to drip from my fingertips onto his cooling corpse.
“Anyone else?”
Silence.
Chernov drops to one knee, fist over his heart. “Pakhan. Tsaritsa. Blood and steel.”
The others follow, one by one, thirty-two men kneeling on concrete while dawn starts to bleed red through the factory’s grimy windows.
Anya’s hand finds my back again, warm and steady, and her voice comes close to my ear.
“You took a knife for me.”
“I’d take a thousand.” I turn my head enough to see her face, pale and furious and so fucking beautiful I can barely breathe. “You’re mine, Anya. Every inch of you. Anyone who tries to take you from me learns what happens when you threaten a wolf’s mate.”
Her eyes darken with something that isn’t just anger, something hot and hungry that makes my cock stir.
“We need to get that blade out. And then you need to tell me about Vadim.”
“There’s something you need to know.” I let her guide me toward the back room, away from the kneeling men and the cooling corpse. “About the massacre. About why this is more than succession.”
* * *
She cuts my shirt away with steady hands while I sit on a crate in the small office Chernov cleared for us, the knife still jutting from my left arm because she won’t let me remove it until she’s ready to deal with the bleeding.
“Talk.” She assembles supplies from the medical kit—gauze, antiseptic, and suture thread. “While I work.”
“The crypt massacre.” The words taste like copper on my tongue. “When I was twelve. The Chechen hit squad killed every Volkov male and my mother. I thought I survived because I was lucky. Wrong place, wrong time. Hiding in the crypt while they slaughtered everyone upstairs.”
Anya’s hands pause on the gauze, just for a moment.
“Three years ago, I found proof.” I destroy the last of her illusions about my family. “Vadim orchestrated it. Hired the mercenaries. Gave them the floor plans and the timing.”
She sets down the gauze and looks at me, really looks, putting pieces together.
“The hit squad didn’t miss you.” Her voice comes out soft, horrified. “They were told to miss you.”
“Da.” The word scrapes my throat raw. “Vadim killed my family and then raised me as his heir. Seventeen years of calling him dyadya. Letting him shape me. Becoming exactly what he wanted because I didn’t know.”
Anya doesn’t say anything. She takes my jaw in her hands and tips my face up.
“He made you to be a weapon.” Her thumbs stroke across my cheekbones, and her voice comes out fierce. “Forged you in guilt and grief and silence. And you still chose to be something else. You still chose the ledger burn. Not trafficking humans. The color system, when you could have just taken.”
“That’s not enough—”
“It’s everything.” She cuts me off, her grip tightening on my face. “He created a monster, and you chose to have a conscience anyway. That’s not weakness, Roman. That’s revolution.”
Something breaks in my chest, some wall I’ve been holding up for twenty years, and I’m crying—second time since the massacre, since I learned what my uncle did—and she doesn’t tell me to stop.
“Now.” Her voice steadies, but she’s still touching me with something like tenderness. “Hold still while I remove this knife, and then we’re going to get you dressed for war.”
She grips the handle and pulls, one smooth motion, and I grunt through the fresh wave of agony while blood pours down my arm.
“Lucky.” She’s already packing the wound, suturing. “Missed the major vessels. You’ll have full use of the arm in a few weeks.”
“The right one’s useless.” She works, her hands steady even after everything. “I’m going into battle half-crippled.”
“You’re going into battle with thirty-two men who just watched you snap a traitor’s neck with two damaged hands.” She ties off the final suture and reaches for bandages. “I think you’ll manage.”
The tactical gear is laid out on the desk beside me—Kevlar vest, shoulder holster, combat boots—and I’m staring at it when Anya steps in front of me.
“Arms up.”
I raise them—painful, awkward, my shoulder screaming and my freshly sutured arm protesting—and she lifts the Kevlar vest over my head, settling it onto my shoulders with a care that makes my throat tight.
Her fingers find the side straps and start tightening.
Every pull brings her body closer to mine.
Every adjustment presses her against me—her breasts brushing my chest, her hips aligning with mine, her breath warm against my throat.
The vest sits snug against my damaged ribs, and she runs her hands over the surface, checking the fit, her palms smoothing across Kevlar that might as well be bare skin for how my body responds.
“Tighter.” My voice comes out rough.
Her pupils dilate. She pulls the straps harder, and the vest compresses around my torso, her face inches from mine.
“Shoulder holster.” She moves behind me, pressing her body flush against my back, and threads the straps over my arms with hands that aren’t quite steady anymore. “Lift.”
I raise my arms again and feel her pressed against my spine from shoulders to hips, her breath hot on my shoulder blades. The holster settles into place, and her hands linger on the buckles, adjusting, tightening, her fingers trailing across my chest.
My cock responds despite the fever, despite the wounds, despite everything.
Her hand brushes across my groin while reaching for the chest buckle. Slow.
“Color?” Her voice comes low against my ear.
“Green.” I turn my head enough to see her face, pupils blown and lips parted. “So fucking green I’m thinking about things we don’t have time for.”
“Tell me anyway.” Her lips find my neck, breathing me in, and her hand presses flat against my cock through the tactical pants.
“I’m thinking about surviving this.” I reach back with my left hand and find her hip, pulling her harder against me. “About the throne. About bending you over it. About making good on every threat I’ve ever whispered in your ear.”
She shudders, full-body, and her hand tightens on me.
“When we survive—” I turn in her arms, facing her, my left hand sliding up to cup her jaw. “I’m giving you everything, Anya. The throne. The knife. Every dark fantasy you’ve been too practical to ask for.”
“Promise?” Her voice comes out breathless.
“Blood oath.” I pull her close enough to feel her heart racing against my chest. “Survive today, and I’ll ruin you in ways you haven’t imagined yet.”
She kisses me—hard, hungry, biting my lip hard—and then pulls back, her eyes bright and dangerous.
“Then let’s go kill your uncle.” She smooths my vest one more time, all business again. “Because I want it all.”
The door bursts open.
Chernov stands in the doorway, face white, breathing hard.
“Pakhan.” His voice cracks. “Scouts just reported. Vadim isn’t fifty kilometers south anymore.”
My blood goes cold. “How close?”
“His helicopter landed at Volkovskaya forty minutes ago.” Chernov’s eyes flick between me and Anya. “He’s not coming to us. He’s waiting. He sent a message.”
“What message?”
“‘The wolf cub can come home now. I’ll be in your father’s chair.’” Chernov swallows hard. “He says he has a wedding gift.”
Anya’s hand finds mine and squeezes. I feel it even through the weakness.
“Then let’s not keep him waiting.” Her voice comes out steady, cold, every inch the Tsaritsa she’s claimed to be.
I love her.
Standing in this frozen factory with thirty-two armed men and a body on the floor and a war waiting, I love her more than I’ve ever loved anything.
“Move out.” I let my voice carry. “We end this today.”
Anya walks beside me toward the door, her hand warm in my weak grip, and I don’t let go.