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.
