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Anya ignores the challenge. She looks at me for a long moment. Then at her sons. Then back at me. "And no one was going to tell me this either?" she says in a half-screech, half-roar.

"We've been a little busy, Mama," Georgy offers from the wall, and Anya silences him with a blood-curdling look.

Her words scorch him more than her eyes. "It seems we have much to discuss. But first, Aleksej." Minutes later Vlad and Anya sweep toward the infirmary, taking matching long strides to their injured son. I trail after them, caught in their whirlwind, because Aleksej is my patient, even if his mother could frighten the stripes off a tiger.

In the recovery room, Vlad lays a hand on Aleksej's hair, and the granite of him cracks for a second before he seals it back over. Then Anya turns to me.

"How long was the surgery?"

"Fourteen hours."

"What is in his arm?" She leans down and sniffs gently. "What material is this? I don't recognize it."

"A biopolymer lattice. It's designed to mimic shifter bone elasticity."

"And if it fails?"

"Then his arm is fitted with a steel rod, and he never shifts again."

She fires the questions, and I give her the medical facts one by one, flat and clinical. I'm lost in the middle of my explanation when her eyes soften just slightly.

"But he will shift?" she asks, and her voice breaks just a little on the last word.

"I can't promise, but I hope so," I say. "Yes."

"Thank you," she says, exhaling. "What you've done is a miracle. My husband and I, we can't thank you enough." A breath shudders from her chest, and I squeeze her hand. Her hands lift to my cheek, tilting my face up. She says, "You must be exhausted."

Then Ivan fills the recovery room's doorway, and his arms wrap around my waist, saving me from swaying on my feet. "Save the rest of your questions for later," he tells his mother. "My mate needs to sleep."

The last thing I register clearly is his voice in my ear: "Bed. Now. Before you fall down."

I wake up in the dark, and everything is wrong.

The bed is too big. The sheets smell like cedar and my mate. And there is a furnace pressed against my back, one heavy arm draped over my waist.

"Ivan."

"Hush, little one," his voice rumbles out of the dark, thick with sleep, completely unrepentant. "You were dead on your feet. You didn't wake when I moved you."

I should hiss, maybe scratch. I should absolutely not roll over and show my belly. My cougar is not hearing it. My body, traitor, traitor, traitor, melts back into his heat. He smells like home. That's the terrifying thing. Forty-eight hours ago I was engaged to a kind, reasonable man. Now I'm in a Bratva warlord's home, wrapped in his arms in the middle of Russia.

"Ivan," I whisper into the dark.

His mouth finds the back of my neck before he rolls me onto my side again. "Sleep, mate."

I do.

The second time I wake up, it's to his mouth sucking along the curve of my shoulder. I resurface slowly and a little confused. His kisses continue along my chin, my neck.

His tongue traces down my body, lingering to suck on my nipples, drawing each one into his mouth until they're tight and aching and I'm squirming beneath him. Then he works his way lower, and by the time his tongue drags up the center of me, I'm very awake, because it is not a human tongue. It's that wide, flat, papery-velvet tiger tongue, and oh my God, I knew it, I knew it, back in my office, I knew his tongue would destroy me.

"Ivan—"

"Shh." He doesn't even lift his head. His voice vibrates through my most sensitive part. "I've waited as long as I can. Be quiet and let me have my breakfast."

He licks me again, long and slow, and the slight roughness of it, that feline texture, catches every nerve ending I own. Ignites them, every single one at once. I thread my fingers through his hair, drawing him closer, letting him know I want this. My hips lift off the bed, and his huge hands pin them back down, effortlessly, like I'm nothing, like I weigh the same as the blanket. Unresisting, I sink back down, my omega giving in completely, happy to release the pressure and weight of the surgery into my alpha's hands and mouth.

"I can scent your heat coming," he growls against me, a sound that should be illegal. "Sweet. Slick. Mine. I am going to taste you every morning, little one. Every morning for the rest of your life, you will wake up like this."