Chapter 273 Clean Bill of Health – Aleksandr’s POV

Chapter 273 Clean Bill of Health – Aleksandr’s POV
Morning light came pale through the medical-wing windows. Sylvia stood at the foot of the bed with her clipboard, wearing the composed expression of a healer who had reviewed every test twice and found no reason to keep her patient.
“Clean bill of health, my Queen.” Sylvia capped her pen with a final click. “Toxin levels undetectable. Heart rate normal. Blood pressure exactly where it should be. The pups’ heartbeats are strong and consistent. You’re free to return to your suite.”
Amelia sat straighter, eager as someone who had spent four days unconscious and another eighteen hours awake in the same bed, which was seventeen hours and fifty-nine minutes longer than she considered reasonable.
“Thank Christ,” she said, and reached for the blanket with the focused urgency of a woman who believed that medical discharge paperwork was a formality that could be handled while already halfway to the door.
“Bed rest,” Sylvia said with the firmness of a healer accustomed to royal patients interpreting instructions creatively. “At least two days. I mean actual rest, my Queen. Horizontal. Minimal movement. Your body needs time to recover from the toxin and four days of unconsciousness. This is not a suggestion.”
“I’ll rest,” Amelia said. From her, that meant a sincere attempt followed by probable failure within three hours, at which point someone would find her in the library insisting that reading counted as horizontal.
Sylvia looked at me, transferring responsibility without a word. I nodded. Amelia would not encounter an unnecessary vertical surface for forty-eight hours if I could prevent it.
The royal guard formed around us in the corridor. Six accompanied Amelia, led by Dominic, who treated the thirty-metre walk from medical to the suite as a tactical operation. Six followed me, weapons visible and attention moving across every junction. The palace no longer felt safer, only watchful, its staff and guards suspicious of every shadow.
Dominic cleared the route ahead. Servants moved aside as we passed. Guards at each junction came to attention, then relaxed slightly when they recognised Amelia, their relief visible after four days spent wondering whether their queen would wake.
The suite welcomed us with cedar, obsidian and the hush of a space that had been violated and scrubbed clean. New locks guarded the door: fingerprints, numeric codes and physical keys. Dominic’s thoroughness should have reassured me. Instead, the security felt like armour fitted after the blade had already found flesh.
I helped Amelia change into loose linen that required little effort. She moved carefully, her body relearning ordinary tasks in increments. When she sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress gave beneath her and she exhaled, relieved to return to a place that belonged to us even if it did not yet feel entirely safe.
“Lie down,” I said gently.
She obeyed. I stretched beside her and offered my shoulder. She shifted close by choice, resting against me until her breathing eased. My palm settled over the small rise beneath the linen, not as a claim or promise, but because the contact reminded me that all three of them were here.
Sleep took her in stages. Her breathing slowed, tension left her body by degrees and her fingers loosened against my shirt. Within minutes, her dark hair lay across my shoulder and the exhaustion she had fought all morning finally won.
I stayed still while the city continued beyond the smart-tinting windows. Somewhere below, servants worked, guards changed shifts and investigators traced the network that had nearly taken our pups. None of it entered the room.
I reached inward for Skoll. He rested at the edge of our shared mind, watchful but subdued. Vengeance had not brought him peace; Amelia’s breathing had.
Through him, and through the faint bond with the pups that remained too new for language, I shaped the thoughts I would not say aloud while their mother slept.
You’re safe for now. Your mother carried you through something that would have broken most people. The world contains those who will see threat where they should see children. I cannot promise danger will never reach for you again. I can promise we will meet it with preparation rather than blind rage.
I imagine you with her intelligence and stubbornness, traits no healer can identify on a scan. Perhaps you will inherit her refusal to accept the world as it is. Perhaps you will improve it before the rest of us realise it needs changing.
I will protect you, but protection cannot mean destroying every threat before we understand it. I learned that lesson too late and at a cost your mother will decide how I repay. You deserve a father who can distinguish justice from vengeance, not merely a wolf with stronger teeth.
I love you, both of you, already and without qualification. Your mother jokes that I call you my little princes because the Brecc line has only produced sons. If you are daughters, you will be princesses on your own terms. If you are sons, you will learn that inheritance is responsibility rather than entitlement.
Rest and grow. The difficult part is not behind us, whatever comforting lie I might prefer. We still have conspirators to find, trust to rebuild and a family to become. We will learn that together, the four of us, without pretending love makes us infallible.
Amelia shifted in her sleep. Her hand found my wrist where it rested above the pups and remained there, loose and unconscious. The gesture asked for nothing. It was simply contact, and I let it steady me.
They needed rest. I needed to learn how to sit beside them without turning stillness into another form of control.
For the first time since the gala, I allowed the morning to pass without issuing an order.