Chapter 9 #2
Exhaling, gills flushing crimson, Thalos said, "She's yours," in a careful hum. A voice laced with the dulcet tones of truth. "Yours by law. But the child?" His lips quirked, but he didn't dare smile.
Not now.
Not while he was so close.
"It's as much mine as it is yours," he said, quiet. Careful. "You can see it, written in every inch of her," he murmured, letting his words drag through the current.
Drifting, letting himself sink below Nyxarion and Kore, just a little, appealing to the beast's base nature, making himself less than, Thalos forced his fins flat.
Yielding.
And then, "It will need both of us to survive," he murmured, meeting Nyx's molten glare without blinking. "You know I'm right."
He let Nyx sit with it, just for a moment.
The risk.
A malformed child.
Stillbirth in the trench that should have been a triumph. A celebration.
Kore's delicate body tearing itself apart trying to support something precious that was starving.
The Beast's teeth flashed—every serrated row bared in a grimace that might have been rage or agony.
Dorsal spines flared wide, translucent violet-black blades fanning outward until Nyxarion's silhouette doubled in size, every spine trembled with the effort of not driving them through Thalos's throat.
"Enough of your pretty speeches, Asterion," Nyxarion spat, voice ragged. Stripped of pretense. "Give it to her."
It was an order.
Clipped.
Bitten off and thrown into the dark.
There it was.
The grin cracked through Thalos' composure before he could stop it. Wide. Open. Genuine in a way that had nothing to do with kindness and everything to do with securing a victory. A prize.
He advanced.
A single, careful sweep of his fluke. Fins tucked flat. Each flexed muscle, every undulation of his tail was calculated. Intentional. Meant to displace as little of the current as possible.
Posture absent threat, for his presence alone was the devastation.
The truth.
That Nyxarion wasn't enough.
Thalos took a breath, closing the distance.
Close enough to reach out and touch the trembling creature locked against Nyxarion's chest.
Enough to taste her distress. Her need.
The perfume ignited his blood.
"Shhh," he hummed, the croon rolling from his throat with an effortless breath. A sound pitched low and warm, threaded with harmonics reserved for distressed mates. For brooding females. "Shhh, little Siren."
Kore's head turned toward the sound.
Grey-gold eyes glassed and reflective.
Instinct.
Pure, helpless need that bypassed whatever remained of her rational mind.
"There you are," he whispered, scarcely a murmur. One hand extended—pale fingers, webbed and elegant. Trailing through the heated water until they found the curve of her thigh.
A spot of skin, absent scales.
Soft. Warm.
He shuddered, scaled rippling as they lifted.
"It hurts," he murmured, falling into those bottomless, inky eyes. "I know. I know."
Drifting up, covering her back, Thalos' hand slid up to cup her jaw. Watching her as he bared a single spine. Translucent. Already beading with the evidence of the approaching frenzy.
He slipped it into her thigh.
Slow.
Gentle.
A single, precise puncture—clean, deep, angled to reach the femoral vein beneath.
Kore's reaction was immediate.
Spine twisting, she arched.
Head dropping back, her throat stretched long and taut. Bared in desperate, helpless surrender. Gills fluttering in an erratic pattern with each ragged pull of water through her lips.
Submission.
Total, involuntary. Etched in the long, elegant lines of her body, in the way her lips parted and her jaws grew slack. In the soft, shattered sound that bubbled from deep inside her chest.
Both males watched.
Entranced as the toxin spread.
Frost to Nyxarion’s inferno.
Veins flushing silver as it branched out from the wound. Spidering through pale skin.
And for a long, terrifying moment, her biolume blanched white.
Chromatophores shocked into ashen submission.
A horrible shade the creatures of the sea knew to mean death.
But then her colors ignited. Both bloodlines at once. Impossible, yet undeniable. Utterly.
Thalos couldn't draw a breath.
He couldn't look away from her throat. The surrender.
"Beautiful." The word escaped him without ego. A quiet thing not meant for any to hear, much less the king of the Deep.
But Nyxarion heard it anyway.
Rumbling, a wordless concession vibrated the water between them.
And for a long moment, they merely watched the venom spread. The silver threads clashing with violet.
Blending in her veins.
It was then, as Nyxarion held her open for Thalos, a sudden, devastating bloom of slick pulsed between her thighs. Heavy. Gushing into the current.
Rich. Obscene. A flavor laced with the electric musk of a female in full, screaming estrus.
Thalos' vent burst open before he could even attempt to stop it.
His pale cock squirming against the taut globes of Kore's ass. Pearls already beaded, his tip ridged and weeping.
Groaning, fingers moving to her hips, he unsheathed himself. Fully. Heavy and aching, he searched for her heat without thinking.
"Is that what you needed?" he murmured, lips working against the shell of her ear. Withdrawing his spine, thumb tracing a slow circle against her thigh to soothe the ache. "Shall I make it go away?"
Her answer was a guttural thing.
Cracked in the middle.
Born from a throat that had forgotten speech, she let her body speak for her. Hips rolling against Nyxarion's vent. Searching and desperate. Her slick pulsing from her cunt in lewd ribbons.
Spines in full flare, Nyxarion rumbled. Low. A continuous sound of an apex predator fighting every instinct he possessed.
But Thalos couldn't stop.
Cock twisting forward, nosing through the ribbons of Siren perfume, he found where she was hot. Slick. The ridged head nuzzled against swollen, heated folds.
Thalos' breath hitched.
The heat that met his tip was volcanic.
And then she clenched. Sucking him in.
It happened in an instant.
Claws snapped shut around his throat. Needling his gills. Five points of deadly obsidian keratin. Pressure that promised ruin dimpled his pale skin.
Blood welled.
Perfuming the current with the scent of his pathetic desperation.
Hips bucking, Thalos hissed. Caught in Nyxarion’s clenched fist.
But the pain… it was…
Exquisite.
The rush of blood to his head. One flex of that fist. A warning measured in millimeters.
Molten silver eyes met his.
Nyxarion.
Pulling him closer, the beast radiated a fury that overwrote everything but the taste of his wrath.
Thalos met that liquid glare.
And sank into Kore's cunt.
Pressing in, stealing inches, the ridges of his prick burrowed deep. Dragged at her heat.
Vision flashing white, Thalos groaned against Nyxarion's palm.
And then Thalos' spines flared on a shocked gasp. "Sh-she's pulling me in," he hissed, hands tight around her hips. Peeling her ass apart as he fought the resistance of that tiny human cunt. Shuddering when she milked him in rhythmic waves.
Thalos couldn't breathe. Couldn't blink or look away from the male whose claws were buried in his throat.
Not until her body took him to the root.
The tip of his cock pressed at the mouth of her womb, marking the place already sealed full with a greedy spurt.
Shuddering, he withdrew.
An agonizing pull. Every pearl dragging through clenching heat until only the fat, flared head remained. Stretching her open.
He paused, then.
Gills working against Nyxarion's fingers.
And then, without breaking from the murder gleaming in Nyxarion's molten glare, Thalos pressed back inside.
Going deep, he filled her in one continuous stroke. Reveling in the way Kore's body seized around him. That desperate, broken keen he tore from her throat.
Thalos fucked her slowly.
Deliberately.
Each thrust a statement. Every withdrawal a lewd provocation for the male he was usurping.
Hips rolling, Thalos bumped against her limit. Nudging her end at the bottom of every stroke.
Holding blistering eye contact with the Abyssari King as Thalos bred his pregnant bride.
Lips peeled back, Nyxarion didn't move. Five points of obsidian remained buried in Thalos' throat, but Nyx didn't squeeze.
Hardly blinked.
And Thalos kept fucking her. Hips working, fingers moving her body back to meet every thrust, he forced delicious sounds from her throat.
Wet, broken sobs.
Her head fell back, bumping Thalos' shoulder, even as her fingers found an anchor on Nyxarion's chest. Clinging to one, bred by the other.
Pushing back, hips working him with small, frantic rolls, she pulled him deeper.
"Hnghh—gods." The sound cracked in her throat, echoed in a ripple of color that lit Nyxarion's scowl. "More, more, please. H-harder."
What else was there but to oblige?
Flicking his tail to shift the angle, Thalos drove up on the next stroke, sliding into her. Dizzy, blood flow to his brain restricted.
Hatred breathed between males. Calcified and ancient. Built from war and exile. From spilled blood and old wounds that would never heal quite right.
But the child.
It was forging a bridge built from venom and wrath. Not alliance, nor forgiveness. This was something else. Binding. Inescapable.
A thing capable of holding kings in place more binding than any law ever recorded by the Hollow Court.
The future.
The next generation of Pelagorn.
Thalos' free hand moved without thought.
Sliding up, tracing Kore's hip as she bucked back against him, riding it. He traced the ridge of sunset scales until his palm settled beneath her navel. Knuckles bumping Nyxarion's belly, he was drunk on the danger and the lewd, perfect clench of another male's bride taking him so well.
Something against his palm squirmed.
Twisting.
Not a kick, it was too early for that.
But he felt it.
A flutter.
His rhythm faltered.
Breath hitching, caught behind his teeth, Thalos stilled. Fins trembling. Shocked. Letting his fingers spread across her belly.
There.
A flutter.
Thalos' eyes never left Nyxarion's.
But something in them… shifted.