Chapter 20
Poised in the liminal space where the Deep and the Shallows converged, Thalos floated in secret. Cloaked beneath his camouflage.
Irritated. Growing wildly impatient. Left to wait in the twilight where neither kingdom ruled, where there were no kings or blood feuds or the endless dance of posturing and politics. There was only… this.
The rhythm that had formed over too many tides to number.
It was almost… domestic.
The word was grotesque, but oddly suited for what they'd become. Two bitter rivals sharing a Siren. Feeding her venom as her pregnancy progressed, passing her between them as they wrote a treaty in the void between kingdoms. Etching the terms into her flesh, stroke by stroke.
Thalos brought clams. His venom. Anchoring them to the resources only found in the shallows.
Nyxarion brought his precious, Tide Bound flame.
And Kore… she was the Siren. The axis around which they now both revolved.
Lips curling around a grin no one could see, Thalos scanned the abyss.
Searching. Eager.
He hadn't expected to enjoy it.
The fucking, certainly. Never mind the sounds she made—that her Siren song was a melody that haunted him from one tide to the next. Or that Kore was responsive and alien in a way he found tantalizing beyond compare.
No, it was the rest of it.
The ritual of their illicit meetings in the dark.
That they had stopped arguing over details. Ceased trying to kill each other at every stray opportunity.
No longer bothered negotiating the Covenant of Twin Venoms, because there was nothing to do but wait. To see what the child growing with every passing tide would become.
And Thalos was growing truly short of patience.
"You're late," he snapped when they emerged from the riptide at last, letting his camouflage drop. Eying the way Kore was cradled against the Beast's chest. The way he kept her hidden as he snaked through the current.
"And you're greedy for what does not belong to you," Nyxarion returned in a low growl, spines flicking when he drew level with Thalos. And then, shrugging, "She was tired. Needed rest, so I let her sleep."
Arms crossed over his chest, eyes narrowed, Thalos sneered. "She needs venom," he said, but his eyes tracked over the ripple of sunset scales. "Delay benefits no one, least of all the child."
"Please." Shifting, Kore untangled herself from Nyxarion's grip, floating in the space between them. Dainty. Her fins spread to balance in the sea. Dwarfed by the Pelagorn circling her. “Stop.”
And her belly—Gods, her belly.
Thalos swallowed, hard enough to click.
It had swelled since he'd seen her last. Growing ripe. Swollen with the unmistakable weight of budding life reshaping her. Pulling her center of gravity forward as her body adjusted, shifting to make space for what grew inside her.
Pregnancy was fucking devastating on her.
Cock stirring in his vent, thickening at the sight of her round and ripe and glowing with what they'd done to her.
Together.
He wanted to touch it. Wrap his hands around that swollen girth and lift, just to feel the child squirm against his palms.
Moving without thought, absent hesitation, Thalos approached. Closing the distance, he slipped straight into Nyxarion's kill radius and did not blink.
Countless tides breeding her together had stripped them both of that particular spectacle.
There was an unspoken truce neither would break.
A pact to tend her. Give this fragile Siren what she needed without the show of combat, for their fight was inside her now.
Spines bristling, Nyx pulled her back. Possessive in a way that flirted with deranged.
It was there, in the way his hands roamed across her scales.
His touch tracing the blended edge joining scales to flesh, before shifting up.
Cupping the swollen weight of her breasts, he squeezed her fat and dragged his thumbs down. Caught her nipples and pulled.
Head tilted, watching Nyxarion's hands map the ripe lines of her body, Thalos frowned.
It was obsessive.
Almost helpless.
And then, a cruel grin spread across his lips—for he understood. Knew just what he'd done. The sort of barb he'd lodged beneath Nyxarion's scales was the type to fester.
Thalassari tears.
He was searching for the tears. Desperately trying not to find them.
Pulling a breath between his lips, pausing to relish that slow poison as it festered, Thalos exhaled through his gills. Savoring the scent of a fear insidious enough to shake even Nyxarion to his monstrous core.
Because the second trimester had nearly expired, and Nyx had been left to drown in a quagmire of uncertainty. His composure riddled with cracks wide enough that doubt had flooded in and rotted the foundation.
The question of paternity. Such a delicious torment.
One that would go unanswered until the baby was born.
Laughing, Thalos met eyes that had gone flinty, and said, "Searching for anything in particular?"
A muscle flexed in Nyxarion's throat. Jaw tight, thumbs still drawing at her nipples, his lips wrinkled. Showing teeth. And then, "Nothing," he snapped, spines lifting in a full, bristling flare that reeked of poorly hidden deception.
The lie.
Turning, Kore tucked her face in the hollow beneath his jaw. Lips dragging at corded muscle and rigid tendon, she peppered his throat with tiny, distracting kisses and sent a wordless hum into his skin. Soothing. Tasting his gills, where the scars made them ugly.
And, even as Thalos watched, Nyxarion's eyes fluttered shut. A helpless surrender to that sound, to her touch.
Pathetic.
Thalos snaked through the lapse.
Bold, pushing at the restraint of a rival who could open his belly with a single swipe of his claws, Thalos reached.
His hands slid over her hips.
Greedy for the rounded swell of that belly, he let his fingers spread.
A thump struck at his palm.
And for a moment, Thalos went still. The only hint, a line of scales rippling down his spine in a cascade of shock. Eyes wide before a long, slow exhale leaked from his gills. "There you are," he whispered, stroking the firm swell just to feel it again.
It was stronger the second time.
Squirming beneath the drum of flesh stretched across her belly.
Thalos pulled her hips back and buried his face against her nape. Inhaling the scent that had grown warm and heavy in pregnancy, he drank her in. Oblivious to the lethal pillar of territorial rage lurking behind her, Thalos groaned.
Both hands pressed flat, indulging his most base impulse, he cradled the weight.
Chin tilted, Kore turned her head.
Pinning him with grey-gold eyes that shone, not with submission nor helpless need, but challenge.
A dare. Devious and defiant in equal measure.
Breath hitching, Thalos' pupils ballooned out, yawning wide. Expanding around a gasp, glassy and dark. For with an obscene throb, his cock pressed at his seam. Bursting through his slit with an oily pulse.
He groaned.
Helplessly.
Unguarded. Laid bare, he was stripped of composure. Left desperate and raw, because he could taste it. Beneath the electric tang of slick. The furious ozone of Nyxation's wrath.
His own venom.
Because he was the anchor pulling her up from the bottom of the sea. Braided through her body. Already inside her.
And he’d grown so weary of waiting.
Flexing, his cock snaked between them. Hunting what was already greased with slick. He caught her edge, the fat, blunt tip notched at the rim of all that was warm and wet.
But he paused.
Just long enough to feel the child kick at his palms. Enough to feel something feral ignite behind his ribs.
Hips snapping forward, he sank into that velvet grip.
"Sun-fucked little—" Head falling back, Thalos shuddered. Tail flicking through the current, his spines clattering as he faltered, then buried his face against her pulse.
Exhaling only so he might drag another breath between his lips. Another sip of her.
Burrowing deep as he could, seating himself to the root, he groaned. Suffering. A relentless press through flesh that was unbearably snug.
"Such a tight little thing," he snarled, voice a guttural hiss.
Eyes squeezed shut as he bumped her end.
"So slick for me, Kore. So tight," he murmured, withholding his venom.
Desperate to see another hint of the wild thing who dared to challenge him.
Offering a slow roll of his hips, Thalos pressed deeper.
Eyes glazed. "Warm," he rasped, pressing his lips to the shell of her ear.
"This perfect little cunt is so fucking warm like this. Pregnancy suits you."
Huffing and irate, Nyx captured Kore’s face in enormous hands. Cradling her jaw, he tilted her chin back. Stealing her attention for himself. Covetous and greedy, despite the obscenity they were committing together.
He kissed her.
Deeply.
Forcing her lips to part, plunging inside, he devoured her.
Kore melted.
A tiny, desperate whine bled from her lips. Escaping through a cloud of delicate little bubbles that trickled from her throat when that cry danced through her gills.
And every muscle inside that luxurious, velvet cunt clenched around Thalos with a wanton grip that made him lurch.
"Fuck." Shuddering, his fins snapped tight to his scales as he fought to endure.
Gasping.
Vision blanching white as her body milked him in rhythmic, greedy pulses. "Fucking—stop," he snarled at neither, fighting the squeeze strangling his cock. Denying the flood of venom that filled his venom sacks, aching to be emptied.
It was instinct. The drive to chase that high and flood her with everything he had.
Jaw flexed, teeth bared, he went still. Buried to the root. Letting her pussy ripple and clench.
And then he felt it.
The press of something unmistakably blunt. Warm. Seeking a slit already filled, it was nudging and insistent.
Nyxarion’s cock.
Nosing through the mess, seeking to claim that glorious seam.