Chapter 23
Drowning was easier the second time.
The water didn’t burn, not like before. There was no pain. Nothing like being crushed beneath the weight of a warship. Her legs ground into jelly, her hips shattered.
Drowning was…
Peaceful.
Terrifying.
A blend of cosmic horror and calm certainty.
That she deserved this. That she’d earned it.
She’d bled for sacred altars and unholy relics. Split herself on the pricks of priests, men, and monsters.
All for naught.
Because the gods couldn’t be appeased through prayer or sacrifice. There was no amount of vestal blood that might spill to make them listen, no exact measure of human ashes that would be enough to save her.
Not from him.
This.
The water was heavy, pressing in from all sides, thick and suffocating as she turned bulging eyes up. Looking to the distant shimmer of silver moonlight.
Searching for an escape she knew didn’t exist.
Not for her.
Not from this.
But she was held aloft, strong arms circling her waist. Inhuman arms thick enough to crush her ribs in a brutal embrace, strong enough to lift the sea and drown the earth.
Claws raked down her ribs as he held her to his chest.
Petting her.
Soothing the creature he’d claimed.
She shook her head.
A denial.
Unable to speak through the shock, she struggled against his grip. Pushing against the possessive circle of unyielding muscle.
She needed a breath! Fighting to get back to the surface, she kicked and thrashed. Lungs burning and full of water.
The beast bared his teeth in a savage grin.
“Pretty little Siren,” he tutted, enjoying her struggles against his monstrous form.
His grip shifted, then. Claws trailing down her throat where they curled in a possessive necklace that reeked of scarcely restrained violence. “My most precious treasure.”
His voice—it vibrated through the water, through her. A thing not heard, but felt. Deep in her bones, a hum turning her spine to liquid.
She gasped, inhaling a soggy breath. Lips parting on a soundless scream.
Bubbles.
They streamed from the slits in her throat, high at the corners of her jaw. Silver and fleeting as they escaped for the surface and left her sinking deeper… deeper…
Deeper…
Eyes growing wide, her hands flew to the seam where something unnatural fluttered and kicked.
Gills.
“Breathe,” he commanded, and tilted her face down, forcing her to meet his impossible gaze.
Kore’s lips parted, but no words came.
Because she couldn’t speak.
Because she had no air.
A low rumbling chuckle shook his chest, and he clenched her tighter.
“Ah,” he hummed. “Sweet Kore. My living flame.” He slid one hand down her back, curling his claws around the curve of her thigh, before he draped it around his hip.
Abrading her inner thigh with the seam between flesh and scales. Man and Leviathan.
She thrashed, and his amusement only grew.
Laughing as if delighted by her resistance, he let his fingers slip between her legs. Taking liberties with a thing he owned. “You prayed to the deep,” he crooned. “When no other wanted you, you begged to be broken across my cock. So break.”
Between them, monstrous and alive, his cock emerged from his slit as if it knew it was being summoned. Long, ridged. Burrowing. Seeking entrance, the pearls already pulsing with vivid interest.
Mute, she thrashed despite the flames of need burning in her blood. Defiant. Utterly helpless.
“I am Nyxarion Korrides, first Sovereign King of the Black Sea,” he murmured as the tip pressed inside. “And I am the tide meant to drown the flesh of the sun.”
Shaking her head, bubbles streaming from her lips, her gills, in a frantic denial, Kore tried to beg.
“My voice the current,” he added, fins flaring as the sea swirled around them, exposing the deadly barbs hidden within.
“My venom the storm.” Shivering, he flicked his tail and barbed her thigh, flooding her muscle with his toxin.
“And my knot is the anchor that binds you to the sea—where you belong.”
He swept his tail in a powerful arc and seated himself to the root in her clasping channel.
“I am the tsunami that fills your womb,” he said and bullied his way inside with a deliberate, sinuous thrust. Stretching her open as they drifted through the current. “The toxin in your veins. The plea to the divine your gods refused to hear.”
Back arching, Kore gasped. Gills flaring, her hands finding an anchor in his hair—her breath coming thin and shallow, but enough.
“I came when you were alone,” he crooned, and cupped her face with the hand not fastened to the trident.
“Found you hollow and made you whole. I am inside you now, my sweet Siren bride. My living flame. Mine,” he snarled, and spiraled up.
Lazy and powerful, despite the fervor of possessive lust driving his cock into her over and over again.
Pearls bumping over her clit, he dragged her over his length. Fucking into her at his leisure, forcing their pace to suit his needs.
“This is where you belong,” he said, sinking deeper. “You cannot escape what you need. Cannot outswim what flows in your veins.”
A shudder whirled through her. And, mouth hanging open, she let her head fall back. Starry eyes fixed to the surface as she was bred from below. Gasping as they sank into the abyss.
Together.
The water carried every sensation—the drag of his pearls against her clit, pulsing inside a cunt that had been remade to suit his whims. The scents she could taste. Sounds that echoed from everywhere and nowhere, all at once.
And the weight.
It was the water growing thick. Syrupy and noxious.
Crushing and heavy.
Her vision blurred as he dragged her down.
She whimpered, but the sound dissolved into a cloud of more damnable bubbles.
“You are mine,” he rumbled, voice rattling her ribs as he pummelled her womb. “You will break, and the sea will sing your name. So drown…”
He kissed her, then.
Lips sealing over hers, a claim was laid.
Lungs burning, head spinning, she grew stiff when he exhaled—sending a gush of ocean water to fill her lungs.
Clarity rushed through her brain, so he did it again.
And again.
Forcing her chest to expand, sending water rushing through her gills.
Breathing for her when the poisonous waters of the Black Sea threatened to smother her.
“That’s it,” he crooned against her lips.
Tracing the seam of her mouth with his tongue.
Tasting. “So good at taking me,” he groaned, claws sliding up her thigh as he wrenched her legs apart and drew her closer.
“My breath,” he whispered, and his thumb found her clit, circling with a cruel sweep that drew her in.
“My cock.” He caught a nipple between his claws and twisted.
“My seed and…” Trailing off, he took a fist full of her hair and forced her to watch when he withdrew, only to slide back inside. “And my spawn.”
Kore tried to shake her head, but her pussy clenched.
“I’ll keep you heavy with them. Breed you while you’re nursing. Have you stuffed with seed until you can’t remember anything but this.” Drawing back, he stroked into her with his full strength. “The weight of my cock. The burn of my venom. The way your cunt sings when I breed you.”
With a sob, Kore felt the fire spread through her veins. His venom. The sickness of her profane addiction.
Down they sank, carving a glowing trail in poisoned currents as the trident dragged them down.
And with each greedy thrust, Kore’s muscles clamped around that invasive tunneling length. Lungs filled with the sea—with him. His breath. His venom.
Nyxarion.
The king of the Black Sea.
Her king.
Sustaining her as he used her, as the weight of the sea grew immense, crushing her ribs, he cupped the back of her head and pressed her cheek to his chest. The pressure built inside her skull, popping and crackling where it was trapped in her inner ears.
Still, he breathed for her. Forced her to acclimate as they drifted down.
“Look,” he commanded, and pushed another breath through her lips.
She obeyed.
A yawning maw of endless night stretched below, and yet, amidst the gloom, a faint, familiar glow caught her gaze. Held it.
Blue.
Pulsing a soft welcome, outlining a structure that was both vast and uncanny.
“Behold,” he rumbled, planting himself deep and pulling her inside out as he fucked her through the currents. “Vorynthar. The Seat of the Black Sea Throne. It shall be a new beginning. A rebel empire built in the dark.”
Eyes wide, trying to take it all in, Kore watched as they drifted over the sprawling reef. Feeling it pulse with an alien heartbeat, she saw polyps dancing in the current. Waving as if in greeting to their king.
“Raskoril Coral,” he said, strumming her clit.
Forcing her to the edge of climax, only to fall back an instant before she peaked.
“A symbiote feeding on the abyss, and in exchange”—he grunted, his rhythm growing fractured and jagged—“each exhale rich in oxygen that will transform my kingdom and tame the anoxic sea. One breath at a time. And soon,” he said, returning his attention to her swollen cunt as his monstrous prick began to swell, stretching her wide around his girth.
“Soon, this will be my throne, where you will break across my cock and grow heavy with my spawn.”
Panic surged in Kore’s heart, rising in perfect sync with the climax Nyxarion was forcing through her blood.
But she was trapped.
Impaled.
Hooked on an enormous bludgeon that grew fast against the mouth of her womb.
Claws digging into her tender skin, he held her steady as he forced her to yield, burrowing deeper. Always deeper.
“This reef will be a fortress,” he said, and she felt him find his target. “It will feast on our enemies. Their bones will form the foundation of your nursery. Thier flesh will nourish our young.”
A shudder boiled her blood, as the cradle between her hips grew ravenous for his seed.
She came.
Mind flooded with horror. Body a swamp of everything she couldn’t name.