Chapter 32 #2
As I round the corner, I spot Ivy slipping out of our chambers, her expression uncharacteristically serious. She freezes when she sees me, her small form tensing.
"Shadow Boy," she greets me with forced lightness. "Fancy meeting you in your own palace. How unexpected."
"Fairy," I reply, narrowing my eyes at her obvious discomfort. "Troubling my wife again with your chaotic influence?"
"Me? Chaotic? I'm a paragon of stability and good judgment," she protests, her wings fluttering nervously. "Just providing some... friendly advice. Girl talk. Completely ordinary, nothing-to-see-here girl talk."
Something in her scent is off—anxiety, secrecy.
Before I can press her further, Emmett appears behind me. Ivy's eyes immediately dart to him, her silvery hair shifting to a telling pink.
"General," she acknowledges with unusual formality.
"Lady Ivy," he returns with equal stiffness.
I glance between them. "How fascinating. The fairy actually rendered speechless. I should commemorate this historic moment."
Her face flushes. "I have important fairy business elsewhere," she announces, backing away. "Very urgent. Probably involving... moon dust. Or something equally sparkly and important."
She bumps directly into my general, who steadies her with automatic gentleness. Their eyes lock for a heartbeat too long to be casual.
"Excuse me," she murmurs, uncharacteristically subdued, before darting away in a flash of silver light.
"Not a word," he warns me as she vanishes.
"I wouldn't dream of it," I reply innocently. "Though I do wonder what color your children's wings would be."
His glare could wither entire forests, but I merely smile before turning toward my chambers.
"Do let me know if you need romantic advice," I call over my shoulder. "I'm told I'm quite the expert on seduction techniques."
His reply is too muttered to hear clearly, but I catch enough to know it's both anatomically impossible and decidedly unflattering.
I find my wife standing by the window, silhouetted against the perpetual twilight that bathes the Shadow Court. She wears a simple gown of deep blue, her dark hair loose around her shoulders. Her scent drifts to me—still that strange sweetness I've noticed lately, richer than usual.
"My shadows sensed your return to our chambers," I say by way of greeting. "Missing me already?"
She turns, and my breath catches. Something has changed since this morning. Something in her golden eyes, in the set of her mouth.
Fear. She's afraid.
"I was consulting with Ivy about... court matters," she murmurs, her voice carefully controlled.
"That fairy knows less about court protocol than a drunken troll," I observe, moving closer. "Unless it was fashion advice you sought?"
A trace of a smile flickers across her features, but it doesn't reach her eyes. "I've grown fond of her peculiarities."
"As have others, apparently," I murmur, thinking of my general's reaction. "Though her taste in men is questionable."
"And what of yours?" she asks, watching me with those perceptive golden eyes. "Your taste in women?"
I reach her at last, close enough to catch her scent fully—sunlight and something floral, with that underlying sweetness that's been growing stronger. My body responds instantly.
"Impeccable," I reply, voice dropping lower as I trace my finger along her jawline. "I only choose the most dangerous, defiant Omegas. The ones who might actually be capable of killing me in my sleep. It adds excitement to breakfast."
"Is that what draws you to me?" she asks softly, her voice uncertain. "The danger?"
"Among other qualities," I admit, my hand sliding into her hair, cradling the back of her head.
"Your intelligence. Your strength. Your remarkable capacity to surprise me, even after all this time.
The way your eyes flash gold when you're angry.
The sound you make when I touch you just..
. here." My fingers brush the sensitive spot behind her ear, drawing a small, involuntary shiver.
Her eyes search mine, looking for something I'm not sure I can provide.
I love you, I think, the words forming with perfect clarity yet refusing to pass my lips. I love you, and it terrifies me more than anything has in centuries.
Instead of speaking the truth, I capture her mouth with mine, pouring every unspoken feeling into the kiss. She responds with equal fervor, her hands clutching at my shoulders as if she might fall without my support.
When we finally break apart, both breathing heavily, I rest my forehead against hers. "What is it?" I ask, sensing her turmoil despite her attempts to shield her emotions. "Something troubles you."
She pulls back slightly, her gaze guarded as she composes her next words carefully. "I was thinking about the children," she says.
"The orphans?" I ask, surprised by the change of subject. "Did you visit them again today?"
"No, I—" She hesitates, her hand rising unconsciously to rest on her stomach. "I was considering more generally. About children... and their fathers."
Something cold slithers down my spine at her words, at the small protective gesture. A suspicion begins to form, unwelcome and terrifying.
Is she...? No. Impossible. Light and shadow can't create life together.
Except the prophecy speaks otherwise.
"What of them?" I ask, my voice suddenly hoarse.
"I was wondering..." She looks up at me, something vulnerable and hopeful in her expression. "How you felt about them. About the idea of having them. Someday. If it was possible."
The world seems to tilt beneath my feet. Children. She's asking about children. Our children. A possibility I've never allowed myself to contemplate, not since—
Julia's face flashes before me—her joy when she told me she was carrying my child.
Horror floods through me, my shadows responding before I can stop them, darkening violently as they whip around the room.
The temperature drops. Frost forms on the window.
I step back from her, desperate to put distance between us as memory overwhelms me, as the shadow poison inside me reacts to my fear.
"Malakai?" she questions, confusion and the beginnings of fear in her voice.
I try to respond, to explain that it's not her I fear, not our potential child, but myself—my capacity for destruction when faced with such vulnerability. The curse that killed my first mate. But no words come, only a strangled sound of denial.
My shadows lash out involuntarily, scraping against the wall beside her head—too close. She flinches, her eyes widening.
I sense her sudden panic, her protective maternal instinct flaring even though—
Wait.
Maternal instinct. The way her hand covers her stomach. The sweetness in her scent. The changes I attributed to our bond settling.
She's not asking hypothetically.
She might be pregnant. My Omega might be carrying my child.
The possibility crashes through me so completely that my shadows explode outward in a wave of darkness. The mirror cracks. Candles extinguish. The very air seems to freeze as the shadow poison inside me responds to my panic.
Seraphina backs away, her hand still covering her stomach in a gesture that now seems unmistakable—protective, maternal, defensive.
"I... I just remembered," she whispers, her voice strained as she edges toward the door. "I need to speak with Ivy again. About tomorrow's... attire."
"Seraphina, wait—" I reach for her, finally finding my voice, desperate to explain.
But she's already slipping through the door, her movements fluid and quick as the assassin she was trained to be.
Fear, disappointment, determination flash across her expression.
But she's gone before I can explain, before I can tell her that my reaction has nothing to do with her or a potential child and everything to do with the cursed monster I fear still lurks inside me.
She thinks I would harm a child. She thinks I'm capable of hurting her.
And why wouldn't she? I've never shared the truth about Julia, about what really happened. I've never explained why the idea of fatherhood fills me with such terror—not for the child, but for what my shadow poison might do in an instant of lost control.
I've never revealed that I love her too much to risk destroying her as I destroyed Julia.
The shadow poison pulses inside me, responding to my emotional chaos. My shadows writhe uncontrollably, darker and more violent than they've been in decades. The curse is getting worse. And if Seraphina is pregnant...
If a child from a fated bond is growing inside her...
Julia was cursed, and trying to save her destroyed us both. What if loving Seraphina draws the same enemies?
I turn to the ebony mirror, my reflection a stranger staring back at me—a cursed Alpha caught between the monster he's cultivated and the vulnerability he's tried to deny.
A future that now hangs by the thinnest of threads, all because I couldn't face my past.
All because the shadow poison I carry might destroy my mate and our unborn child—if there is one.
I need to find her. Need to explain. Need to tell her everything, even the parts that might make her hate me again. Because if she is carrying our child—a twilight child, a child of both shadow and light—then she needs to know the danger.
And she deserves to know that I have fallen hopelessly, irrevocably in love with her.
Even if that love might be the death of her.