Chapter 23 Kess #2
"You can." His fingers move faster, his cock hitting that spot with every thrust. "Come on my cock again, Kess. Let me feel it."
The second orgasm builds impossibly fast, pleasure coiling tight in my belly. I'm sobbing now—from the intensity, from the anger, from the grief of everything we've broken between us. His free hand comes up to cup my breast, fingers finding my nipple and pinching hard enough to hurt.
"That's it." His voice is wrecked, ragged. "That's my omega. So fucking tight around me—"
"Don't—" I choke on a moan. "Don't call me that—"
"You are, though." He pinches my nipple again, rolls it between his fingers while his cock pounds into me. "My omega. My mate. Carrying my child. Nothing changes that, Kess. Not even this."
The second orgasm rips through me, harder than the first. I scream into my arm, my whole body convulsing, and I feel him swell inside me—the knot starting to catch at my entrance.
"I love you," he gasps against my throat. "I love you, Kess. I'm sorry—"
"Shut up." I reach back, grab his hip, dig my nails in until I feel skin tear. "Shut up and knot me."
He slams in one last time and the knot forces its way inside.
The stretch is brutal—too fast, too much, my body struggling to accommodate even with the heat making me wet and open. I cry out, half pain and half something darker, and then it catches behind my pubic bone and locks us together.
He comes with a sound that's half roar, half sob.
The first hot pulse of his release floods into me, and I feel it—feel him filling me, marking me from the inside.
Another pulse. Another. His hips grind against my ass, working the knot deeper, and each movement sends sparks shooting up my spine.
My body clenches around him without permission, milking his cock, and another orgasm rolls through me—smaller than the others but somehow more devastating, pulling tears down my cheeks.
We end up on the ground—I don't know how, don't remember moving. He's on his back in the fallen leaves, I'm sprawled across his chest with his cock still locked inside me. Both of us breathing like we've run for miles. Both of us crying.
The flash heat recedes like a tide going out, leaving me raw and shaking and horribly, devastatingly clear-headed. His rut is still there—I can feel it through the bond, the desperate need—but it's banked now, satisfied enough that he can think again.
Which means we both have to face what we just did.
"I'm sorry," he says into the silence, his voice wrecked. "Kess, I'm so sorry."
"For what?" The bitterness cuts through. "For following me? For the rut? For the tea? For hiding my pregnancy? Which part are you sorry for, Rhystan? Because there's a lot to choose from."
His arms tighten around me—not restraining, just holding on. "All of it. Everything."
"That's not good enough."
"I know."
The knot pulses inside me, another wave of his release, and my body clenches in response despite myself. We're going to be here for a while. Trapped together, his cock locked inside me, nowhere to go and nothing to do but talk or lie in silence.
"Why?" The word tears out of me. "Why didn't you just tell me? About the pregnancy, about the tea, about any of it?"
"Because I was afraid."
"That's not—"
"Let me finish." His hand comes up to stroke my hair, and I hate that it feels good, hate that I lean into it.
"I've watched forty-seven women die, Kess.
Forty-seven omegas sent to me as tributes—some willing, most terrified, all of them dead before their first year ended.
I held them while they bled out. I carved their names into stone.
And every single time, I told myself there was nothing I could have done. That the curse was to blame, not me."
His voice breaks.
"But it was me. I'm the one who claimed them. I'm the one whose blood poisoned them. I'm the monster they were sacrificed to, and I hated myself for it every single day for three hundred years."
The knot pulses inside me. More release, more clenching.
"And then you came. And you were different—stronger, fiercer, more likely to survive than any of them. But you were also pregnant, and transforming, and bonded to me, and every text I could find said that combination would kill you. That your body couldn't handle the strain."
"So you decided to weaken the bond without telling me."
"I decided to do something. Anything." His hand stills in my hair.
"For the first time in three hundred years, I had a chance to actually save someone instead of just watching them die.
Was it wrong? Yes. Was it selfish? Yes. But Kess—I've stood over forty-seven graves.
Forty-seven women I killed just by being what I am.
I couldn't add you to that number. Not when I could do something to prevent it. "
The knot pulses again. More release, more clenching. My body is completely out of my control, responding to his whether I want it to or not.
"You should have trusted me," I say, and my voice shakes. "You should have told me the risks and let me decide."
"You're right."
"I'm not some fragile thing that needs protecting—"
"I know."
"Then why—"
"Because loving you made me stupid." The words come out ragged, scraped raw. "Because every time I looked at you, all I could see was your name carved into that wall. Because I've never wanted anything the way I want you, and the idea of losing you made me desperate enough to do terrible things."
I close my eyes and let out a breath that shudders through my whole body.
"That's not an excuse."
"No. It's not." His arms tighten around me. "But it's the truth. The only truth I have left."
We lie there in silence while the knot slowly, slowly starts to soften. The heat has burned itself out completely now—just a normal post-rut heaviness settling into my limbs, exhaustion and oversensitivity and the strange hollow feeling of emotions too big to process.
"I don't know if I can forgive you," I finally say.
"I know."
"I don't know if I can trust you again."
"I know that too."
"So where does that leave us?"
He's quiet for a long moment. The knot pulses one last time, and I feel it starting to deflate—the pressure easing, his cock beginning to slip free.
"It leaves us here," he says quietly. "In the dark. With me loving you and you hating me and a child growing between us that we made together. It leaves us broken, Kess. But still breathing. Still alive."
"That's not enough."
"Maybe not." His hand cups my face, tilts it up so I have to meet his eyes. "But it's a start. If you want it to be."
I don't answer.
The knot softens enough that he slips free, and I roll off him onto cold ground.
That's when I feel it.
Wetness between my thighs. Too much wetness. Different from slick or seed.
I look down.
Blood.
Not a lot—pink-tinged fluid rather than bright red—but there. Unmistakable against my pale inner thighs.
"Kess." His voice shifts, fear cutting through the post-coital haze. "You're bleeding."
My hand flies to my stomach. "The baby—"
Oh gods. The stress of the fight. The violent sex. The way he slammed into me over and over while I was too angry to care—
What have we done?
"We need to get you to the mystic." He's already reaching for me. "Come on—"
"Don't touch me." I scramble backward and more fluid slips down my thigh. "This is—we did this. If you'd just told me the truth—"
"I know." His voice has gone hollow. "I know. But please, Kess. Please let me get you to help. You can hate me forever—just not while you're bleeding. Not while our child—"
Our child.
The child I didn't know I wanted until this moment, when I might be losing it.
"Yaern," I manage through the fear closing around my throat. "Take me to Yaern in the village. She knows healing."
He doesn't argue. Just scoops me up and the shift takes him before we're even off the ground.
The flight is a blur of terror.
His wings beat faster than before, driving us forward with desperate speed.
I keep one hand pressed against my stomach, the other gripping his scales, and I can feel the blood still seeping between my thighs.
The wind tears past us, cold and sharp, and I'm shivering—from fear, from cold, from everything.
Please, I think, not sure who I'm praying to. Please don't let me lose this.
We come down outside Yaern's cottage in a spray of leaves and displaced air.
He shifts back and sets me on my feet with trembling hands, keeping one at my elbow when I sway. His face is ashen in the moonlight.
"Go," I tell him, pulling away. "I don't want you here."
"Kess—"
"Go." I meet his eyes, and whatever he sees makes him flinch. "I can't have you here while I find out what we did."
He stands there for a long moment, fighting himself—alpha instincts screaming at him to stay. But he gave me his word.
So he goes.
The shift takes him in a rush of air, and then he's climbing into the sky, growing smaller until I can't see him anymore.
I knock on Yaern's door.
She opens it after three heartbeats, takes one look at me—bleeding, crying, destroyed—and pulls me inside.
"I'm pregnant," I manage as she guides me toward the bed. "He knew and didn't tell me. We fought. We had sex—rough, too rough—and now I'm bleeding—"
"Lie down." Her voice is calm, steady. "Let me look."
She examines me while I stare at the ceiling, trying not to think about anything.
"It's light," she says finally, and relief hits me so hard I almost sob. "Spotting. Could be from stress, from rough sex, from a lot of things that don't mean you're losing the pregnancy." She draws a blanket over me. "You need rest. No more of whatever that was."
"I can't go back there."
"You don't have to." She takes my hand. "Stay as long as you need."
"What if I lose it?"
"Then we'll deal with that." She squeezes my fingers. "But right now, your body needs rest. Give it space to settle."
I nod because I can't speak.
The bleeding continues through the night—light, pink, but there. Present. A reminder of how close I came.
I don't sleep.
Just lie in Yaern's bed with one hand pressed to my stomach, feeling my body hover on the edge of disaster.
And I think about Rhystan.
Alone in his castle. Not knowing if his child is alive or dead. Not knowing if I'll ever come back.
Part of me wants him to suffer.
Part of me wants to go back, let him hold me, pretend none of this happened.
I do neither.
Just lie here in the dark, waiting.