Chapter 31 Kess #2
Most hosts die. The curse is too much for mortal vessels to contain.
I have witnessed three attempts in my years as temple keeper—two dead within minutes of the transfer completing, one survived but was never the same.
The divine rage changes what it touches.
It does not gentle itself for willing hearts. Be certain before you begin.
"Changed how?" I ask, though part of me already knows.
Rhystan leans over my shoulder to point at another section, close enough that his breath stirs the hair at my temple.
"It completes what's already happening to you.
The contamination—the hardening scales along your scars, the purple tint under your nails, the red ring that shows in your eyes when you're angry—all of it happens at once.
Forced transformation instead of gradual adaptation.
Minutes instead of months." He straightens, putting distance between us again.
"If you survive, you'll be fully hybrid.
Not omega anymore. Not quite human. Something new. "
"I'm already changing." I hold up my hand, letting him see the violet shadows beneath my nails, the way the skin along my scarred knuckles has taken on a faintly iridescent sheen.
"Not like this. This would force the full transformation while you're simultaneously absorbing three hundred years of accumulated divine curse.
While pregnant with twins who share your blood.
" He doesn't soften it, doesn't try to make it easier to hear.
"The strain could tear you apart from the inside. "
"Our daughter dies if I don't try." Flat. Certain. Not asking for his opinion. "That's not a choice, Rhystan. That's just math."
His jaw flexes, but he takes it the way he's been taking everything—straight on, without flinching.
"There has to be another—"
"There isn't." I turn back to the book, start sounding out the ritual words under my breath. The old tongue is harsh on my lips, consonants scraping against my teeth like swallowing thorns. "When can we do this?"
"Kess—"
"When?"
He's quiet for a moment, and I can practically feel him recalculating, adjusting to terrain he can't change. Then his expression settles into focused determination.
"Days. Maybe a week to gather everything properly.
We need blessed silver—I'll send riders to the temple today, have them ride through the night if necessary.
My blood, fresh, which I can provide. The stabilizing herbs the mystic should have in her stores, but if not, there are traders in the eastern markets.
" He pauses. "And you need time to learn the words perfectly.
One mistake—one mispronounced syllable—and the curse transfers wrong. Goes to our children instead of you."
"Then I practice until there's no chance of mistakes."
"You will." Not a question—a statement. Confidence in me that I'm not sure I've earned. "But you'll do it right. We're not rushing this and killing all three of you because we skipped a step."
The alpha command in his voice shouldn't be reassuring. Shouldn't make something in my chest unknot slightly, some tension I didn't know I was carrying.
"Fine. We do it right. But we do it fast."
"Agreed." He's already moving, already planning, the gears turning behind those golden eyes. "I'll have the components gathered within the week. You focus on the words."
The days blur together after that, but certain moments stand out sharp and clear.
The first time I speak the ritual words aloud and Rhystan stops me after three syllables—"The stress is wrong, you're hitting the second syllable too hard, it changes the meaning from 'willing vessel' to 'empty vessel'"—and makes me repeat the phrase forty times until my tongue learns the difference.
The afternoon the blessed silver arrives, enough to draw the binding circle three times over, and I watch Rhystan inspect each piece with the careful attention of a man who knows imperfection means death.
He rejects two pieces for flaws invisible to my eyes and sends a rider back for replacements without hesitation.
The morning the mystic draws his blood—fresh from the vein, dark and hot, filling spelled vials that glow faintly in the dim light of her chambers.
He doesn't flinch when the needle goes in, just watches the blood flow with an expression I can't read.
When she's finished, he rolls his sleeve down and returns to the library without comment.
The evening I practice too long and my voice gives out entirely, reduced to a rasp that can barely form words at all.
He brings me honeyed tea—just honey and chamomile, I check, breathing deep over the steam—and sits with me in silence while I drink it.
Doesn't try to fill the quiet with words.
Just exists beside me, solid and present, until my throat stops burning.
The circle gets drawn and redrawn in the throne room—the only space large enough for the ritual's requirements.
Silver dust in precise geometric patterns, shapes nested within shapes within shapes, each line measured and remeasured because the binding must be perfect or it shatters and takes us all with it.
I watch Rhystan do the work himself, refusing to delegate something this important, his hands steady as he pours the silver in hair-thin lines that never waver.
Through all of it, we exist in this strange suspended state. Working together but not together. Close but never touching. The bond humming between us like a plucked string that never stops vibrating.
He brings me tea every evening. Just chamomile and honey, nothing else—I check every time, breathing deep, searching for any hint of bitter herbs or hidden betrayal. And every time, it's exactly what he says it is.
I drink it anyway. Not because I forgive him—I don't, might never fully—but because some stubborn part of me wants these days to taste less bitter than they could. And because my throat is raw from practicing words that might kill me, and the honey helps.
The night before the ritual, I can't sleep.
I lie in my chambers staring at the canopy overhead, watching shadows dance and flicker as candles burn low in their holders.
One hand rests on my belly where the twins are restless—more restless than usual, as if they know something is coming.
The boy kicks sharply, aggressively, testing the boundaries of his space.
The girl's movements are softer, a flutter rather than a strike, like she's trying to make herself small.
Trying to hide from her brother's growing instincts.
Ten weeks until the curse activates fully. Less, maybe, if we're unlucky.
Tomorrow we either break it or I die trying.
The knock at my door is firm. Three solid strikes, no hesitation. The knock of someone who's already decided what he's doing and isn't asking permission.
I know who it is before I answer.
I open the door anyway.
Rhystan stands in the corridor, and he looks like he's been through a war.
Dark circles bruising the skin beneath his eyes, stubble shadowing his jaw in a way that shouldn't be attractive but absolutely is, hair falling across his forehead in disordered waves that make my fingers itch to push it back.
His shirt is unlaced at the throat, revealing the strong column of his neck and the edge of the scar where I bit him during our first claiming.
But he holds himself like a king. Shoulders back, spine straight, golden eyes burning with something that isn't defeat.
"I'm not spending the night before you face this sitting alone in my study." Low and rough, the words scraping out like he's been practicing them. "Not when I could be here."
Not asking. Telling me what he's decided. And despite everything—or maybe because of it—there's something almost relieving about that. The alpha confidence I fell for in the first place, before I knew what it would cost me.
I step back from the doorway, letting him in. "I couldn't sleep either."
He moves past me into the candlelit room, and I'm suddenly very aware that I'm wearing only a thin nightshift, the fabric doing nothing to hide the swell of my belly or the shape of my body beneath. His eyes track down and then deliberately back up, heat flaring in them before he banks it.
We stand there in the flickering light, a few feet of charged air between us. The bond pulses, heavy with everything we're not saying.
"I'm going to survive this," I tell him, not sure which of us I'm trying to convince. "The warrior omega bloodline. The contamination already changing me. I'm built for this in ways no one else is."
"You are." No hesitation. No qualification.
No attempt to argue me out of it or plead for another option.
Just acceptance of what I've decided, and faith that I can do it.
"You're the strongest person I've ever known.
If anyone can take three centuries of divine rage and metabolize it into something survivable, it's you. "
The words land somewhere in my chest, warming places I didn't know were cold.
"And you'll be there," I say. Not a question.
"I'll be there." His voice drops lower. "Whatever happens tomorrow, you're not doing this alone.
I'll be in that circle with you, bleeding into the silver, speaking the words alongside you.
If it goes wrong—" He stops. Takes a breath.
"If it goes wrong, I'll be the last thing you see. Not stone walls. Not strangers. Me."
I should argue. Should tell him to stay back, to protect himself, to think about the children who'll need a father if I don't make it.
But the truth is, I'm terrified. And some treacherous part of me—the part that still loves him despite everything—wants him beside me when I walk into the fire.
"If I die," I say instead, "you raise them both. Our son and our daughter. You break this cycle. You make sure he never becomes what your bloodline made you—a weapon for a god who doesn't deserve worship."
"You're not going to die."
"Promise me anyway."
He closes the distance between us in two strides—close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off him, close enough that his scent fills my lungs and makes my head swim. His hand comes up to cup my jaw, tilting my face toward his, and I don't pull away.
"I promise." Rough and absolute. "If the worst happens, I'll raise them. I'll break the cycle. I'll be the father they deserve instead of the monster my bloodline tried to make me." His thumb traces along my cheekbone, feather-light. "But you're not going to die, Kess. I won't allow it."
"You can't control—"
"Watch me." His eyes burn into mine, gold and fierce and utterly certain.
"I've spent three hundred years letting this curse take everything from me.
Forty-seven omegas. Any chance at a normal life.
The ability to touch someone without wondering if I'm killing them.
" His voice drops even lower. "I'm not letting it take you too.
I don't care what I have to do. I don't care what it costs.
You're walking out of that ritual alive, and I will burn down the heavens themselves to make it happen. "
The intensity of it steals my breath. This isn't pleading. Isn't bargaining. It's a declaration of war—against the curse, against the god who placed it, against death itself if that's what it takes.
I should step back. Should put distance between us before I do something I can't take back.
Instead I lean into his touch, just for a moment. Let myself feel the warmth of his palm against my cheek, the steady strength of him, the bond singing between us with something that feels dangerously like hope.
"I love you." The words come out rough, dragged from somewhere I've been keeping them locked away.
"I hate that I do. I hate what you did and I don't know if I'll ever fully trust you again.
But I love you anyway. I've loved you since you looked at me like I was the answer to a question you'd been asking for three hundred years. "
His breath catches. Something cracks open in his expression—not weakness, but the kind of vulnerability that takes more strength than armor.
"Kess—"
"Don't." I pull back before I can lose myself entirely. "Don't say anything. Just—go get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be hard enough without both of us running on nothing."
For a moment I think he's going to argue. Going to close the distance again and kiss me until neither of us can think straight. Part of me wants him to. Part of me is terrified he will.
But he just nods, something fierce and tender and determined all tangled together in his expression.
"Tomorrow," he says. "We end this curse. Together."
Then he's gone, the door closing softly behind him, and I'm alone with my hand pressed to my belly and my heart pounding against my ribs.
Tomorrow, everything changes.
I close my eyes and practice the ritual words one more time, letting the harsh syllables ground me in something I can control.
Blood calls to blood. The willing vessel accepts. The curse transfers.
I fall asleep with the words still echoing in my skull, and for once, I don't dream of golden claws and my daughter screaming.
I dream of flying.