Chapter 41 Kess
Kess
Six months later, I still wake up reaching for him.
It's instinct now—my hand finding the warm bulk of his body before my eyes even open, claws tracing the familiar landscape of scars and scales and sleep-warmed skin. He's always there. Has been every morning since the ritual, since the battle, since everything changed.
Some promises he actually keeps.
Today he's on his stomach, face buried in the pillow, one arm thrown across my waist. The morning light catches the silver threading through his dark hair—new, since his father's death, like the stress of it aged him in ways three centuries of curse couldn't manage.
I trace the strands with one careful claw and feel him stir.
"Stop counting my grey hairs."
"I'm admiring them. Distinguished."
"You're a terrible liar." But he's smiling into the pillow, and the bond hums with sleepy contentment.
From the nursery down the hall, a small voice starts fussing. Then another, harmony to the first—our twins waking in tandem the way they do everything, never quite in sync but never far apart.
"Your turn," I tell him.
"It's always my turn."
"It is, I agree."
He groans but rolls out of bed anyway, yanking on pants with the efficiency of a man who's learned that babies wait for no one. I watch him go—watch the play of muscles across his back, the scars I've memorized, the easy way he moves now that the curse isn't weighing him down.
He's lighter these days. We both are.
-
By the time I make it to the nursery, Rhystan has both twins in his arms.
Sera is gnawing on his finger with her four new teeth, drool everywhere, her gold eyes fixed on his face with fierce concentration.
Cade is asleep again—he does that, fusses himself awake and then immediately passes back out, like consciousness is too much effort.
They're six months old and already developing personalities that make me want to laugh and cry in equal measure.
"She's hungry," Rhystan says, handing Sera over. "And I think he needs changing. Again."
"How does someone so small produce so much—"
"Don't." He takes Cade with practiced ease, heading for the changing table. "Don't even finish that sentence. I've been asking myself the same question for months and there are no good answers."
I settle into the nursing chair with Sera, guiding her to my breast. She latches on with the same fierce determination she brings to everything—eating, crying, grabbing fistfuls of my hair and refusing to let go. Warrior omega blood, the mystic says. It shows early.
The scales on my arms catch the light as I adjust her position.
I've stopped noticing them most days—the patches of black and gold that cover maybe a third of my skin, the claws I've learned to retract, the eyes that will never be human again.
The curse is a weight in my bones, but a manageable one. Most days.
Some days are harder.
Some days I wake snarling, divine rage pressing against the inside of my skull. Those days Rhystan holds me until it passes, talks me through breathing exercises he developed over three centuries. Those days I understand what he carried alone for so long, and I love him more for surviving it.
"Stop thinking so loud." He's finished with Cade, settling into the chair across from me with our son tucked against his chest. "I can feel you brooding through the bond."
"I'm not brooding. I'm reflecting."
"You're brooding. You always brood when you're nursing. Something about sitting still for more than five minutes."
He's not wrong.
"I was thinking about the curse," I admit. "About carrying it. About what happens when—" I stop. This is an old fear, one we've discussed before. "What if I pass it to them somehow? What if the transfer wasn't complete?"
"It was complete." He says it with absolute certainty—the same certainty he's offered every time I've asked. "The mystic confirmed it. I can feel it through the bond. The curse is in you, not them. They're free."
"But what if—"
"Kess." He catches my eyes, holds them. "They're free. Whatever else happens, whatever comes next—we gave them that. A life without divine punishment. A childhood that isn't shadowed by three centuries of death." His voice softens. "That's worth everything. Even on the hard days."
I look down at Sera, still nursing with single-minded focus. At Cade, asleep on his father's chest, tiny fist curled against dragon-scarred skin. At the life we've built from the wreckage of everything that came before.
He's right. It's worth everything.
Even on the hard days.
-
The afternoon is chaos—feeding schedules and diaper changes and the constant background noise of two babies who haven't learned the concept of taking turns. By the time we get them down for their afternoon nap, I'm exhausted in a way that has nothing to do with curses or transformations.
Just parenthood. Just the ordinary miracle of keeping two small humans alive.
"They're asleep." Rhystan closes the nursery door with exaggerated care. "Both of them. At the same time. I think that's only happened twice before."
"Don't jinx it."
"I'm not jinxing anything. I'm stating facts." He pulls me against him, my back to his chest, arms wrapped around my waist. "We have maybe an hour before one of them wakes up screaming. What do you want to do with it?"
I lean back into him. Feel his heartbeat against my spine, steady and strong. The bond hums between us—quiet contentment, banked heat, the ever-present awareness of each other that's become as natural as breathing.
"I can think of a few things."
His hands slide lower. "Yeah?"
"We could take a nap."
"We could."
"Or eat something that isn't mashed vegetables."
"Also an option."
"Or..." I turn in his arms, loop my hands around his neck. "You could take me back to our chambers and remind me why I keep you around."
The heat that flares through the bond makes my breath catch.
"That," he says, voice dropping to something darker, "is the best idea you've had all day."
We don't make it to the chambers.
We make it to the hallway outside the nursery before he presses me against the wall and kisses me like we have all the time in the world.
We make it to the stairs before my hands are under his shirt, claws tracing paths I've memorized over months of this.
We make it to the landing before I'm wrapping my legs around his waist and he's carrying me the rest of the way, mouths still fused together.
The door barely closes before he's laying me on the bed.
"We have an hour," I remind him, already pulling at his clothes. "Maybe less."
"Then I'd better work fast."
He doesn't work fast.
He works thorough—mouth and hands everywhere, learning my body all over again the way he does every time, like he can't quite believe I'm still here.
The scales don't slow him down. Never have.
He traces them with his tongue, finds the places where they're thinner and more sensitive, makes me gasp and arch and forget that there are two babies sleeping down the hall who could wake up at any moment.
"Rhystan—" His name comes out desperate. "Stop teasing."
"I'm not teasing. I'm savoring."
"Savor faster."
He laughs against my hip. Then his mouth finds my cunt and I stop being able to form words.
The orgasm builds slow—his tongue working me with maddening patience, fingers sliding inside to stroke the spot that makes me see stars.
I come with my claws buried in the sheets, transformed throat producing sounds that are more growl than moan, pleasure rolling through me in waves that leave me shaking.
He doesn't stop. Doesn't let me come down. Just keeps working me through it until I'm desperate again, until I'm pulling at his shoulders, demanding more.
"Inside me." I manage to gasp it out between aftershocks. "Need you inside me. Now."
He rises over me, positions himself, pushes in slow.
The stretch is familiar now—perfect, devastating, exactly what I need. I wrap my legs around him and pull him deeper, feel him bottom out, watch his eyes flutter closed with the pleasure of it.
"Move," I tell him. "We don't have time for slow."
So he moves.
Not the desperate rutting of the early days, but something better. Confident. Certain. The rhythm of two people who know each other's bodies completely, who've earned every moment of pleasure through months of trust rebuilt and promises kept.
I come again with him inside me—clenching around his cock, crying out his name, feeling him follow me over with a groan that vibrates through both of us. The knot swells, locks us together, and I feel him spill inside me while aftershocks ripple through my core.
We lie tangled together, breathing hard, the knot pulsing between us.
"Forty-five minutes," he murmurs against my neck. "Not bad."
"We're getting more efficient."
"Practice makes perfect."
I laugh—bright and real, the sound startling in its ease. Six months ago I didn't know if I'd ever laugh like this again. Didn't know if we'd survive the ritual, the battle, the aftermath. Didn't know if trust could be rebuilt from the ashes of betrayal.
Now I know.
It can. It was. It is, every day, in every choice we make together.
"I love you," I tell him, because I can. Because the words come easy now in a way they didn't before.
"I love you too." He presses a kiss to my temple, to my jaw, to the claiming bite that scarred over months ago. "More than I knew I could love anything. More than three hundred years of loneliness taught me was possible."
"Sap."
"Your sap."
"Unfortunately."
He laughs, and I feel it everywhere—through the bond, through the knot still locking us together, through the place in my chest where the curse has settled into something almost peaceful.
From down the hall, a small voice starts fussing.
"Your turn," he says.
"We're literally knotted together."
"Then I guess we wait."
I settle against him, content to do exactly that. The fussing quiets—Cade soothing himself back to sleep the way he sometimes does. Sera stays silent, probably plotting world domination in her dreams.
Our children. Our future. Our family, built from the wreckage of curses and betrayals and three centuries of pain.
It's not perfect. It might never be perfect.
But it's ours.
And that's more than enough.