But I keep walking anyway.
Because my daughter's life is worth more than my pride.
And somewhere in that castle, in those forbidden texts, in the centuries of knowledge Rhystan has accumulated about his own cursed blood—somewhere there's an answer.
I just have to find it before it's too late.
28
Kess
The mountain passis steeper than I remember, or maybe pregnancy has made everything harder.
I stop for the third time in an hour, one hand pressed to the small of my back where a persistent ache has settled, the other curved over my belly where the twins are restless. They've been moving constantly since I left the village—rolling, kicking, pushing against each other in the cramped space of my womb. Like they know where we're going. Like they can sense their father getting closer.
The bond certainly can.
Without the tea suppressing it, the connection has grown almost unbearable. Every step closer to him pulls the thread tighter, until I can feel him like a second heartbeat in my chest—his longing, his grief, his desperate hope that I'm really coming back. The emotions bleed through whether I want them or not, mixing with my own until I can't always tell where I end and he begins.
I hate it.
I hate that my body still wants him. That even now, exhausted and angry and carrying the evidence of his betrayal inmy swollen belly, some treacherous part of me aches to close the distance. To let him hold me. To pretend the last month never happened and we're still building something worth keeping.
The air is different here already. Thinner. Colder. It tastes like stone and old smoke, nothing like the herb-scented breeze around the omega village. This is the boundary between territories—omega lands falling away behind me, dragon lands rising ahead.
I should have brought more water. My waterskin is already half empty and I'm maybe a third of the way through. The twins are making me thirstier than normal, and the climb is taking more out of me than I expected. Legs burning. Lungs aching. Sweat soaking through my borrowed dress despite the mountain chill.
When I pause to drink, I catch sight of my hands wrapped around the waterskin. The purple tint under my nails has deepened since I left the village—darker now, almost violet in certain light. The contamination is progressing faster without him near, or maybe the pregnancy is accelerating it. Either way, I'm changing. Becoming something else.
Something dangerous.
"Keep moving," I mutter. To myself. To them. To the daughter who needs me to do this. "Just keep moving."
The path curves around an outcropping of black rock that's warm to the touch—volcanic stone, glassy surface catching sunlight and throwing it back in fractured rainbows. Dragon lands are built on volcanoes, on mountains that still remember being fire.
I round the outcropping and stop.
The view opens up like a wound—dragon territory spreading in all directions, painted in blacks and golds and deep forest greens. Mountains piercing clouds, peaks crowned with snowthat never melts. Forests so dark they look almost black. Rivers cutting through valleys like silver veins.
And in the distance, barely visible through the afternoon haze, his castle.
Black stone rising from black rock, impossible to tell where mountain ends and structure begins. Towers that look like they grew from the earth rather than being built by hands. Walls thick enough to withstand dragon fire.
The bond surges at the sight, pulling so hard I actually sway on my feet.Home, something whispers in the back of my mind—not my thought, or not entirely. His longing bleeding through, his desperate need for me to come back to him.
I shove the feeling away. It's not home. It's the place where he lied to me for months, where he dosed my tea with poison, where he hid my pregnancy while I suffered through symptoms I couldn't understand.
But my chest aches anyway. And lower, in places I don't want to acknowledge, my body remembers other things. His hands on my skin. His mouth on my throat. The way he felt inside me, thick and hard and so deep I couldn't tell where I ended and he began.
I press my thighs together against the sudden pulse of heat and hate myself for it.
Through the bond—stronger now, clearer with every step—I feel his sudden awareness of me. Like a string being plucked, vibrating between us. He knows I'm here. Probably knew the moment I crossed into his territory. His emotions flood through—shock, hope, desperate relief, fear, and underneath it all, a wave of want so intense it makes my knees buckle.
He's been starving for me.
The realization hits like cold water, sobering and unwelcome. All those weeks apart, he's been feeling the same pull I have.The same ache. The same desperate need that the tea had been muting for months.
No wonder he couldn't think straight. No wonder he made terrible choices. The bond is overwhelming when it's not being poisoned into submission.
