"I'm not planning on destroying myself," I say carefully. "But I'm also not planning on letting you make my choices for me. We clear?"
He nods slowly, and something in his expression eases—but not completely. There's still something guarded behind his eyes, something he's holding back. More than one secret, I think. Layers of them, built up over weeks of watching me change and refusing to tell me why.
"I'm going back to bed," I say. "We can talk more tomorrow."
"Of course." He hesitates, then: "Kess? Thank you. For confronting me instead of just... leaving."
"Where would I go?" The question comes out softer than I intended. "This is my home now. You're my—" I stop, not surewhat word fits. Mate? Partner? The monster I'm learning to love?
"Yours," he says quietly. "Whatever word you want to use. I'm yours."
I leave before I can say something I'm not ready to say, walking back through quiet corridors to my chambers, my mind churning with everything I've learned.
The priests engineered three hundred years of suffering. They sent forty-seven omegas to die deliberately, needing them to die so the curse would stay active.
Rhystan hid the truth because he was trying to protect me. Wrong, but understandable.
And there's still something he's not telling me. I felt it in the gaps between his words, saw it in the way he couldn't quite meet my eyes. More secrets, buried deeper than the ones I dug up tonight.
I climb back into bed, pulling the covers up to my chin. The hunger has faded, replaced by exhaustion so deep it feels like drowning.
My hand drifts to my stomach without my permission. The nausea that comes every morning. The hunger that's never satisfied. The way my body feels different in ways I can't name.
I'm not stupid. I know the mathematics of biology. Four heats, four claimings, his seed flooding me over and over while my omega body did exactly what it was designed to do.
But I'm not ready to think about that yet. Not ready to see a mystic and hear confirmation of what I'm already starting to suspect.
One crisis at a time.
I think about the tea waiting on my bedside table—the cup I forgot to drink before all of this happened. I should get up and drink it. It helps with the nausea, smooths the rough edges ofthe transformation. One of the kindest things he's done for me, having it made specially, bringing it to me every day.
But I'm too tired to move.
Tomorrow. I'll drink it tomorrow.
Tonight, I sleep, and try not to dream about the secrets still hiding in the spaces between us.
19
Rhystan
I smellit the moment she enters the courtyard.
Her scent—blood and wilderness and burning cedar—has changed. Something new threads through the familiar notes, something richer and sweeter that makes my dragon surge to attention in a way it hasn't in three hundred years.
Mine, it rumbles, the word echoing through my bones.MINE. Protect. Keep.
I'm watching her train from the shadows of the armory entrance, have been for the better part of an hour. She's sparring with Carter again, wooden practice swords blurring through the afternoon light. She moves faster now than she did even days ago, the contamination accelerating her transformation with each passing sunrise, making her stronger and deadlier and more beautiful.
She lands a strike on Carter's shoulder—would have been a killing blow with steel instead of wood. He yields with a rueful laugh, and she grins, fierce and sharp and utterly magnificent.
The wind shifts.
Her scent hits me full force and my dragonroars.
Pregnant.
The knowledge slams into me like a physical blow, driving the air from my lungs. My mate is carrying my young. The scent must have been building for days—weeks, maybe—but now it's unmistakable, ripe and sweet and screaminglifeto every dragon instinct I possess.
