"You're not empty," he corrects, pressing his hand against my belly where his seed pools warm and bright. "You're full of my child. Full of everything that matters."
The ache of separation is almost overwhelming, my omega nature crying out for the connection we've just lost. But the knowledge that his heir is growing inside me soothes the biological distress, replacing it with deep satisfaction.
"How do you feel?" he asks as we finally separate, though his hands immediately move to my belly.
"Complete," I answer honestly, and it's true. For the first time in my life, I feel like I'm exactly where I belong, exactly what I was meant to be. "Like this is what I was always supposed to become."
"My perfect fertility goddess," he murmurs, his voice filled with wonder and possession. "Mother of my children, queen of my court."
As his glowing seed settles deep in my transformed womb and my body begins the process of nurturing our child, I know he's absolutely right. This is my purpose, my destiny—not the frightened virgin who stumbled into his trap, but the goddess who chose to embrace her fate.
His perfect omega, finally understanding exactly what that means.
And I wouldn't have it any other way.
CHAPTER 20
THORIAN
Maya glowslike liquid starlight in my arms, her transformed body radiating power that makes every plant in the conservatory respond with eager growth. But even as I hold my perfect goddess, something cold knots in my ancient gut. The magic flowing through her veins pulses too strong, too fast.
"I feel incredible," she breathes against my throat, her skin warm with divine energy. "Like I could power the entire court with what's flowing through me."
Her words should fill me with satisfaction. Instead, they echo warnings I've tried to ignore—the same words Isabella spoke three days before the magic consumed her from within.
"Tell me about these feelings," I say carefully, my hands stroking her radiant skin while I assess her condition with eight centuries of magical experience.
"Everything is so intense," Maya explains, her voice filled with wonder rather than concern. "Colors are brighter, every sensation magnified. When I breathe, I can feel the life force of every plant in the conservatory."
I can feel it too—her power reaching out like tendrils, touching every living thing around us. But where it should nurture growth, I notice disturbing patterns. The roses nearestto her bloom too quickly, their petals unfurling in fast-forward before beginning to brown at the edges.
"And physically?" I probe, though I can already sense the answers through our magical connection.
"My heart feels like it's racing with excitement," she says, pressing her hand to her chest. "And sometimes I get a little breathless, but I think that's just from all the power flowing through me."
Racing heart. Difficulty breathing. The same symptoms that marked the beginning of the end for seven others. But Maya interprets them through the lens of her transformation, seeing danger signs as marks of her growing divinity.
By the second week, I begin moving her through different areas of my domain, ostensibly to help her learn control but really to monitor how her growing power affects various environments. In my private study, she settles happily among ancient texts, her voracious academic appetite now focused on magical theory.
The potted herbs respond to her presence with supernatural vigor, growing inches overnight before beginning their inevitable decline. Maya attributes the wilting to natural cycles, having no reason to connect her presence to their accelerated aging.
"I feel like I understand magic on a deeper level now," she tells me as we dine in my chambers, her transformed senses allowing her to see magical structures invisible to normal sight. "Like I can sense the connections between all living things."
Her growing awareness isn't wrong—it's a sign that her power levels are reaching dangerous peaks. But to Maya, it feels like divine evolution rather than magical poisoning.
Three weeks after her transformation, the pattern has become unmistakable. Wherever Maya spends significant time, the accelerated bloom-decay cycle follows. In the bathingchambers where she soaks in mineral pools infused with fertility magic, the water plants bloom so rapidly they choke themselves out. In my private quarters where she sleeps against my chest like the perfect omega she's become, even the ancient ironwood furniture shows signs of magical saturation—eight-hundred-year-old wood developing golden veins that shouldn't exist.
"I had the strangest sensation yesterday," she mentions as we walk through the conservatory, her touch making dying flowers suddenly burst into radiant bloom. "Like I could feel every living thing in the entire palace responding to my presence."
That strange sensation is her power reaching critical levels, unconsciously seeking outlets for the magical pressure building inside her transformed biology. But to her, it feels like expanded awareness, goddess-level perception of the life force around her.
"Your connection to living things has deepened," I agree, watching as those revitalized flowers begin withering again moments after her attention moves elsewhere.
She doesn't notice the withering. Her focus has already shifted to the next demonstration of her incredible abilities.
The irony is bitter as winter frost. Maya survived the initial transformation because her human biology was strong enough to channel divine levels of magic. But that same strength means her power continues building until her mortal frame will eventually burn out under the pressure.
"I've been thinking about expanding the conservatory," she says, her hands trailing along a vine that responds by growing several inches in real-time. "With this much magical energy flowing through me, I could probably enhance an area ten times this size."
