Cush flinched.Truth hurt like that.
“I’m not judging you,” Trik said more softly.“I’m standing in the same mess.I keep pushing Cassie away because I’m afraid the darkness in me will touch her.I call it protection.Myrin calls it cowardice.”
Cush blinked.“Do you think you’re a coward?”
“I think fear wears convincing masks,” Trik replied.“Duty.Logic.Strategy.Strip them away and it’s still fear of losing what you love more than trusting what you love to survive beside you.”
Cush looked away, jaw tight.“Sometimes I think she picked the wrong male.”
“Cush,” Trik warned.
“I’m serious,” he said.“She’s half dark-elf.Brilliant.Wild.She should have someone who lets go, not someone who grips tighter the more afraid he gets.”
Trik’s expression sharpened to something lethal.“You are exactly who she needs.”
The ache in Cush’s chest deepened.“Neither of us has done a good job lately.”He looked up.“Cassie needed you.She needed to talk to you.”
Trik’s eyes narrowed.“How would you know that?”
Cush hesitated.“I ...heard something.”
“Cush.”
“When I was near her,” he said and watched as Trik went rigid.He quickly continued, “Elora was with her.I wasn’t alone with your Chosen.”Cush wouldn’t normally feel the need to clarify that, because he knew Trik trusted him.But, Trik hadn’t been himself for a while, and they were territorial and possessive of their Chosen females on a good day.He cleared his throat and said, quietly, “I heard a second heartbeat.Her magic is different.Fuller.”He swallowed.“She’s carrying your child.”
The world contracted.Not metaphorically, physically.The edges of the room blurred, sound dulling as if cotton had been shoved into his ears.The Book’s pulse stuttered, its glow flickering once before dimming, but Trik barely registered it.His lungs locked.His chest refused to expand.
“You’re certain?”The words scraped out of him, thin and disbelieving, like they’d been dragged up from somewhere too deep.
“Yes.”
The answer landed hitting like a fist to the sternum, like the sudden drop of a blade where he hadn’t known there was one.Trik’s knees went weak, the floor tilting beneath him, and instinct alone had his hand slamming down on the table to keep himself upright.Cassie.Pregnant.
The bond erupted.Not a single emotion, too small for what tore through him, but a violent collision of them.Awe so sharp it burned.Joy so sudden it hurt.Fear so vast it hollowed him out from the inside.A life they’d created out of love.
Something inside his chest cracked open, and for a heartbeat he swore he could feel it, small, bright, impossibly fragile, nested within the warmth of Cassie’s magic like a second sun.
His breath shuddered free in a sound that might have been a laugh, or a sob, or something dangerously close to breaking.
“She didn’t tell me,” he whispered.The words tasted wrong.Hollow.Accusatory in a way he hadn’t meant, but couldn’t stop.
“And you haven’t made it easy for her to reach you,” Cush said, quiet but unyielding.
Trik’s eyes snapped open, anger flaring hard enough to light the shadows in the room.Heat rolled off him, magic reacting to the surge of emotion he could no longer contain.“She should have told me,” he said, sharper now, the edge of panic bleeding through the outrage.Because if she was carrying his child, if she’d been doing it alone, in silence, while he?—
“She will,” Cush said steadily.“When you show her she still belongs beside you.”
Not protected from you.Not kept at a distance.Beside you.The words flashed in his mind.
“Not outside this room,” Cush finished.
The words struck deeper than any accusation.They slid past his defenses and lodged somewhere dangerous, somewhere tender.Trik’s gaze dropped to the Book, to the space between them, to the choices he’d made in the name of protection that suddenly looked a lot like abandonment.
The realization burned.Cassie had been carrying his child, and he had been pushing her away.
Trik drew a breath that shook all the way down to his bones.The study felt too small suddenly, the walls pressing in, the air thick with unspent magic and regret.His hand tightened on the edge of the table, fingers digging into ancient stone as if he could anchor himself through sheer force of will.The bond pulsed again, sharp this time.Not distant.Not muted.Protect.The instinct roared up from somewhere primal and violent, eclipsing everything else.He turned toward the Book, vision narrowing, magic coiling tight beneath his skin.
Something answered.
