She was progressing rapidly, his Kore. Outpacing her predecessor by a degree he wouldn’t have believed possible, ifhe hadn’t felt the way she’d clenched and milked his cock. An exquisite mimic of aVireliicunt, his little human was ravenous for everything he could cram inside.
It wasn’t enough.
Not nearly enough to cradle the precious thing he’d drag into the dark.
Blue veins flickered through the dark. Fevered lightning, the Raskoril demanded tribute. Alive. Growing.
Hungry.
The reef was starving in the anoxic dark.
Settling on a shelf of barren rock, he brushed the feeding polyps off his scales and sent a handful sparkling into the dark. Watching the phantom of his fledgling kingdom shimmer and spread.
But he was too depleted, too injured to feed the reef, to force the growth at the same pace his bride had set.
He would heal. Rise again. Pay whatever the cost to keep her. Tame her.
The trench was quiet beyond the distant boom of tectonic heartbeats.
Still, except for the hum of the current endlessly pounding at the shore above.
And then the current shifted—subtle, at first. A scent he didn’t recognize. One that didn’t belong.
Nyx’s spines rose.
Intruder.
Pelagorn.
He took a slow breath and tastedThalassari.
Open-water scum.
Lip curling, Nyx scanned the trench with pupils blown wide and dared not move a muscle. Pain rippled beneath his scales anyway.
A scout.
One on a mission from theThalassariking, no doubt. Drawn in by the scent of a Siren in the water, for it was a lure more potent than any other.
Forbidden.
His.
Glancing toward the distant basalt shelf where his trident stood embedded in the sea floor, Nyx hissed. Silent. Cursing himself for the blind stupidity of settling so far from that ancient forge of war.
Too far.
Too wounded.
Useless now, for a fight would finish what the surface had started.
And what would become of Kore, then? Half transformed. Abandoned.
Sensing his tension, the reef flashed a vibrant, hungry blue. Fragile tendrils stretched in the gentle current, microscopic maws gaping all around him.
Blind and searching for nutrition.
A shadow flicked through the dim light, trying to penetrate the fathomless dark.
