Drifting.
Diluted by the sea.
Tainted with the sweet nectar of the bride he cultivated.
“Defiant slut,” he snarled, low and vicious. Fear pulsing through his veins, he tore his hand away from the reef and dislodged his barb with a howl so black, the ancient kings would shiver and cringe.
That scent in the water could only mean one thing.
She had gone into the surf.
Long enough for the plug he’d crammed inside her to dissolve and send a torrent of sperm gushing into the water.
She was trying to escape.
Or worse.
She’d been found.
Spines flaring, lips peeled back in a soundless snarl, for it was too soon to return, his body nowhere near recovered from the effort he’d expended to fill her womb.
Pain lanced through his system when he whirled.
He ignored it.
Kore was fleeing or taken, and he would not lose another bride.
Gills burning, skin tender and raw, he snarled—at his back, the Raskoril hissed. Reactive to the surge in his pulse, it spat a plume of bubbles from tiny chambers, as if recoiling from his vicious temper.
A low groan rumbled through the trench, and with war in his heart, Nyxarion Korrides, first Sovgerine of the Black Sea, reached for the trident.
Thalos would not have her.
It thrummed the moment his fingers touched ancient metal. Obsidian-dark, the shaft grew resonant with the hum of power it hadn’t tasted in years.
Not since he’d failed.
Exiled from the kingdom he should have ruled.
The trident remembered war.
He wrenched it from where it had been embedded in the sediment with a howl of rage. Tail thrashing off the bottom, he launched himself toward the surface. Eyes gone black and fathomless in an instant as he made the ascent at a speed that would kill any other creature in the ocean.
But he was no longer a king.
No longer a builder of something profound and new.
He was a monster ascending.
A predator on the hunt, seething with the need to punish and claim. Drunk with a surge of possessive violence and territorial hunger, he shot through the poisonous layers. A bolt through the dark. Carrying enough speed to leave a trail of scales glittering in his wake.
Every stroke of his tail dragged fire through his chest. Left his gills burning and raw. His lungs squeezed tight as he abandoned the snug embrace of the deep and returned once more to her domain.
The surface.
Pulsing in his grip, the trident thrummed with an ancient power. Ready to enact the frothing wrath festering in his heart.
Ready for war.
