She wasradiant.
The shade of her biolume had shifted. A subtle thing, yet profound. Her glow threaded through with the touch of venom Thalos had pumped inside. Hair an untamed cloud of defiance drifting about her face.
And her belly.
It was still round.
Full.
Thalos' sperm,yes. But the sight of it? Theknowingignited a territorial blaze in Nyx, the urge to wash the other male out. To fuck her before the gathered courts, arousal and fury twisted into a thermal vent of villainous, desperate need. To claim. Breed. Win his bride back, to install her at his side, and set her forever in the heart of his kingdom.
And then grey-gold eyes slid through their audience. Cool and blank.
Until they met his.
Fury.
Delicious, searing wrath.
His bride was a towering inferno.
Breath catching, Nyxarion turned.
A single, lazy flick of his fluke. Shifting, pulled toward her, the current rippled at his command.
And for a moment, all else fell away, and he looked. Truly looked upon the creature he'd claimed. Created.
"Magnificent," Thalos breathed, and for the first time, the Shallows and the Deep were in harmony.
A single crystalline note shattered the moment.
It sang through the current.
The chime was the signal to ready the competitors for battle.
All around them, the spectators began to swirl. Creating a wall of scales and flickering light. The Crucible's arena.
Simple.
Brutally clean.
Opposites, Thalos and Nyxarion took their positions inside the walls of their people.
Waiting.
And when the second chime sang through the current, coiled muscle launched through the poisoned tide. An explosion of trench-forged wrath whipped through the water. Bearing down upon the Shallow King, absent any whisper of elegance or grace.
It was raw, brute strength. Everything the trench had bred him to be.
A weapon aimed.
Pure mass hurled toward Thalos, intending to obliterate the Asterion line in one strike.
Thalos twisted.
Even handicapped, his speed was a brutal response. Flexible, spine wrenched at a nauseating angle, he snaked sideways with an elegant roll of his shoulders. Slipped through the hole in Nyxarion's guard.
Claws sweeping through the current, Nyxarion missed, leaving a trail of bubbles where Thalos' throat had been only an instant before.
