"Asterion," the other returned, spines flaring as if to mock Thalos with the deadly points that had nearly ended him.
Unperturbed, Thalos flicked his tail. "I confess, I wasn't entirely certain you would accept my offer. Pride can be such a… cumbersome thing, no?" But his eyes dropped back to Kore. To the way her thighs clenched around Nyx's waist. Drinking in the color bleeding from gold to molten amber, tracking the way her sunset scales danced with enticing violet and indigo. "But then," Thalos added, fins spreading to balance in the current, "she has quite the appetite for things she just cannot find in the Deep…"
Grip tightening, Nyxarion clutched his bride closer to his chest. Possessive instinct flaring to life. Poisoning the current with the stink of Abyssari venom already spilled.
Lips parting, Thalos sent the black waters over his gills. Tasting it. Savoring the flavor of a Siren flirting with a breeding heat, no matter the child already growing inside her womb.
A tiny, keening sound bubbled up from Kore's lips, then. And as he watched, mesmerized, the Siren writhed against Nyx's grip. Seeing every tiny instance of her chromatophores ripple across her scales.
Abyssari blues and indigos… right alongside Thalassari gold and red.
"There she is," Thalos murmured, voice a quiet, hushed little burr. "Our wretched little mutant."
Chest expanding, fins spread wide to display his spines, Nyxarion's gills flared wide and bright. Exposing the crimson flash of his filaments.
It was a warning.
Deadly.
Grinning, Thalos didn't react or posture. He merely held his position. And said, "Tell me, Korrides," in a quiet croon, polar blue gaze lifting to meet those that were molten silver. "Did it feel good?" he asked, tail sweeping through the current with a lazy flick. "Trying to wash me out? Knowing that even as you bred her, I was already inside?"
The response, when it came, was exactly what Thalos expected.
It was an ancient thing, absent language. A flash of teeth bared in a rictus of aggression that said everything he couldn't. Pupils blown, fathomless, flat disks that swallowed the liquid silver, Nyx's scales lifted. Venting the heat of his fury.
But he didn't deny it.
Couldn't.
Thalos grinned.
Moving in a slow, deliberate circle, Thalos began to glide around them.
Testing.
Pressing at the boundaries the Abyssari king dared not breach. Not with the delicate creature twisting in his arms. Leaking slick.
He slipped through the current, orbiting the other male and his captive, gravid female. Forcing Nyx to spin in place, Thalos drifted closer without putting himself at risk of those spines.
Each one a translucent spike leaking a cloud of violet venom.
The scars marring his otherwise flawless skin ached with the memory. The memory of how hot Abyssari venom burned. The wet crunch when he'd been impaled, the ribbons of ichor staining the Black Sea with Asterion blood.
Still…
He circled closer.
Pressing Nyxarion, voice low, rippling with companionable, dulcet tones, he said, "It's the competition, isn't it?" Fluke lifting, Thalos claimed another slow revolution. Opalescent scales caught the Siren's sunset biolume and tossed it back in fractured prisms. "Ancient," he murmured, tracking Nyxarion's lethal dorsal spines. "That primal urge to fight for breeding rights. To flood her with enough of your seed to drown out my claim entirely." Thalos' radius tightened by another half-meter. His words seduction as much as challenge. "Every knot you set inside her, each and every time you hold her down and pump her full? It isn't worship, Korrides. It's war. Againstme."
Jaw working, the tendons in Nyxarion's neck stood out as something shifted behind silver eyes.
Homicidal, enraged… acceptance.
A guttural sound rattled the tide, then. Subsonic. Something not heard, but felt. Issued from deep inside that barrel chest as Nyxarion's spines flicked once, twice more, then flattened.
Because he understood now.
That every savage, desperate coupling in the heretical reef he'd built to contain her wasn't devotion to a bride he meant to cherish… but another attempt to defeat his rival.
