The rhythm that had formed over too many tides to number.
It was almost… domestic.
The word was grotesque, but oddly suited for what they'd become. Two bitter rivals sharing a Siren. Feeding her venom as her pregnancy progressed, passing her between them as they wrote a treaty in the void between kingdoms. Etching the terms into her flesh, stroke by stroke.
Thalos brought clams. His venom. Anchoring them to the resources only found in the shallows.
Nyxarion brought his precious, Tide Bound flame.
And Kore… she was the Siren. The axis around which they now both revolved.
Lips curling around a grin no one could see, Thalos scanned the abyss.
Searching. Eager.
He hadn't expected to enjoy it.
The fucking, certainly. Never mind the sounds she made—that her Siren song was a melody that haunted him from one tide to the next. Or that Kore was responsive and alien in a way he found tantalizing beyond compare.
No, it was the rest of it.
The ritual of their illicit meetings in the dark.
That they had stopped arguing over details. Ceased trying to kill each other at every stray opportunity.
No longer bothered negotiating the Covenant of Twin Venoms, because there was nothing to do but wait. To see what the child growing with every passing tide would become.
And Thalos was growing truly short of patience.
"You're late," he snapped when they emerged from the riptide at last, letting his camouflage drop. Eying the way Kore was cradled against the Beast's chest. The way he kept her hidden as he snaked through the current.
"And you're greedy for what does not belong to you," Nyxarion returned in a low growl, spines flicking when he drew level with Thalos. And then, shrugging, "She was tired. Needed rest, so I let her sleep."
Arms crossed over his chest, eyes narrowed, Thalos sneered. "Sheneedsvenom," he said, but his eyes tracked over the ripple of sunset scales. "Delay benefits no one, least of all the child."
"Please." Shifting, Kore untangled herself from Nyxarion's grip, floating in the space between them. Dainty. Her fins spread to balance in the sea. Dwarfed by the Pelagorn circling her. “Stop.”
And her belly—Gods,her belly.
Thalos swallowed, hard enough to click.
It had swelled since he'd seen her last. Growing ripe. Swollen with the unmistakable weight of budding life reshaping her.Pulling her center of gravity forward as her body adjusted, shifting to make space for what grew inside her.
Pregnancy was fucking devastating on her.
Cock stirring in his vent, thickening at the sight of her round and ripe and glowing with what they'd done to her.
Together.
He wanted to touch it. Wrap his hands around that swollen girth and lift, just to feel the child squirm against his palms.
Moving without thought, absent hesitation, Thalos approached. Closing the distance, he slipped straight into Nyxarion's kill radius and did not blink.
Countless tides breeding her together had stripped them both of that particular spectacle.
There was an unspoken truce neither would break.
A pact to tend her. Give this fragile Siren what she needed without the show of combat, for their fight was inside her now.
