He'd been like this for days.
Circling. Prowling. Ready to tear Thalos apart with his bare hands.
The sovereign who'd once bred her relentlessly—claiming her body with desperate, obsessive hunger—hadn't so much as looked at her since Thalos had retreated to the shallows above.
Spines flared, moving ceaselessly in the way of Pelagorn, without sleep, Nyxarion bristled and postured. Taking up space. Patrolling and snarling at shadows.
He'd driven the Abyssari into defensive submission as they tended to the fledgling reef rising up from the gloom.
But he hadn't looked ather.
Not the way he used to—with that slow, predatory hunger that made her gills flutter and her thighs press together.
For more tides than she could count, he'd been consumed.
With Thalos.
Fins flaring with the weight of her irritation, Kore's biolume flickered.
Nyx made another pass.
Enough.
Pressing her palm flat against the coral, she watched him through the gap. Timing her approach, she tracked the gleam of obsidian scales and muscle lashing through the dark. Admiring the flutter of hair streaked with silver as it whipped behind him. Fins flared wide and rigid. The bioluminescent veins beneath his scales pulsed in rapid, angry bursts.
Blue. Blue. Blue.
A heartbeat made visible.
He didn't look at her.
Not once.
That she craved the weight of his body, the obscene stretch of his cock, and the molten burn of venom flooding her veins? Pregnancy had only sharpened that hunger, made every nerve ending sing with desperate want.
But, lost in his fury, Nyxarion circled the abyss. A predator defending his territory.
Jaw tight, Kore watched.
Until she felt that peculiar squirming beneath her navel.
The reminder of a life that demanded attention.
Pushing off the chamber wall, webbed fingers slipping through the water as she kicked toward him, Kore moved to intercept. A coordinated kick of legs that would never fuse into a tail. Fins flared to catch the current, she adjusted her angle, using the translucent membranes along her calves to steer.
Clumsy compared to any Pelagorn born to sail through the ocean currents.
But she was adapting.
Nyxarion rounded the far column just as she cut across his path. "Nyx." Her voice rippled through the water, laced with the strange melody of a Siren.
The massive form slowed, silver eyes finding her in the darkness.
Pupils wide, flat disks that swallowed every spare molecule of light. Reflective. And then that predatory focus shifted, growing sharp. Deadly.
Fins flaring, spines lifting, Nyx reeled back to avoid her. Posturing as his scales flashed blue, he sent the Trident swinging wide, a sharp adjustment away from her face.
Kore was undeterred.