BLESSING LUNA RISING

NESTING

CHAPTER 13:

Darius didn't walk back to his chambers. He flew, and he didn't let me walk.

One moment his black wings were open and the entire mountain was staring at my belly where his son pulsed with white fire, the next moment his wings snapped shut around us and the world became wind and speed and his scent — pine, ice, and ash — and his heart hammering against my cheek.

I clutched his neck, my own wings tucked uselessly against my back, silver dust trailing behind us like a distress signal.

He didn't land at his balcony. He smashed straight through the upper ice doors of his private tower, doors that had been sealed for two hundred years, that no Lycan had ever entered without permission, and the black ice shattered around us like glass, then instantly reformed behind us, sealing us in.

His chamber — no, his lair — was not a bedroom. It was a cave of black ice and midnight furs, with a fire pit in the center that burned black and silver, never needing wood. The floor was covered in furs so thick my feet would have sunk to the ankles. The walls were covered in claw marks. Old marks. Hundreds of years of a King alone.

He set me down on the furs, but didn't let go. His hands stayed locked over my belly, his black eyes still completely black, his fangs still out, his breathing ragged.

"Little Luna," he whispered, his forehead pressed to mine, his wings still wrapped around us, creating a second nest inside the nest. "Little Luna, you are shaking."

"I just— I just found out I'm—" My voice broke. I placed my hands over his, over the tiny pulsing white light that only we could see now that Selene's thread was gone. "Darius, I'm three days pregnant. Three days. How is that possible? Wolves— werewolves take months to show—"

"White Lycans don't," came a voice from the doorway.

We both snapped our heads up. Darius snarled, his wings flaring wider, his body instantly covering mine.

My father, Aeron, stood in the shattered doorway, his white wings folded, his white hair windswept. My mother was behind him, wrapped in his cloak, her broken wings trembling. And behind them, Selene floated, her feet not touching the furs, her moon-eyes calm.

"He has waited 200 years to touch you, Darius Nocturne. Let her breathe."

Darius's snarl deepened, but he didn't attack. His hands tightened protectively over my belly. "No male healer touches her. No male touches her at all. She is nesting. She is with pup. My pup."

Aeron's silver eyes flicked to Darius's hands on my belly, to my own hands over his, to my wings which were now instinctively curling around my own stomach, mirroring Darius.

"She is my daughter," Aeron said quietly. "And she is bleeding silver dust. Look at her wings. She burned too much white fire. She needs Lira. White females need their mothers to nest."

For the first time since Selene announced the pregnancy, Darius hesitated. He looked down at me, at my wings which were indeed shedding too much silver dust, leaving bald, dim patches on the moonstone feathers. My face was pale. The soul-severing, the flight, the fire wall, the shock — it was too much for a three-day-old White Queen carrying a Lycan King's heir.

"Are you hurt?" he asked me, his black eyes finally bleeding back to storm-grey, his voice wrecked. "Little Luna, does your belly hurt? Does the pup—"

"No," I whispered, leaning into his chest, into the black ice warmth of him. "Just dizzy. And cold. Even with the furs."

That was the wrong word. Cold.

Darius moved like lightning.

One second he was holding me, the next he was ripping every fur off his massive bed — midnight wolf furs, snow bear furs, furs from beasts that didn't exist anymore — and throwing them into the center of the fire pit, building, circling, shaping with his bare hands and his wings.

A nest. A true Lycan nesting nest. Round, high-walled, deep enough to hide a Queen and a pup, lined with his own shed black wing membranes that shimmered like silk.

Lycan Kings only nested once in their lives. For their fated mate when she was with pup.

Aeron watched, his expression softening from warrior King to father. "He's been saving those furs for 200 years," he whispered to my mother. "Look. Those are White Lycan furs from the old war. He kept them."

My mother stepped forward, despite Darius's low warning growl, and knelt at the edge of the half-built nest.

"Elara, starling," she said softly, her scarred hand reaching for mine. "May I? White mothers have to oil the wings after first fire. Otherwise they crack."

Darius looked at my mother, then at me, then at his nest, his jaw clenched, his rut making him want to snap at any female near me, even my mother.

I placed my hand over his on my belly. "Please. Let her."

He exhaled, a shuddering breath, and nodded once, sharp.

My mother climbed into the nest, and Darius gently — so gently for a male who had just threatened to peel wolves alive — lowered me into the center of it, into the furs that smelled like him, like us now.

The moment my back hit the furs, my wings gave out completely, flopping open, exhausted.

My mother gasped. "Aeron! The oil! Quickly!"

My father was already there, handing her a small jar of silver liquid that glowed. Selene floated closer, her moonlight bathing my wings.

"Her first flight and first justice and first fire all in one day," Selene said softly, her hand hovering over my belly, not touching, just warming the tiny white light. "No White Queen has ever done that. Her body is eating itself to feed the pup. Darius, she needs meat. Fresh kill. And she needs you to stay in the nest with her. Your black fire stabilizes her white."

Darius was already stripping off his chest armor, his boots, his pants, until he was in only thin black linen pants, his massive, scarred chest bare, his black crescent now pulsing white in time with my belly.

He climbed into the nest, his black wings folding around the three of us — me, my mother, and our pup — creating a perfect, warm, dark dome where only silver dust floated like stars.

Outside the nest, his voice boomed to his warriors who were still kneeling in the hallway.

"BRING THE ENTIRE ELK HERD WE KILLED THIS MORNING! RAW! AND TELL THAT PATHETIC ALPHA KAEL THAT IF HE IS STILL BREATHING ON MY MOUNTAIN WHEN MY QUEEN WAKES, I WILL FEED HIM TO MY SON!"

My mother began oiling my wings, her hands gentle, humming an old White Lycan lullaby I had never heard but somehow knew.

And Darius, the 200-year-old Lycan King who had never nested, never purred, laid his head on my belly, his ear right over where our son's tiny white fire pulsed, and purred.

A deep, rumbling, earthquake purr that vibrated through the furs, through my belly, through my wings, putting me to sleep for the first time in nineteen years without wolfsbane in my veins.

I fell asleep to my mother humming, my father guarding the shattered door with white wings spread, Selene watching with moon-eyes, and my mate purring over our unborn pup.

Below, in the courtyard, Kael was still unconscious in the snow, holding the hem of furs that smelled like me, while his wolfless mother and bleeding false Luna were dragged to the dungeons to await my justice when I woke.