He didn't move for a long time.
Just stayed on his knees, arms locked around my waist, face buried against the small swell of my stomach like I was the only thing keeping him human.
I was too stunned to push him away.
The photograph trembled between my fingers.
"Talk," I finally managed, voice cracking. "Now."
Noctis drew a shuddering breath, then stood. Slowly. Carefully. Like every movement hurt.
He took the photo from me and placed it on the nightstand face-down, as if even looking at it too long would break him.
Then he sat on the edge of my bed (my bed) and stared at the floor.
"Her name was Elara," he began, voice raw. "She was human. A moon priestess. The last of her bloodline. Or so we thought."
He dragged a hand through his hair, claws half-extended, leaving red trails on his scalp.
"I found her in 1787. The second I scented her, my wolf went insane. Mate, it screamed. Mine. Forever."
His laugh was bitter, broken. "I was young then. Arrogant. I thought the curse couldn't touch us if we loved each other hard enough."
I sat beside him, not touching. Not yet.
"What happened?"
"She got pregnant." His voice dropped to a whisper. "Seven weeks in, the blood moon rose. The curse… it sensed the child. It wanted the power in her blood and the power in mine combined. It tried to rip the baby out of her to feed itself."
My hands flew to my own stomach.
Noctis saw the motion and flinched like I'd struck him.
"She bled out in my arms," he said. "I held her while she died begging me to save the pup. There was no pup left to save. The curse took everything."
Silence stretched, thick and suffocating.
"I went mad," he continued. "Killed half my own council that night. The other half put me in silver chains for fifty years until I stopped trying to burn the world down."
He turned to me then, eyes ancient and haunted.
"Then one night, two months ago, I walked into a masquerade looking for a distraction… and I smelled her again. Elara's scent. Impossible. But there you were. In silver. Wearing the same fox mask she wore the night I first kissed her."
I couldn't breathe.
"That's why you called me little fox," I whispered.
He nodded once.
"I thought I was losing my mind. Thought the curse was finally eating my soul. Then you let me touch you, let me inside you, and for the first time in two hundred and thirty-six years, the monster in my blood went quiet."
His hand hovered over my belly, afraid to land.
"I left that morning because the sun was rising and I felt the curse stirring again. I was terrified it would sense you through me. I thought if I stayed away, it would leave you alone."
He laughed again, wet and wrecked.
"Instead I got you pregnant. With the one thing that might finally destroy us both."
I stared at him.
At the strongest man I'd ever met, shaking because of a ghost who looked like me.
Something fierce and furious rose in my chest.
I grabbed his face with both hands and forced him to look at me.
"Listen to me, Noctis Lysander," I said, voice steady even though I was breaking inside. "I am not Elara. I'm not some tragic reincarnation here to repeat history. I'm Tanya Everhart. I eat spicy chips at 3 a.m. and name my plants and cry at sad commercials. And this baby?" I pressed his hand hard against my stomach. "This baby is ours. Not the curse's. Not some prophecy's. Ours."
For the first time, something fluttered under his palm (tiny, but real).
His eyes went wide.
The pup kicked again. Harder.
Noctis made a sound I'd never heard from a man before. Half sob, half prayer.
He dropped his forehead to mine.
"I don't deserve you," he whispered. "But I swear on every moon that ever rose, I will die before I let what happened to her happen to you."
I believed him.
God help me, I believed him.
And when he kissed me this time (slow, desperate, reverent), I kissed him back like I was trying to rewrite both our histories.
Outside, the sky began to pale toward dawn.
Inside, a three-hundred-year-old king cried against my lips while our baby kicked between us like it was saying,
Finally. Took you long enough.