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The curve is unmistakable now. Obvious. She’s not just carrying my essence anymore. She’s carrying something else. Something that pulses with a heartbeat that sounds like distant thunder, that tastes like old magic and new hunger.

Something I made.

The realization hits me like a fist to the throat. I did this. When I fed on her grief, when I filled the hollow spaces inside her with my own essence, I didn’t just take. I gave. And now there’s something growing inside her that shouldn’t exist.

Incubi don’t father children. We’re parasites. We steal life force, drain it like siphoning fuel from a tank. We don’t create anything. We consume. We feed. We’re hunger given form, not life.

But the bond in my chest pulls taut, dragging my attention to the thing inside her, and I can feel it. A second heartbeat synced with mine. A piece of me that’s become something more.

“You,” I say, and my voice cracks. Fractures. “What the fuck did you do to yourself?”

Her laugh is sharp. Brittle. “What did I do?” She pushes off the wall, stalks toward me with her hands clenched into fists. “You’re the one who crawled into my kitchen and fed on me like I was a goddamn buffet. You’re the one who—” She stops. Her eyes go wide. “Oh my god.”

She’s smelling me.

I watch the recognition dawn on her face. Watch her nostrils flare, her pupils dilate. She takes another step closer, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off her skin.

The hunger stirs.

Not the void-hunger. The other one. The primal, sexual need that’s written into my bones, that drives me to hunt warm bodies and willing flesh. It rises like a tide, hot and insistent, responding to her proximity, her scent, the way her pulse hammers visible in her throat.

I shove it down. Hard. Because the protective instinct roars louder, drowning out everything else. She’s carrying something fragile. Something mine. And I will not risk it. Not for anything.

“It was you,” she whispers. “The shadow in my kitchen. Malak. The one they whisper about.” She swallows hard. “You did this to me.”

I should back up. Put distance between us. But the bond won’t let me. It’s pulling me toward her like gravity, like the tide, like every natural force that can’t be denied.

“Yes,” I say. “I’m Malak.”

“You got me pregnant.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“You didn’t mean to?” Her voice rises, echoing off the brick walls. “You crawled into my house in the middle of the night, fed on my grief, and somehow knocked me up with—with—” She gestures at her stomach. “Whatever the hell this is, and you didn’t mean to?”

“Incubi don’t father children,” I say flatly. “We don’t create life. We steal it. What happened between us—” I stop. Search for words that don’t exist. “It shouldn’t be possible.”

“Well, clearly it is.” She presses both hands against her stomach. The gesture is protective. Instinctive. “Because there’s something inside me, and it’s growing, and Mariska says it might kill me when it decides to come out.”

“Mariska told you that?”

“She also said you’re a void-walker. That I coupled with something that shouldn’t exist. That this—” She gestures between us. “This is forbidden magic.”

“She’s not wrong.”

“Great. Fantastic.” Kaia laughs again, the sound dangerously close to hysteria. “So I’m carrying a monster baby that might kill me, I’ve got a corrupt businessman trying to steal my bakery, and the father is a literal void daemon. This is fine. Everything is fine.”

“I won’t let you die.”

The words spill out before I can stop them. Before I can think. But the moment they’re out, I know they’re true. The bond won’t let me walk away. Won’t let me leave her unprotected. She’s carrying part of me, and every instinct I have is screaming to keep her safe.

Even if that means staying.

Even if that means letting her see what I really am.

She stares at me. “You can’t even access your full power. Mariska said you gave me something. That I’m carrying your strength.”

“You are.”