Chapter 33: Red Ocean

Chapter 33: Chapter 33: Red Ocean

Sebastian was lost in an ocean of blood, although "ocean" was probably the wrong word for something so still.

He was sitting in it rather than drowning, the dark red surface stretching in every direction beneath a colorless sky while the sound of a single drop falling somewhere beyond his sight repeated with maddening patience.

One drop.

Then another.

Then another.

He could not move, could not speak, and could barely feel the shape of his own body beneath him, as though his consciousness had been separated from everything physical and left there alone with the blood and the sound.

God, he hated this place.

Every time he had seen Nero rip his own heart from his chest and place it into Sebastian’s hands, Sebastian had been here first, trapped in the same red stillness and waiting for the vision to become unbearable.

For three years, this place had been the part he dreaded most.

Now, however, there was something different.

He was not asleep.

At least, he did not think he was.

Somewhere beyond the red, beyond whatever barrier his own mind had built around him, he could feel warmth pressing against his body and an arm holding him upright, while a familiar voice reached him through the distance.

My moon.

Sebastian’s chest tightened.

Nero had called him that.

He knew exactly what it meant because Dax had used those words for Christopher often enough while Sebastian was growing up around the Alteras, and there had never been anything casual in the way Dax said them.

Then another memory surfaced.

Can I?

Sebastian tried to move.

Nothing happened.

He tried again, forcing against the stillness with the only thing that had never failed him completely.

Anger.

The red surface shuddered.

Pain returned first, sharp enough to tear through the dreamlike numbness, followed by the sensation of marble beneath his knees, fabric twisted in his hand, and the absurd solidity of Nero’s body wrapped around him.

Sebastian dragged himself toward consciousness.

When his eyes finally opened, everything was blurred by red and white light, but Nero’s face was close enough that Sebastian could make out the pale hair framing it and the purple eyes fixed on him with something Sebastian had almost never seen there before.

Fear.

That unsettled him more than anything.

Sebastian raised one hand with considerable effort, his fingers brushing Nero’s jaw before sliding higher along his cheek.

Nero froze.

"Sebastian."

The name came out of him too quickly.

Sebastian swallowed against the metallic taste filling his mouth.

"Nero."

"I’m here."

Sebastian knew.

That was the problem.

He could still hear the dripping somewhere inside his mind and could still remember Nero dying in his arms in lives that might never have existed, but he also knew exactly what happened if he refused everything now and his body finally crossed the line into berserk.

He had spent years trying to avoid one possible future without ever proving that avoidance itself was not what created it.

His thumb moved weakly over Nero’s cheekbone.

"Do it."

Nero stopped breathing.

For once, there was no smile, no clever answer, and no trace of the prince who could turn almost anything into amusement when it suited him.

"No."

Sebastian almost laughed, but the sound broke into another cough.

Nero tightened his hold immediately.

"You asked."

"I asked because you weren’t conscious enough to answer."

"I heard you."

That silenced Nero.

Sebastian’s hand started to slip, and Nero caught it before it fell, pressing Sebastian’s palm against his cheek as if he could not quite bring himself to let go.

"You heard that too?"

Sebastian knew what he meant.

My moon.

"Yes."

Something changed in Nero’s face then, something too exposed and too quiet for Sebastian to examine properly in his current state.

Sebastian closed his eyes for half a second, then forced them open again.

"Do it already."

Nero thought Sebastian was cruel.

Not deliberately, which made it worse.

Sebastian had opened his eyes after Nero had already convinced himself that he might have to make the decision alone, touched his face with blood on his fingers, admitted that he had heard the one name Nero had never intended to give him under circumstances like these, and then offered exactly what Nero had wanted for seven years.

Permission.

Given while Sebastian was bleeding in his arms.

Nero closed his hand around Sebastian’s.

"You are cruel."

Sebastian’s eyes narrowed faintly. "You’re complaining?"

"Yes."

A breath escaped Sebastian that might have become a laugh under better circumstances.

Nero lowered his forehead against Sebastian’s, careful despite how tightly he was holding him.

"You ask me like this, barely conscious and covered in blood, and somehow I’m supposed to pretend this is how I wanted you to say yes."

Sebastian’s fingers moved faintly against Nero’s cheek.

"You’ll survive."

Nero almost laughed.

There he was.

Still difficult enough to irritate him while half-dead.

"Unfortunately for you," Nero murmured, "so will you."

Then Nero stopped holding the transition back.

He did not lose control and did not simply flood Sebastian with everything he had, because even now precision mattered more than power.

The change could not happen in a few seconds.

Sebastian’s secondary structure had been established as dominant alpha for more than a decade, and rewriting something that fundamental would take months of repeated exposure, gradual receptor adaptation, stabilization, and eventually the full enigma bond if Sebastian continued to allow it.

But Nero could begin.

He let his pheromones move deeper, no longer merely wrapping around Sebastian’s system and forcing it into temporary regulation, but entering the failing structure and giving it another path to follow.

Sebastian jerked sharply in his arms.

For one terrible moment, Nero thought he had pushed too far.

Then Sebastian inhaled.

The breath tore into him like a drowning man finally breaking through the surface after being held underwater too long, his chest expanding violently before his entire body sagged against Nero with the sudden relief of someone whose lungs had remembered what air was.

Nero adjusted his hold immediately, one arm tightening around Sebastian’s waist while his other hand supported the back of his neck.

Sebastian coughed once more, but there was less blood this time.

Then, against all reason, he let out a painful chuckle.

"You look pleased."

"I’m terrified."

"That’s worse."

Sebastian shifted in his arms before Nero could reply.

Nero expected him to pull away now that he could breathe properly.

Instead, Sebastian turned his face to the side of Nero’s neck and moved closer, not dramatically and not with any conscious tenderness. Nero could tease him about later, but with the exhausted instinct of someone searching for whatever had just dragged him back from the edge.

Nero went completely still.

Then his pheromones softened around them.

The scent, usually controlled so carefully that few people ever noticed it at all, warmed into something gentle around Sebastian, like clean air on a summer afternoon, sun-heated grass, and the faint sweetness of vegetation after rain.

Sebastian breathed it in.

His shoulders lowered.

Another breath followed, deeper and steadier.

His fingers tightened in the ruined front of Nero’s shirt.

Nero lowered his face into Sebastian’s dark hair and closed his eyes for a moment.

There was blood everywhere, staining the polished marble beneath them, soaking through Nero’s clothes and drying along Sebastian’s mouth and cheek, and none of this resembled the way Nero had imagined finally being allowed to begin.

It did not matter.

The transition would take months.

There would be physicians, political arguments, medical supervision, legal negotiations, and almost certainly several occasions when Sebastian would decide that surviving did not obligate him to be pleasant about any of it.

Nero could tolerate all of that.

He could tolerate Sebastian’s anger, his suspicion, and every insult he could invent while adjusting to a body that would no longer behave the way it had for most of his life.

Because Sebastian was breathing.

For now, that was enough.