The corridor to Damon's chambers had never felt this long.
I walked it with my hand pressed against my stomach—a habit I'd already developed in the two days since the healers confirmed what my body already knew. Malik knew.
The healers knew. But none of them were Damon, and Damon was the one whose reaction I couldn't predict.
I was halfway to his door when Elara nearly collided with me.
She came around the corner with flushed cheeks, slightly disheveled hair, and the ghost of a smile she hadn't quite finished wearing. She stopped when she saw me, composure reassembling itself with admirable speed. "Your Majesty."
"Elara." I couldn't help the knowing edge that crept into my voice. "You look... thoroughly reviewed."
Her flush deepened by exactly one shade. "We were—the territorial correspondence required—" She cleared her throat. "I was just leaving, Your Majesty."
"Elara," I said warmly, watching her walk away with the measured stride of a woman desperately trying not to look like she was fleeing.
She murmured her respects, and something about reviewing documents in the morning, and walked away down the corridor with the measured stride of a woman desperately trying not to look like she was fleeing.
I watched her go with a warmth spreading through my chest that had nothing to do with the pregnancy and everything to do with the flustered, giggling, pink-cheeked reality of a woman who'd just spent time with my brother and emerged looking like that.
Elara Thornwood—practical, composed, constitutionally incapable of performance—had been giggling.
In my brother's chambers. With disheveled hair and flushed cheeks and a smile she couldn't suppress.
Something was changing behind Damon's walls. And I could feel it the moment I stepped through his door.
The twin bond flooded with his emotions before I'd crossed the threshold—happiness, unfamiliar and tentative, rising through the connection like warmth from a fire he'd only just allowed himself to sit near.
Not full, not yet. Not the blazing certainty of a man who'd surrendered to joy. But there was light in it, and beneath the light, something I hadn't felt from him in all the months since we'd found each other—a fragile, trembling thread of trust.
Not complete, not unguarded, but present. Real. Directed at the woman who'd just walked past me with flushed cheeks and a smile she couldn't contain.
Damon stood by the window, and his face when he turned to greet me was softer than I'd seen it in weeks.
The sharp edges of his usual guarded expression had been smoothed by whatever had happened with Elara, and for a moment he looked younger, lighter, more like the brother I'd imagined having during all those years when I hadn't known he existed.
"You look different," I said, settling into the chair by his fire with what I hoped was casual ease. "Something's changed."
The softness vanished, replaced by the reflexive defensiveness I knew too well.
"Nothing's changed. Elara and I were reviewing territorial correspondence and the conversation was—"
He stopped, apparently deciding that whatever adjective he'd been reaching for would incriminate him further. "We were working."
"Of course you were," I said, and let it sit there between us without pushing.
He wasn't ready to name what was happening with Elara—might not even have the vocabulary for it yet, given how thoroughly Seraphine had poisoned his understanding of intimacy.
The last thing he needed was his sister prying the doors open before he'd figured out how to unlock them himself.
He studied me with narrowed eyes, recognizing the deliberate retreat, and the twin bond hummed with his gratitude—unspoken, barely acknowledged, but warm.
I gave him the silence, let him resettle, and watched the tension in his shoulders gradually release as he realized I wasn't going to interrogate him about the woman who'd left his chambers glowing.
Then I took a breath, and the nervousness I'd been managing since the corridor surged back with full force. "Damon, sit down. I need to tell you something."
Something in my tone caught him. Through the bond, I felt his attention sharpen—the happiness receding behind the alert, protective instinct that surfaced whenever he sensed I was carrying something heavy.
He sat across from me, and his eyes searched my face the way they always did, reading me through the bond and through the expressions I could never fully hide from my twin.
I built my courage the way I'd learned to build everything since taking the throne—deliberately, brick by brick, refusing to let the fear dismantle what needed to be constructed.
"I'm pregnant, Damon. Six weeks. The healers confirmed it." I paused, then added the part that made my heart stammer. "Twins."
The bond exploded with his reaction—surprise first, bright and sharp, followed immediately by a joy so fierce and instinctive it nearly knocked the breath from my lungs.
His face transformed, the guarded composure cracking open to reveal something raw and luminous underneath, and for a moment my brother looked exactly like a man who'd just been told the family he'd never had was growing.
"Malik," he said, and it wasn't a question. The name came out steady, certain, with none of the hesitation or disapproval I'd been bracing for. He already knew.
The relief that washed through me was so powerful my eyes stung. But I owed him honesty beyond announcement—I owed him the conversation we'd never properly had.
"Things never started in a good way between us, Damon. You and I—we were strangers raised apart, thrown together by a prophecy that tried to make us enemies.”
Something deep charged in our bond as I spoke more. “We've built something real from that, something I treasure more than I know how to say. But I need to know how you feel about this. Not what you think is politically correct, not what you believe I want to hear. How you actually feel."
Damon leaned forward, and the bond between us thrummed with a sincerity so absolute it left no room for performance.
"I'm happy, Kira. Genuinely, completely happy. And before you ask whether that happiness comes with conditions or reservations—it doesn't."
His voice carried the particular weight of a man choosing his words with the precision they deserved.
"Malik is an omega who rose higher than any noble in this realm through nothing but skill and integrity and the kind of loyalty that most wolves in that council chamber couldn't comprehend if you drew them a diagram.”
He raises his chin as he continues. “The lords they wanted to match you with—the noble sons with their ancient bloodlines and their political advantages—most of them are nothing but corruption dressed in ceremony.” I smiled gratefully as he continued.
“Malik earned everything he has, and he earned your love, and I would rather my sister chose a man of genuine worth over a man of inherited title every single day."
His hand found mine, and the twin bond deepened between our clasped fingers—wider, warmer,
"You're my sister. My twin. The other half of everything I am. I will always stand beside you, Kira. Whatever you choose, whoever you love, whatever the council thinks about propriety and bloodlines and the way things are supposed to be done. You have me. Always."
The tears came before I could stop them, and I didn't try. I let them fall, let the relief and the love and the overwhelming gratitude pour through the bond until Damon could feel exactly what his words meant to me.
He squeezed my hand, and I squeezed back, and for a moment we were just two people who'd survived the worst the world could throw at them and somehow come out the other side with enough love left to build a future.
"The council won't be as gracious," I said, wiping my cheeks with my free hand.
Damon's expression hardened into something that looked remarkably like the Dark King the court had learned to respect.
"The council will accept what we tell them to accept. And we'll tell them together." He stood, pulling me gently to my feet, and the twin bond hummed between us—steady, fierce, unbreakable. "Ready?"
I pressed my hand to my stomach, felt the magic pulse warm beneath my palm, and nodded.
Together. The way it was always supposed to be.