Chapter 278: The Crimson Womb
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Blood welled steadily from it, dark red at first glance, but when one looked too long, there were stranger depths inside the color. More life than ordinary blood should hold. More pressure. More heat. More hidden violence. The blood of someone who had swallowed other blood and become something no longer simple beneath the skin.
It struck the glass in measured drops.
Then faster.
Then in a narrow ribbon when he tightened his hand slightly.
Lily stood before him and watched.
She did not look away.
She had already walked past too many points of retreat tonight. There was no need to lose herself at the sight of blood now, not when she had seen what feeding looked like with her own eyes and still stepped forward afterward.
But this was different.
Seeing Vera and Vela feed from captives had been ugly truth.
Watching Sekhmet bleed for her was something else entirely.
The glass slowly gathered crimson.
Bat Bat floated at Lily’s shoulder in a state of suppressed outrage and fascination.
Auri stood several steps away, silent and alert, her eyes moving between Sekhmet’s hand, the glass, Lily’s face, and the dark horizon beyond. She had never seen this exact ritual before. She had seen blood. She had seen Sekhmet do impossible things. She had seen the Void Land answer him like a hidden kingdom waiting to be named. But this... this was not a battle. Not feeding. Not punishment. This was creation.
And Auri understood enough to feel how dangerous that word really was.
Vera and Vela remained in place, guarding the line between the central ground and Sofia and Natasha. Neither woman moved unnecessarily. Neither allowed the sealed half-gods too much visual space. But both twins watched from the corners of their eyes, and both remembered.
Their own turning had not happened like this. Not exactly. The details were still written into their blood, into the places in them that answered him before command finished forming. They remembered pain. Heat. Hunger. The terror of letting go. The terrible relief after.
The glass filled.
Not all at once.
Not quickly enough for anyone to ignore what it meant.
By the time it reached the right level, the air around the glass itself felt heavier. The liquid inside held a faint inner glow now, too subtle for ordinary sight perhaps, but unmistakable to those present. It looked like blood that had swallowed a secret and decided not to share.
Sekhmet lowered his hand at last.
The cut across his palm was already beginning to close. His body did not waste time healing itself anymore. Not after everything he had become. The wound remained visible, but the bleeding slowed quickly, then stopped.
He picked up the glass.
The blood within it swirled once under the motion.
Then he looked at Lily.
"Give me your hand."
She did.
No hesitation.
Just trust.
Her hand was warm when he took it, smaller than his, very alive. He turned it, palm up first, not because that was where he intended to bite, but because he wanted to feel the shape of it in his hand. Thin bones. Noble softness. The pulse beneath the skin. This hand had touched his chest tonight as if it belonged there. It had held onto him during kisses. It had worn no ring because secrecy demanded too much and the world was not allowed to see what he already knew.
His wife.
The thought hit him again.
More dangerous every time.
He let her fingers close lightly around his for one brief second before speaking.
"This happens in order," he said.
Lily nodded once.
His voice remained low and steady. "First I take your blood. Then you drink mine. After that, the transformation begins."
Bat Bat, unable to stop herself, whispered loudly, "Very dramatic."
No one answered her.
Lily’s gaze stayed on Sekhmet’s face. "Will it hurt when you bite?"
"Yes," he said.
Her mouth moved faintly. "You say comforting things so well."
"It is better than lying."
"That is true."
Sekhmet lowered her hand and guided her a step closer, enough that he could see every small reaction in her face. The pulse at her throat had grown faster again. Her breathing remained steady only because she was making it steady. She looked brave.
More importantly, she looked willing.
He needed that.
Not borrowed courage. Not pressured consent. Not some fragile nod pushed out by fear of disappointing him.
Willing.
He lifted his free hand and touched the side of her neck gently, not yet possessive, not yet hungry, simply measuring where skin met a pulse. Lily shivered.
Vera looked away for one second.
Vela did not.
Auri’s throat moved once as she watched, absorbing every detail because she knew this moment mattered far beyond simple curiosity. Bat Bat, meanwhile, went absolutely still in the air, tiny eyes huge, as if watching some sacred crime she had no right to interrupt.
Sekhmet’s fingers shifted, tilting Lily’s chin very slightly.
"Look at me," he said.
She did.
"If you want me to stop, say it before I bite."
That made her expression change.
Not because she was suddenly afraid.
Because the line made the reality sharper.
This was not romance now.
Not only romance.
This was an irreversible structure.
Lily looked into his eyes and said, quietly but with no wavering at all, "Do not stop."
Something in him tightened hard enough to hurt.
Let it hurt. That made the control cleaner.
He lowered his head.
His mouth brushed her skin first, just enough for her to feel breath and the shape of what came before pain. Lily’s fingers tightened around the hand still holding hers.
Then Sekhmet let his fangs descend.
He bit.
Lily’s whole body jolted.
Not violently. Just enough to tell the truth. The pain was real. Sharp and immediate, two clean punctures at the side of the neck where flesh was sensitive enough to make the act intimate and cruel at once. A breath tore out of her, soft and unsteady.