But Aurora? The girl who sat in the back and pressed shields? Daddy's needy little bitch who spent half her waking hours fussing over potions? THAT woman got an element before Vex did, and she was using it right now to protect the Hexwitch like she was some dementia-ridden granny who fell off the stairs and needed help getting back up.
'No.' The thought came hard and sharp enough to cut through the tears. 'I refuse. I refuse to accept that.'
Her mind began racing.
The system description hadn't said every bonded woman receives an element. She'd seen the words when the Bloodfather class was born, felt them through the bond alongside everyone else, and nowhere in that announcement was a guarantee that each of them would draw one of Quinlan's seven elements.
Her fingers were still on the brand, and the warmth was still there, flat and patient and very much alive. The bond wasn't broken. Quinlan hadn't rejected her. The Reservoir was open and humming against her skin and the blood that ran through it was still his blood, still warm, still reaching for her.
'Maybe...' The thought turned slowly, carefully, like a woman handling something fragile. 'Maybe it's because I'm not like them.'
The others had reached for the bond and pulled, Serika finding wind, Blossom finding lightning, Lucille finding magma. They took from Quinlan's Reservoir because they needed his strength, and that was fine, that was what the class was built for, built straight out of Quinlan's overwhelming desire to stand tall with his girls at his side, not by himself. They took from Quinlan's Reservoir because they needed his strength, and that was fine, that was what the class was built for, built straight out of Quinlan's overwhelming desire to stand tall with his girls at his side, not by himself. But Vex...
Vex didn't want to take from him.
She knew what Quinlan was carrying. She couldn't even begin to imagine the strain of feeding an entire family's bat output from a single Reservoir while fighting a mutated dwarf king alone, and the idea of reaching into that pool and yanking out power for herself made her stomach turn in a way the jealousy hadn't.
'Because I'm the one who loves him the most.' She'd fight every other wife in the harem over that claim and die on the hill smiling. 'I'm his undisputed number one, his most devoted, most loving wife, who refused to be a drain on the man she'd burn the world for, and that's why the bond didn't give me an element.'
The rationalization settled into her chest like a balm, and the tears slowed.
She didn't want to take. She wanted to give. She wanted Quinlan to reach into her and use everything she had, her mana, her stamina, her health, her very blood if it would keep him standing one second longer. That was what her curse had been about, the one she'd given him when she became his woman, curse hex she'd poured every ounce of her obsessive love into. She wanted to be so thoroughly given over to him that there was nothing left of her that wasn't his to spend.
But...
Her fingers twitched against the brand on her womb. The warmth pulsed once beneath them, and the thought that surfaced was vicious and perfectly Vex.
'There is one thing in there I wouldn't feel bad about taking.'
Neither an element nor Quinlan's power. Something else entirely, something that had been sitting inside her Hubby since the day he conquered it, something that had no business being that close to him in the first place.
...
Nyxara sat with one leg crossed over the other in Quinlan's soul realm with her chin in one hand and the fingers of the other between her teeth, gnawing on her nails while she watched someone she cared about get hit and couldn't do a single thing about it.
The realm stretched around her in its vast space, and the bond that existed between them after he conquered and bound her, let her feel every impact of the fight on the ridge, every exchange between her Ruin and the fused monstrosity that used to be a dwarf king.
'You chose to take this fight instead of running, my Ruin... So as your devoted woman, I'll cheer you on... Even if the odds are stacked against you so bad, I will-'
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