**Six months had passed in the other world.**
In this one, only a single day—barely a minute of true time—had slipped away.
He had learned three things that mattered more than anything else the edit had given him.
First, the fate-edit was imperfect. His height had become monstrous, yes—shoulders broad enough to make doorways feel narrow, presence heavy enough that strangers stepped aside without knowing why—but the rewrite refused to touch anyone already bound to him. Kajal remained exactly as she had always been. The universe allowed him to change himself; it would not let him reshape the people who already loved him.
Second, he now understood the mechanism of travel between worlds. The threshold opened only under precise conditions of need, will, and the quiet expenditure of the strength he gained each time he spent himself inside a chosen womb. It was not a door he could force. It was a current he had to step into at the exact moment it rose.
Third, departure was final. Once he left a world, he could never return to it. He could always find his way back to his own reality, but every other door closed behind him forever. The knowledge sat in his chest like a cold stone.
He had been home for a month.
Living under the same roof as Kajal had become nearly impossible. The scent he carried now was too strong. Her body was too responsive. His own control had grown thinner with every passing night. She had lost control as well. Every evening the air between them thickened until neither of them could breathe without wanting. He had begun to think seriously about opening another door—about leaving before the hunger between them burned the house down around them both.
Then the new world found him.
---
It was a cold winter afternoon in Saint Petersburg. Snow fell in slow, heavy flakes across the cemetery, settling on the bare branches of the birch trees and on the shoulders of his coat. Kaikal stood before two simple headstones, scarf pulled tight against the wind, tears freezing on his cheeks before they could fall. The silence was absolute except for the soft, rhythmic crunch of approaching tires on the frozen path.
A black SUV with tinted windows rolled to a stop a few meters away. The engine idled, a low growl against the quiet. A broad-shouldered bodyguard stepped out first, boots sinking into the snow, and rounded the vehicle to open the rear passenger door with practiced efficiency.
The woman who emerged moved as if the snow itself deferred to her. Tall, elegant, wrapped in a long dark coat that somehow never seemed to collect flakes. Her heels sank into the white without hesitation. Grey eyes scanned the graves first, then settled on him with the calm, absolute assessment of someone who had already decided his future and saw no need to ask permission.
"Kaikal," she said. Her voice carried no warmth, only certainty. "I am Giana. From this moment I am your legal guardian."
He looked at her and understood at once.
New world.
New mother.
---
The estate on Krestovsky Island rose behind high iron gates like a private fortress of stone and dark glass. Snow blanketed the formal gardens; the bare branches of the trees stood like black ink strokes against the white. Inside, the air was warm and smelled of cedar, polished wood, and the faint, expensive bitterness of black tea. Giana walked ahead of him down a long marble corridor, heels clicking in perfect, unhurried rhythm. She never once looked back.
"You will stay in the east wing," she said. "Closest to the medical suite. The staff have been briefed. They know what is required."
She stopped at a heavy oak door and turned. Her gaze moved over him the way a jeweler examines a flawed stone—precise, unhurried, faintly dissatisfied with the cut.
"You look hungry," she remarked, voice dry. "The kitchen is stocked. Eat. I will not have you collapsing on my floors."
Then she was gone, pausing only long enough to brush her fingers over the head of a ginger kitten curled on a velvet cushion in a small alcove. The gesture was almost tender. It vanished the moment she continued walking, coat flaring slightly behind her.
The days settled into a quiet, clinical rhythm. Doctors came each morning with the sharp scent of antiseptic and the soft rustle of latex gloves. They checked his pulse, his temperature, the strange new density of his blood, and left again without explanation. Meals arrived on silver trays at exact hours—always warm, always perfectly portioned. Staff moved through the house like well-trained shadows, never meeting his eyes for longer than necessary. Giana herself remained a presence rather than a person—glimpsed through half-open study doors, heard issuing brief commands to bodyguards in the foyer, occasionally felt as a sudden shift in the temperature of a room she had just left.
On the fourth evening the rain came hard, lashing the tall windows of the east wing. Kaikal sat in the chair beside the fireplace of his suite, the flames throwing long shadows across the rug, when the door opened without a knock.
Giana stood there in a dark coat, hair slightly damp from the weather, the exhaustion of long days visible in the fine lines around her eyes and the subtle tension in her shoulders. She stepped inside, gaze sweeping the room in a single efficient arc—bed, nightstand, medical kit, the untouched tray of tea—before settling on him.
"How are you feeling?"
No greeting. No softness. Only the question.
He met her eyes with the open, unguarded look he had learned to wear like armor in this new life. Something in her expression flickered—surprise, perhaps, or the briefest recognition of a vulnerability she had not expected to find inside these walls.
"Fine," she repeated, as if testing the word for truth. She pulled a chair from the corner and sat facing him, crossing one leg over the other. Firelight carved sharp shadows across her cheekbones and the thin gold of her signet ring.
"You barely touched lunch. The staff noticed."
He continued to watch her. After a moment a dry, almost mocking smile touched the corner of her mouth—one that did not quite reach her eyes.
"Is there something on my shirt," she asked, voice dripping with effortless sarcasm, "or are you simply admiring the architecture?"
She leaned back, twisting the heavy ring on her little finger. The gold tooth at the back of her mouth caught the light when she gave a short, quiet huff of amusement.
"You're a strange one, Kaikal."
Her fingers moved to the buttons of her silk blouse. One by one they came undone with deliberate calm. The fabric parted, revealing pale porcelain skin and the thin, jagged scar that ran just above her left breast—an old wound, white and permanent. She let the blouse slide from her shoulders without haste or apology. It pooled on the floor beside the chair. The albatross tattoo on her left shoulder shifted as she stood, the ink seeming to move in the firelight.
The lace beneath followed. She stood completely bare in the dim room, breathing evenly, unbothered by her own nakedness. The cool air settled against her skin; she did not shiver.
"You've been staring for days," she said quietly. "Stop looking at me as if I were a painting."
She walked to the bed, sat on the edge of the mattress, and rested one warm hand on his knee. The scent of her rose between them—dark wood, something older and more dangerous, threaded with the faint metallic note of rain still clinging to her hair.
"Come here."
He did.
The moment his mouth closed over her nipple the flame ignited.
It was not pleasure. It was pure, white-hot pain that tore through his chest and down his spine as if someone had poured molten metal into his veins. Milk flooded his tongue—thicker, richer, almost electric in its intensity—and with every swallow the fire climbed higher. His body locked. Muscles seized. He would have pulled away if her hands had not already tangled in his hair and forced him closer, nails pressing hard into his scalp.
"Don't stop." Her voice was raw, stripped of every careful distance she had maintained since the cemetery. "Do you understand me? If you pull away now it ends. You will not survive it."
She pressed her forehead to his, breathing hard, eyes wide with something that looked almost like fear beneath the fierce determination.
"Keep going. I've got you. I've got you."
The pain did not lessen at first. It only deepened, a roaring heat that threatened to hollow him out from the inside. Giana held him through it, one hand locked at the back of his skull, the other steadying his jaw so he could not turn away even if he tried. Her body was rigid against his, every muscle braced as if she were the one absorbing the fire. A single tear slid down her cheek, but her expression remained absolute.
"That's it," she whispered against his hair. "Just like that."
The room seemed to shrink. The crackle of the distant fireplace and the lash of rain against the windows faded until the only sounds were their breathing and the quiet, wet pull of his mouth at her breast. Her skin grew slick with a fine sheen of sweat. The scent of her perfume mixed with the heat of their bodies until the air itself felt heavy, almost unbreathable.
Slowly—minute by minute—the fire changed.
The agony did not vanish, but it settled into something he could carry. The heat became strength. The milk no longer burned; it fed. Each deep, deliberate pull filled him with a dense, humming vitality that pushed the last of the pain into the background and left something sharper, cleaner, in its place. He bit down harder, molding the soft weight of her breast with one large hand while the other gripped her waist, anchoring himself to her. Milk flowed freely now, warm and endless, and with every swallow the quiet power the fate-edit had promised him rose once more—different this time, tied to the new world and the woman who had claimed him.
Giana's body softened by degrees. The desperate tension in her shoulders eased. She arched into his mouth with a low, guttural sound that was half relief and half something far more primal. Her fingers stroked through his hair in slow, almost absentminded passes, no longer forcing, only guiding.
"Good," she breathed, voice thick. "That's it. Take what you need."
She leaned back against the headboard, eyes half-closed, watching him with an expression he had never seen on her face before—something close to purpose, or perhaps the first true calm she had allowed herself in years. The clinical detachment she usually wore like armor had cracked, and what showed beneath was raw and human and strangely maternal.
"You're getting stronger," she observed, voice returning to its usual low steadiness, though a faint softness remained at the edges. Her hand drifted down his spine in a gesture that was almost tender, stripped of the cold distance she had maintained since the moment she stepped out of the SUV. "There is no need to rush. We have all night."
Outside the rain continued to fall against the dark windows of the estate, turning the gardens into a blurred watercolor of black and silver. Inside the east wing the fire burned low. Kaikal drank, and the strength continued to settle into his bones—heavier, denser, more certain with every pull. Giana's grey eyes remained fixed on him, reflecting the dying firelight like polished stone.
"Continue," she said simply.
And he did—biting harder, molding her breasts with both hands now, drawing the rich milk deeper, letting the last traces of pain burn away until only the quiet, addictive power remained. Her fingers never left his hair. Her breathing slowed to match the steady rhythm of his feeding. The night stretched ahead of them, long and unbroken, and for the first time since the cemetery he felt the new world begin to accept him as something more than a temporary charge.
Giana's hand traced a small circle between his shoulder blades.
"That's enough for now," she murmured eventually, though she made no move to push him away. "Rest. Tomorrow the doctor returns. And after that… we will see what you are becoming."
He stayed where he was a moment longer, mouth still gentle at her breast, the taste of her milk lingering on his tongue like a promise and a warning both. When he finally lifted his head, her grey eyes were waiting—calm again, but no longer entirely closed.
The rain kept falling.
The fire kept burning.
And the quiet strength continued to rise.