LOGINShare
Chapter 6
publish date:
2026-02-09 00:01:54Third-person POV
For seven Zephyrian days, each one stretching nearly twice as long as an Earth day. Lirian and Vaelor avoided each other with the precision of opposing magnets.
Vaelor had wasted no time after the grove. The next morning, he appeared in the lab corridor only long enough to issue a curt order to the wardens: “Prince Draven will assume oversight of the Terran researchers. I have matters requiring my full attention.” Then he was gone, leaving behind a silence that felt heavier than the citadel’s crystal walls.
Lirian told himself he was relieved. No more towering shadows in the doorway. No more stolen glances that left his pulse racing for no reason. He should have been grieving Lashawn properly, curled up with the ache of betrayal, letting time dull the edges. Instead, every night he woke up gasping from wet dreams that weren’t dreams at all. Phantom touches his skin. A thick, ridged tongue fills his mouth. Hands lifting him like he was paper. And worse, his body kept betraying him in ways he couldn’t explain.
His ass was self-lubricating.
Not just a little slickness. Actual, insistent wetness that soaked through his underwear by mid-morning, leaving him shifting uncomfortably in his chair. He’d wake up drenched between his cheeks, thighs sticky, hole twitching like it remembered being stretched even though nothing had touched it. Was he sick? Some alien virus? An allergic reaction to the Aether? He kept waiting for fever, pain, anything rational. Nothing came except heat, need, and a hollow sadness that had nothing to do with Lashawn anymore.
He couldn’t tell Mara or Elias. The memory of teasing Mara about gawking at the prince still burned, only to have locked mouths with that same prince the very next day. If they knew… God, they’d look at him like a perverted freak. So he suffered in silence, eyes flicking to the lab door every time it slid open, he’d hoped for a glimpse of midnight hair and obsidian horns.
Nothing.
On the seventh day, he cornered Elias during a quiet moment at the analysis console.
“Hey,” Lirian said, keeping his voice low. “Quick question. Thalorians… can they, like… cast spells on people? Make them feel things?”
Elias blinked, then laughed outright. “Spells? You’ve been reading too many fantasy sims, Lirian. They’re biologically advanced, sure—telepathy, Aether manipulation, but they’re not witches.”
Mara snorted from her station. “You’re being silly. Why? You think the prince hexed you because you stared too long?”
Lirian forced a laugh that sounded brittle even to his own ears. “Yeah. Just joking.”
He wasn’t joking. He was fucking serious.
His gaze drifted to the door again, just as it opened.
A Thalorian woman glided in, and the room seemed to pause.
She was breathtaking. Tall even for her kind, nearly seven and a half feet, skin a luminous pearl-gray that shifted like moonlight on water. Long silver hair cascaded in loose waves, pinned with crystal shards that caught the lab lights. Her gown was translucent layers of violet and white, clinging to generous curves and leaving long, toned legs visible through strategic slits. Her eyes were pale lavender, sharp and assessing. She moved with the languid confidence of someone who had never once questioned her place in the universe.
Lady Serina.
Vaelor’s favorite concubine, though Lirian didn’t know that yet. To the humans, she was simply a high-ranking courtier sent to “ensure their comfort.” To the court, she was known for her beauty and her proximity to the heir. To a very few, she was something far more dangerous.
She smiled warmly, perfectly, and inclined her head. “Dr. Voss. Dr. Kade. Dr. Thorne. I am Serina, liaison to the royal household. I’ve come to escort Dr. Voss to the training grounds during your midday respite. The Sovereign believes physical acclimation aids mental clarity in alien visitors.”
Lirian nodded numbly. Anything to get out of this room and away from his own thoughts.
The training grounds were a sprawling open-air arena carved into one of the citadel’s lower plateaus. Magic and technology collided here in ways that made Lirian’s head spin. Different clans trained in designated fields: Nocthrim shadow-stalkers vanished and reappeared in bursts of darkness, practicing silent kills; Vyrkath warriors dove into a gigantic, glowing pool that seemed bottomless, cutting through the water with unnatural speed, tails and gills manifesting mid-dive; Kragvorn titans scaled vertical obstacle walls, adhesive pads on their palms and feet letting them cling to sheer crystal like insects, leaping impossible distances between platforms.
In the central ring, holographic beasts roared and lunged, simulated predators drawn from Zephyria’s wilder regions. Some trainees fought in pairs, weapons materializing from Aether fields: spears of light, blades that sang as they cut air.
Lirian’s guide, Serina, led him to the far corner where a small crowd had gathered, murmuring excitedly.
He saw why.
Vaelor.
The prince fought alone against a ten-foot simulation monster, a hulking, multi-limbed thing of jagged crystal and shadow, claws long as swords. It was terrifyingly real: every swipe left scorch marks on the ground, every roar vibrated through Lirian’s bones. The simulation delivered real force. The guide explained quietly that a solid hit would bruise, break bones, or even kill if you weren’t careful.
Vaelor didn’t look careful.
He moved like liquid violence. Nocthrim horns glowing faintly as he anticipated strikes before they landed. Vyrkath's scales hardened across his forearms as he blocked a claw swipe that would have gutted a lesser fighter. Kragvorn limbs extended, giving him reach to slam a fist into the creature’s side with enough force to crack its crystalline hide. He ducked, rolled, and sprang, delivering a spinning kick that shattered one of the monster’s arms into glittering shards.
It was like watching a movie on Earth, only real. Only devastating.
Lirian couldn’t look away.
From a shadowed viewing balcony high above, Draven leaned against the railing, arms crossed, eyes narrowed.
He’d noticed.
The way Vaelor’s gaze had flicked toward the lab wing twice already this session—unnecessary, distracted glances. The way his rhythm faltered for half a heartbeat when a slender figure in a white lab coat appeared at the arena’s edge. Even from this distance, Draven could see it: his brother, the unbreakable tribrid heir, losing focus over a fragile human.
Opportunity.
Draven’s lips curved into a slow, predatory smile.
Below, Vaelor drove his fist through the monster’s chest. The simulation shattered in a burst of light and sound, dissolving into harmless motes. The crowd cheered.
Vaelor didn’t acknowledge them.
His head turned slowly, inevitably toward the spot where Lirian stood frozen, staring back.
Their eyes met across the crowded grounds.
For one heartbeat, the world narrowed to that single point of contact.
Then Vaelor turned away, shoulders rigid, and strode toward the shadowed exit without a word.
Lirian exhaled shakily, unaware he’d been holding his breath.
Beside him, Serina watched the exchange with cool, unreadable interest.
“Fascinating,” she murmured, almost to herself. “Isn’t it?”
Lirian didn’t answer.
He couldn’t.
Latest chapter
Aether's Obsession Chapter 83: The End
Third-person POVThe sky gardens had been transformed.Flowering crystal vines wound through every archway, their blooms catching the twin suns in shifting gold and violet. Floating lanterns drifted overhead in slow, ceremonial patterns, and the Aether in the garden's crystal floor pulsed with a warm, celebratory frequency that seemed to respond to the gathered joy of everyone standing in it. The music was live, three separate instruments Lirian couldn't name playing something that moved through the chest rather than just the ears.Draven and Elias's wedding was, by any measure, extraordinary.Vaelor had pulled Lirian into a secluded alcove partially hidden by flowering vines before the ceremony began, ostensibly to straighten his ceremonial sash. The straightening had concluded some time ago. They were still in the alcove. Lirian, several months pregnant, wore a flowing light ceremonial gown that draped beautifully over his swollen belly. His silver hair cascaded down to the small of
Aether's Obsession Chapter 82
Third-person POVVaelor took Lirian everywhere.It was not a gradual thing, not a slow loosening of the careful distance he had maintained through the treaty negotiations, through the lab visits, through every corridor and almost-kiss and deliberate not-looking. The morning after the celebration, it had been decided, in the wordless way that Vaelor decided most things, and the citadel had rearranged itself around the new reality with the efficiency of something that understood arguing with the Sovereign was not a productive use of anyone's time.Where Vaelor walked, Lirian walked beside him. One large hand at the small of his back, constant and warm, the proprietary ease of something that had stopped performing restraint. His tail found Lirian's ankle during meetings. His fingers moved silver hair from Lirian's face in corridors without breaking stride or conversation. He dressed him every morning from the wardrobe he had commissioned, different shade silvery fabrics that caught the Ae
Aether's Obsession Chapter 81
Zafer's POVThe vision hit without warning.One moment, I was asleep, warm and anchored in the dark. The next I was somewhere else entirely, kneeling on a floating island, the crystal ground fracturing beneath me in slow, spreading lines, the sky above wrong in the way that things are wrong in the moments before something irreversible happens.Blood in my mouth. Warm and metallic, the taste of something internal giving way.My hands were pressed flat against the cracking crystal, but I couldn't feel them properly — couldn't feel much of anything properly, because my body was doing something bodies are not supposed to do. Coming apart. Not violently, not with pain that screamed, but with the slow, terrible inevitability of something being reclaimed. Blue Aether rising through my skin from the inside, scattering into the wind in shimmering fragments, piece by piece, the edges of me becoming light and then becoming nothing.And Vaelor.Running toward me across the island with terror on hi
Aether's Obsession Chapter 80
Zafer’s POV I was crying. Not from pain — though there was plenty of that — but from the overwhelming pleasure that kept crashing through me in waves I couldn’t control. My body had never felt anything like this. Every nerve was lit up, every inch of me hypersensitive, and Vaelor showed no sign of stopping. He leaned over me, Eyes low, like he was drunk on the feeling, his long dark hair falling like a curtain around us, shielding my flushed face from the rest of the world. His lips found mine in a deep, hungry kiss. At the same time, his thick cock rutted slowly against my swollen, leaking hole, not pushing inside yet, just sliding the heavy length between my cheeks, teasing the sensitive rim over and over. One of his large hands wrapped around my spent cock, stroking it with slow, firm movements. I was only leaking watery fluid now, but he kept touching me anyway, drawing out every last tremor. His other hand cradled my face, thumb brushing my cheek as he kissed me deeper,
Aether's Obsession Chapter 79
Zafer’s POV The sovereign's breath ghosted against my ear, his voice low and heavy.“How do you want to be punished?”I couldn’t find the words. My body was already reacting to his presence, heat pooling low in my belly. He didn’t rush me. "It seems you've run out of time... to negotiate," he said as he took slow, powerful strides toward me before walking around me. “Pants down,” he said quietly. “To your ankles. Then bend over the bed.” My hands trembled as I obeyed, sliding the fabric down until it bunched at my ankles. I leaned forward, forearms resting on the edge of the bed, back arched, presenting myself to him. He stood behind me in silence for a long moment. I could feel his gaze moving over my body like a physical touch. The first spank landed — firm, deliberate. The sting bloomed across my left cheek. I gasped softly.“Count,” he murmured. “One!”He continued slowly, each spank measured and controlled. By the tenth, my ass was burning, the skin turning a deeper, flushed hu
Aether's Obsession Chapter 78
Zafer's POVI still hadn't spoken to Vaelor about my vision as the timing was never right. I wonder how he had the time to stalk me, as it seems as though he was always occupied.Life in the citadel after the treaty signing had not settled into anything resembling calm.If anything, it had become more — more everything. More warmth, more weight, more of Vaelor's presence filling every room I walked into, whether he was physically in it or not. The citadel felt different now that I was staying in it as something other than a delegation member. Like the building itself had been informed of the change in status and had adjusted its relationship to me accordingly.Vaelor had certainly adjusted his.His hands found me constantly — not possessively in the way that demanded, but in the way of something that had been denied contact for long enough that proximity had become a reflex. A hand at the small of my back when we walked. His tail found my ankle during our private meals with the casual
Aether's Obsession Chapter 36
Third-Person POVThe room was still a research chamber, but the atmosphere had changed.The floating diagnostic orbs dimmed to a sickly amber. The silver circuitry in the obsidian walls pulsed faster, like veins under fevered skin. Four Vorathian-aligned palace agents stood in a loose semicircle, t
Last Updated : 2026-04-05Aether's Obsession Chapter 19
Lirian's POV The Vyrkath cavern entrances were in the sub-levels, beneath the oldest wing, the part of the citadel that predated the throne itself, where the stonework was rough, and the Aether ran in open channels along the floor like shallow rivers of light. I'd mapped this section in my second
Last Updated : 2026-03-23Aether's Obsession Chapter 8
Vaelor’s POVI should have stayed away.I told myself the assignment was duty, nothing more. The Sovereign wanted the Terran xenobiologist protected in Hydralis waters; I was the only one with Vyrkath blood strong enough to navigate the depths and survive any current that turned murderous. Logi
Last Updated : 2026-03-17Aether's Obsession Chapter 7
Third-person POVTwo months had passed in a haze of stolen glances and suppressed heartbeats.Lirian had thrown himself into the work with a ferocity that bordered on obsession. Sample analysis, degradation mapping, Aether resonance charts, anything to drown out the constant, humiliating ache bet
Last Updated : 2026-03-17
You may also like
Trapped Between Two Alpha Captains
Em Sama12.6K viewsMy Rival My lover
glorypens22.8K viewsSurrender Freely: Lyker's Redemption
Unsolvable Mystery19.3K viewsThe Alpha In My Sheets
Cameo23.7K viewsDiscarded: The Omega’s Last Run
Dan-Boy452 viewsThe Edge Of You
Divayne175 viewsTo Marry a Monster
PINKMama1.0K viewsMore than Rivals, less than Mates.
Winwrite139 views
