Chapter 6: The Moon's Pull
The days after the cliffs settled into a tense, watchful rhythm. James kept his word. Regulus had the freedom of the villa and the headland. Clothes arrived from the seamstress—fine linen chitons in shades of sea-glass and slate, a woolen cloak for the cooler evenings. Luna was a quiet shadow, appearing with food, or fresh water for washing, or simply to sit with him on the balcony, her presence a silent anchor.
James trained in the mornings, a spectacle of violence that Regulus watched from the shade. In the afternoons, he was often called away to the port on business, or to drill his men. He returned at dusk, smelling of horse, leather, and sweat. He would find Regulus, wherever he was, and claim him.
The claiming was always physical, often rough, but now threaded with a searching intensity. In the bathing chamber, James would push Regulus against the wall, hooking one of his legs over his hip as he thrust into him, his mouth sucking bruises into the pale skin of his throat. “Tell me what you feel,” he’d growl, his fingers digging into Regulus’s thigh. On the balcony under the stars, he would bend Regulus over the rail, the sea air cool on their heated skin as he drove into him from behind, his hand splayed possessively over Regulus’s stomach. “Is this enough?” he’d rasp, his thrusts brutal and deep. “Does this touch the place that aches?”
It did, in a way. The blinding, physical overwhelm was a distraction from the deeper, hollowing grief. But it was a distraction, not a cure. Regulus began to fade. It was slow, subtle. The lustrous quality of his skin dulled. The silver starlight in his eyes dimmed to a flat grey. He picked at his food. He spent hours motionless on the balcony, not seeing the view, his body responding listlessly even to James’s most demanding touches. He was a cut flower in clear water, beautiful but dying by inches.
James noticed. The frustration in him built like a storm. He brought gifts: a necklace of matched pearls, a finely crafted lyre, a bottle of perfume from Egypt that smelled of lotus and myrrh. Regulus would thank him with empty politeness, set them aside, and return to his silent vigil.
One evening, a week after the full moon, it broke.
Regulus was in the bathing chamber, standing in the pool, letting the warm water lap at his hips. He wasn’t washing. He was just standing there, his head bowed, his shoulders slumped.
James stood in the doorway, having just returned. He saw the posture, the profound stillness that was not peace but surrender. He stripped off his tunic and entered the water silently. He came up behind Regulus, his hands sliding around his waist, pulling him back against his chest. He was hard, already, always ready for him. He nuzzled the damp hair at Regulus’s temple.
“You’re quiet tonight,” James murmured, his lips against Regulus’s pointed ear.
Regulus said nothing. He didn’t lean back into the embrace. He was a statue in James’s arms.
James’s hands moved, one sliding down to cup between his legs, the other roaming up to tease a nipple. He found Regulus soft, unresponsive. He squeezed, trying to coax a reaction. Nothing.
Anger, hot and immediate, flushed through James. It was the arena-fury, the one that saw a reluctant opponent. He spun Regulus around, gripping his arms. “What is wrong with you?” he demanded, his voice echoing off the marble. “You have everything. Comfort. Freedom. My bed. My cock. What more do you fucking want?”
Regulus looked past him, his eyes focused on the steam coiling toward the ceiling. “Nothing, Master.”
“Don’t,” James snapped. He pulled him from the pool, water splashing across the floor, and shoved a linen towel at him. “Dry off. Now.”
He dressed quickly, his movements sharp. He pointed to the door leading back to the bedroom. “Go. Sit.”
Regulus walked, trailing damp footprints. He sat on the edge of the bed, the linen clutched around his shoulders. James paced before him, a caged predator.
“I have tried,” James said, each word bitten off. “I have asked. I have given. And you… you wither. You look at me with dead eyes. You spread your legs like it’s a chore.” He stopped, facing him. “Tell me what you need. To be happy. Right now. Tell me.”
Regulus’s head lifted slowly. A spark, not of life, but of bitter anger, flickered in the grey depths. “Happy?” The word was a dry leaf, crumbling. “What I want does not matter. I am your property. Property does not get to want. It gets used. You are very good at using me. Be content with that.”
“I’m not content with that!” James roared, the sound raw. He kneeled suddenly, putting his face level with Regulus’s, his hands gripping the edge of the bed on either side of Regulus’s hips. “I don’t want it to be that way. I want you to be happy here. With me. I want… fuck.” He ran a hand through his hair, the confession torn from him. “I want you to be my betrothed. Not my slave. Mine.”
Regulus stared at him. Then a sound escaped him—a sharp, humorless laugh that bordered on a sob. “Your betrothed? By what rites? By Roman law? Your empire stole me before my own people could wed me. Did you know that?” His voice rose, tremulous with pent-up venom. “I was promised. There was a ceremony begun, on the sand under the high tide moon. To bind my soul to the sea, so that when my body died, my essence could return to it. It was not finished. Your soldiers came. They dragged me from the water. So my soul is untethered. It will not return to the sea. It will just… scatter. So no, James Potter, I will never be happy. I am a ghost in a pretty cage.”
James flinched as if struck. Regulus wasn’t done.
“You give me the cliff and deny me the plunge. You let me see the water but never feel it alone, just me and the depths. You ask me what I need? I need my brother! Sirius, who you Romans took and turned into a weapon for your northern wars. Is he even alive? Is he broken like me? I need privacy! I need to not have every sigh, every tear, every fucking moment of weakness witnessed and cataloged by you or that silent girl! I need to not have your hands on me when all I crave is the cold, silent embrace of the sea!”
He was shouting now, tears of fury carving clean tracks through the salt residue on his cheeks. “You want to make me happy? Give me back what you stole. You can’t. So stop trying. Fuck me, use me, enjoy your trophy. But do not ask me to smile for you while I’m dying inside this gilded room.”
The tirade ended. The room rang with silence, broken only by Regulus’s ragged breathing. He expected a blow. He expected to be thrown down and taken violently, a punishment for his insolence.
James did not move. He remained on his knees, his face a mask of stark, unguarded concentration. He was listening. Truly listening. His eyes scanned Regulus’s face, not with anger, but with a processing intensity, as if deciphering a complex battle strategy.
Several long moments passed. The distant crash of waves filtered through the balcony doors.
“Your soul needs binding to the sea,” James repeated, his voice low, thoughtful.
“It’s impossible now,” Regulus spat, the fight draining out of him, leaving hollow exhaustion.
“You need to swim alone.”
“You’ve forbidden it.”
“You need to know about your brother.”
Regulus’s breath hitched. He hadn’t expected that. “What?”
James stood up, his tall frame unfolding. He began to pace again, but slowly now, mind working. “Sirius Black. Sent to the northern frontier under General Lupus.” He glanced at Regulus. “Remus, my man, he came from that legion. He might know something. I can ask. I can send inquiries.”
Regulus could only stare, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs.
James stopped pacing. He looked at Regulus, his hazel eyes clear, resolved. “The other things… the privacy, the swimming, the…” He struggled with the concept, the foreign magic of it. “The soul-binding. I don’t know. But I will think on it.” He approached the bed again, not to touch, but to stand close. “You are not just property to me, Regulus. I don’t know what you are. But you are not that.”
He turned and walked to the door. He paused, his hand on the frame. “Sleep. I will not trouble you tonight.”
He left, closing the door softly behind him.
Regulus sat in the profound quiet, the echoes of his own shouts still ringing in his ears. The towel was damp and cold around him. He shivered.
No blow had come. No brutal taking. Instead, the Lion of the Arena had knelt, had listened, and had promised to think.
It was the most terrifying thing that had happened yet. It was a crack of light in the shell of his despair, so sudden and sharp it felt like a new kind of pain. He lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling, the salt of his tears drying on his skin, the wild, desperate hope he had tried to extinguish now flickering stubbornly back to life, fanned by the unexpected breath of a conqueror’s consideration.
He lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling, the salt of his tears drying on his skin, the wild, desperate hope he had tried to extinguish now flickering stubbornly back to life, fanned by the unexpected breath of a conqueror’s consideration.
James did not go to his own chambers. He walked instead, barefoot and shirtless, through the sleeping villa’s cool, dark halls. His mind was a battlefield, rearranging itself around Regulus’s words. Soul. Untethered. Scatter. The concepts were foreign, unsettling. They spoke of a permanence beyond the finality of a sword-thrust, a loss he could not comprehend but whose evidence was in the fading light of Regulus’s eyes.
He found Luna in the kitchen’s back courtyard, kneeling by a stone basin where she was cleaning fish, her small hands moving with swift, silvered efficiency in the moonlight. She looked up, her black eyes seeing everything. She did not seem surprised.
“Master,” she whispered, wiping her hands on her apron.
“The full moon ceremony,” James said, the words rough. He leaned against the doorframe, crossing his arms. The night air was chill on his skin. “He spoke of it. A binding. On the shore. Before marriage. Explain it to me.”
Luna studied him for a long moment. She looked down at the dead fish, its scales glinting. “For the sea-born, the soul is a current,” she began, her voice a soft ripple. “The body is a vessel. The marriage rite is the joining of two vessels, yes? But the full moon after, with the high tide… that is the offering. The couple gives themselves to the water’s edge. Their pleasure, their union, their seed and essence—it is a prayer. It tells the deep: ‘This one is claimed, but remains yours. Hold their spirit. Welcome it home when the vessel breaks.’” She looked up, her gaze piercing. “Without it, the spirit has no anchor. It is adrift. Lost between worlds.”
James digested this, a cold knot forming in his gut. “And if… if the joining happens before this ceremony?”
Luna’s expression did not change, but a profound sadness deepened the hollows of her face. “Then every touch that follows is a theft. A claiming the sea does not witness. It is an act in a closed room, away from the moon’s eye. To the old ones, it is a slight. A deep offense. The nymph’s body may sing, but their spirit weeps salt that cannot fall.”
The words landed like physical blows. James saw it all with horrific clarity: the bathing chamber, the cliffside grass, the bed. Every time he had pinned Regulus beneath him, every time he had lost himself in that tight, glorious heat, he had been hammering another nail into a spiritual coffin. He had been flaying Regulus’s soul while worshipping his body.
“How do I fix it?” The question was torn from him, raw.
Luna shook her head slowly. “The rite is for the wedded. It is a blessing on a bond. You have a slave. There is no bond to bless. Only a chain.” She returned to her work, the finality in her posture absolute. “The sea does not recognize chains.”
James pushed off the frame, turning away. The villa walls felt suddenly suffocating, a mockery of stone. He had won a thousand fights. He could solve any problem presented by steel or muscle. This was a labyrinth of water and moonlight, and he was blundering through it blind, causing damage with every step.
He found himself back outside Regulus’s door. The silence from within was a tangible weight. He opened it.
Regulus hadn’t moved from the bed. His eyes were open, fixed on the ceiling. The linen sheet was tangled around his hips. Moonlight from the balcony painted his torso in monochrome, highlighting the delicate architecture of his ribs, the faint, ethereal shimmer that was slowly leaching from his skin.
James didn’t speak. He walked to the bed, his shadow falling over Regulus. He saw the track of dried tears, the brittle set of his mouth. The anger was gone, burnt away, leaving only a cold, clarifying dread.
He knelt on the bed, straddling Regulus’s hips. He placed his hands on either side of Regulus’s head, caging him. Regulus’s eyes shifted, focusing on him. There was no fear, only a vast, exhausted resignation.
“Tell me about the ceremony,” James said, his voice low. “The details. How it’s done.”
Regulus’s brows drew together. A faint, confused frown. “Why?”
“Tell me.”
A long pause. Regulus’s voice was a ghost of sound. “On the shore. Where the waves can reach. Sand, not grass. Under the moon, when it is highest. There is… a chant. A calling to the triad: Moon, Tide, Deep. Then… you join. You take your partner. You let the sea witness. You finish inside them, as the water washes over your feet. You offer your pleasure as a tribute. You anchor them.”
James listened, committing it to memory. Sand. Moon high. The water’s touch. A tribute. He looked down at Regulus’s body, so beautifully made for this ritual he had defiled.
“I have slighted your gods,” James stated, no apology in it, just a grim acknowledgment.
Regulus’s breath hitched. “You didn’t know.”
“That doesn’t matter to the sea, does it?”
“No.”
James lowered himself slowly, until his weight settled on Regulus, chest to chest. He felt the frantic rabbit-pulse of Regulus’s heart against his own. He buried his face in the curve of Regulus’s neck, inhaling the scent of salt and despair.
“Then we will inform them,” he murmured into his skin.
His mouth found Regulus’s. This kiss was different. It was not claiming, but questioning. It was deep, wet, searching. Regulus made a small, broken sound against his lips, his hands coming up to clutch weakly at James’s shoulders. James kissed him until that weakness turned to a shuddering response, until Regulus’s mouth opened under his with a desperate hunger that had nothing to do with pleasure and everything to do with a need for anchor.
James broke the kiss, trailing his mouth down Regulus’s throat, over his collarbone. He took a nipple into his mouth, sucking hard, worrying it with his teeth until Regulus arched off the bed with a sharp cry. He moved to the other, lavishing it with the same rough attention. His hands slid down Regulus’s sides, gripping his hips, holding him down as he continued his slow, deliberate descent.
He kissed the quivering plane of his stomach, the sharp hip bones. He pushed Regulus’s thighs apart, spreading him wide under the moonlight. James looked, really looked, at the delicate, dual sex presented to him—the flushed, wet folds and the tight, clenched entrance below. He saw it now not just as a source of his pleasure, but as the sacred site of a ritual he had trampled.
“James…” Regulus whispered, a question and a plea.
James answered by lowering his head and licking a slow, broad stripe up the center of him. Regulus jolted, a full-body spasm, a choked gasp ripping from his throat. James did it again, focusing on the sensitive bud, sucking it into his mouth, flicking his tongue over it with a ruthless precision he usually reserved for swordplay. He wanted to wring every sound, every shudder, every drop of sensation from him. He ate Regulus out with a focused intensity that was devastating, his tongue plunging inside the welcoming heat of his cunt, then circling back to tease the tight, furrowed rim of his ass.
Regulus was unraveling beneath him, his fingers tangled in James’s hair, not pushing him away but holding on as if he were the only solid thing in a dissolving world. He was sobbing, babbling, his back bowing off the bed. “Please, oh, please, I can’t—"
James pulled back, his mouth glistening. He looked up the length of Regulus’s trembling body. “You can. You will. This is for them. For you.” He positioned himself, the thick head of his cock nudging against Regulus’s soaked entrance. He didn’t push. “Call them.”
Regulus’s eyes were wide, pupils blown black with need and confusion. “What?”
“The triad. Call them. Now.”
Understanding dawned, brutal and bright. Regulus’s lips parted. The words that emerged were in his own liquid, flowing tongue, not Latin. They were a chant, soft at first, then stronger, a rhythmic invocation that filled the moonlit room. Moon, who pulls the heart. Tide, who cradles the bone. Deep, who holds the memory. Witness.
On the last syllable, James drove into him.
He sheathed himself in one relentless, deep thrust, burying himself to the hilt in the clutching, silken heat. Regulus’s chant broke into a raw, shattered cry, his legs locking around James’s back. James held there, buried, feeling the exquisite tremors coursing through the body beneath him. He lowered his forehead to Regulus’s, their breath mingling.
“Again,” James growled.
Regulus chanted, the words interspersed with gasps. James began to move. He set a deep, rolling rhythm, each thrust a measured, powerful surge. This was not the frantic pounding of the cliffs. This was a deliberate claiming of a different sort. He gripped Regulus’s hips, holding him steady, controlling the pace, making it last, making it an act of thorough, undeniable possession.
“They see,” James rasped against his lips, his thrusts never faltering. “They hear. This pleasure. This is my tribute. My fucking claim. Your spirit is mine to hold. Mine to anchor. Do you understand?”
Regulus could only nod, his chant lost, his voice gone. He was a vessel of sensation, filled to the brim, overflowing. James shifted, hooking Regulus’s legs over his shoulders, bending him almost in half. The new angle was overwhelming. James fucked into him with deep, punishing strokes that brushed a spot inside that made Regulus see bursts of white light.
James’s hand slid between them, his fingers finding Regulus’s cock, stroking it in time with his thrusts. The dual stimulation was too much. Regulus came with a soundless, wrenching convulsion, his cunt clamping down violently around James’s shaft, his own release spurting hot over James’s fist and his own stomach.
The fierce, rhythmic squeezing tore James’s climax from him. He drove in one last, final time, grinding deep, and roared as he emptied himself, his seed pumping into Regulus in hot, endless pulses. He collapsed forward, catching his weight on his arms, still buried inside the clutching, trembling heat.
They stayed like that, joined, for a long time. Sweat cooled on their skin. The moonlight moved across the floor.
Finally, James softened and slipped out. He rolled to the side, pulling Regulus against him, tucking the smaller body into the curve of his own. Regulus was pliant, boneless, his breathing slow and deep. James pressed his lips to the damp, tangled hair.
“We will do it on the sand,” James said quietly into the dark. “On the next full moon. We will give them their tribute.”
Regulus did not answer. But his hand, resting on James’s chest, curled lightly into the damp hair there. It was not forgiveness. It was not understanding.
It was a map, drawn in the language of touch, of a path forward through the dark water. James stared at the ceiling, holding him, already planning how to navigate it.