Marvel's Reaper ( Male reader x Natasha Romanoff x Wanda Maximoff )

First of Five

Drago's chest rises and falls like a hill breathing, the heat from his nostrils curling across the courtyard in soft, foggy ribbons. The other dragons—Smokespawn, Terrador, Golos, Vegha, Saphira, Krastus—are arranged in a loose crescent that looks accidental until it doesn't; until Rhea glances once and the ring subtly tightens, as if the house itself has grown scales for the evening. Wanda and Natasha stand close together with the weight of the day still on their shoulders, fingers laced for strength neither would admit to needing. Zaire lingers near the stairs, arms folded, watching with the quiet patience of someone who knows this talk is long overdue.

Rhea's eyes glow a soft icy blue as she studies them, not in the clinical way of an examiner but the way a lighthouse studies a storm.

"Zionite pregnancy is not a disease," she says, voice low and warm. "It's a weather. It moves through you in fronts and tides, and if you know the seasons, you can sail it without capsizing."

Natasha breathes out a tired, humorless laugh and rests a hand on her stomach like she's steadying a ship. "We've been seasick for days."

"It passes," Rhea says.

Wanda's voice is small but steady. "Tell us everything."

Rhea nods once and steps closer, close enough that Drago's shadow spills over all three women. She lifts her hands, palms hovering an inch from Wanda's stomach, then Natasha's. Her gaze flicks to Zaire; he gives a small nod as if confirming the currents she's feeling.

"The first season is Kindling," Rhea says. "That's where you are now. Weeks one through eight, though time is a suggestion when the Onyx Force is involved. Kindling is the body learning a new language. You'll smell minerals in the rain that weren't there before. You'll crave heat and salt and cold in the same hour. Your hearts will feel off-beat. You will be nauseous because your blood is brightening, and your senses don't want to be left behind."

Natasha's jaw twitches. "Brightening?"

Rhea tips her head, searching Natasha's face like she's re-measuring her courage. "When my son healed you, he did not patch a wound. He reset a system. Human doctors speak of function and organ; we speak of song. He returned your song to the first stanza. That carries a glow. You feel it as heat in the spine and a weight behind the eyes. That is not weakness. That is your body remembering what was stolen."

Natasha blinks hard. Her mouth opens, closes. She swallows and looks at the stones instead of at Rhea. "So this... this is normal."

"It is miraculous," Rhea says. "And normal."

Wanda dabs at the corner of her eye with the back of her wrist and scrubs in a breath. "What about me? My magic's been... touchy. It flares when I don't ask it to."

Rhea smiles, the kind that softens the air. "Kindling wakes old embers. Chaos magic will try to surge to protect what it senses. It will throw hands at shadows. You must teach it to hum instead of shout. We will make you anchors—focus bands, carved from basalt and amethyst. Wear them on your wrists and at the base of the throat. They won't dampen what you are. They will give it railings."

Zaire steps forward, pulling a small bundle from the fold of his coat. Thin bands, matte black, inlaid with a faint green seam that looks like a vein under skin. "Worked them last night," he says. "Basalt from the old ice caves. Amethyst from the west ridge. A streak of onyx powder because you know he'd insist."

Wanda takes the band like it's a relic and fastens it with shaking fingers. Natasha accepts hers without a word, turns it once, twice, and sets it in place, watching the seam find her pulse.