Chapter 6
Xylo
The transmission had come at dawn.
Kaede’s voice, stripped of everything but urgency: War. Evacuation. Selena coming home.
Xylo hadn’t stopped moving since.
The medical wing hummed with activity—sterilizers cycling, supply crates stacked against walls, hovercarts loaded with trauma kits and regenerative compounds.
His hands cataloged inventory without conscious thought: bone-knit gel, neural stabilizers, the rare Circuli bloodwort that accelerated tissue regrowth.
Thankfully, their medical greenhouse had paid off, but unfortunately for a time like this.
There was enough for a fleet. Enough for a war.
Not enough for the dread settling in his chest.
He sealed another crate. Checked the manifest. Moved to the next station. His body operated on its own rhythm while his mind drifted along the thread that connected him to his nestqueen—faint at this distance, but growing stronger with each passing hour.
She was coming home.
And darkness followed behind her.
Xylo paused, one hand braced on a storage shelf, and let his awareness sink deeper into their bond. The connection shimmered at the edge of his consciousness—teal threaded through gold, his color woven into her radiant web.
Exhaustion clung to her like a second skin. Emotional depletion that ran bone-deep. Something had happened on the ShadowClaw—something that had cost her, though she’d hidden the price behind her mental shields.
His jaw tightened. He couldn’t heal what she wouldn’t show him.
The pregnancy progressed normally—that much, at least, he could verify. From the records he’d been sent since she’d been gone, he knew that Kaede’s daughter grew steadily.
Xylo returned to his inventory, hands moving through muscle memory while calculations ran beneath the surface. Triage protocols for mass casualties. Evacuation procedures for the vulnerable. The medicinal compounds that would be hardest to synthesize if supply lines fractured.
A healer planned for pain. It was the only way to minimize it.
“You’ll wear a groove in that floor if you pace any faster.”
Odelm’s voice carried from the doorway, warm despite the worry threaded through it. Xylo glanced up to find his bondbrother leaning against the frame, arms crossed, watching him with knowing eyes.
“I’m not pacing. I’m organizing.”
“You’ve organized that same shelf three times in the last hour.” Odelm pushed off the doorframe and crossed to him, movements unhurried. His empathic presence brushed against Xylo’s shields—gentle, inquiring, the way an Ulax checked on a friend without demanding entry. “They’re landing.”
Xylo’s hands stilled on the crate.
“Now?”
“The ShadowClaw entered the atmosphere moments ago.” Odelm’s hand settled on his shoulder, firm and grounding. “She needs her Primary present, not buried in supplies.”
Xylo’s gaze swept the medical wing—the organized chaos, the careful preparations, all the ways he’d tried to feel useful while she flew toward him through the void. None of it would matter if she arrived and he wasn’t there to welcome her home.
He placed down his vidtablet and followed his bondbrother out.
The corridors of the Destima villa blurred past as they walked, but Xylo felt the weight of each step.
Sunlight slanted through the windows, warm and golden, painting familiar walls in shades that should have felt like comfort.
The scent of blooming vines drifted from the gardens.
Somewhere in the distance, the pool’s waterfall murmured its endless song.
Home.
“Have you eaten today?” Odelm asked, breaking through his thoughts.
Xylo considered lying. Decided against it. “I’ll eat when she does.”
His bondbrother sighed but didn’t push. They understood each other, the two of them—the Favored who’d stayed behind while their nestqueen traveled, who’d spent sleepless nights reaching across vast distances just to feel the pulse of her presence.
The waiting had carved something hollow in both of them.
Soon, that hollow would fill.
And then empty again when the constellation fractured.
“Zirene leaves at dawn,” Xylo said quietly. Not a question.
Odelm nodded. “V’dim and Z’fir will follow within days. The female fleet needs their command.”
“And we stay.”
“We stay.” Odelm’s voice held no resentment, only acceptance. This was their role—the males who guarded the center while the warriors flew toward violence. The ones who would hold her together when pieces of her heart scattered across star systems. “Kaede. You. Me. And...”
He trailed off. Xylo felt the unfinished thought hanging between them.
“You sensed it too,” Xylo said, cursing himself for not following his nestqueen with the drone Kaede had given them. “She’s claimed another.”
“A new thread.” Odelm’s expression remained carefully neutral. “Crimson. Strong. Woven into her web sometime in the last day.”
Zyxel.
The name surfaced with clinical detachment. Xylo had suspected it by the way the serpent ambassador had watched Selena, the pull between them that neither could quite hide. The bond must have sealed sometime before the chaos of evacuation, when shields cracked and instincts overrode caution.
He cataloged the information the same way he’d catalog a new symptom. Noted it. Filed it. Moved forward.
“Do you feel—” Odelm started.
“The Stars guide her choices.” Xylo’s voice came out steady. Certain. Because it was true, and because jealousy had no place in their clan. “Zyxel is clan now. That means he’s one of us as much as she is.”
Odelm studied him for a long moment, then smiled—small and genuine. “You’re a better male than most, bondbrother.”
“I’m a scholar.” Xylo shrugged. “We learn to accept what we cannot change.”
The landing pad sprawled wide beneath the late afternoon sun, heat shimmering off the polished surface. A small crowd had gathered—villa staff, security personnel, the household members who’d stayed behind during Selena’s absence. All of them watched the sky.
Two ships descended through scattered clouds.
The ShadowClaw came first—Zirene’s personal vessel, sleek and deadly, its hull catching light like a blade.
Behind it, the Abyss followed in close formation, Kaede’s ship maintaining perfect escort distance.
The engines shifted pitch as both vessels oriented toward the landing pad, and the crowd fell silent.
Xylo’s heart climbed into his throat.
Through their bond, Selena’s presence blazed suddenly bright—close, so close, the distance between them collapsing as the ships touched down. He felt her awareness brush against his, warm and weary and achingly grateful.
Home. Her thought, threading through him like sunlight. Finally home.
The ShadowClaw’s ramp lowered with a hydraulic hiss. Steam curled from the ship’s cooling vents, hazing the air.
Selena appeared at the top.
Xylo’s breath caught.
She looked exhausted. The kind of bone-deep weariness that no amount of sleep would cure, at least not quickly. Shadows bruised the skin beneath her ocean-deep eyes, and her bioluminescent spots glowed at low intensity—pink shifting toward violet, emotions too tangled to settle on a single color.
But she was here. Alive. The gentle curve of her belly visible beneath practical clothes.
His nestqueen.
The cubs tumbled down the ramp behind her—Nocrez and Neazzos first, small bodies vibrating with the restless energy of children too long confined. They spotted Xylo immediately and launched toward him, a blur of limbs and excited chatter.
“Xylo! Xylo! We’re home!”
He caught them both, one in each arm, and pressed his face into their fur. Stars, he’d missed them. The villa had been too quiet without their chaos, without the patter of small feet and the endless questions and the way they demanded stories before bed.
“Welcome home, little ones.” His voice came out rough. “I’ve missed you.”
Meti descended last, her steps measured, silver-streaked fur catching sunlight. Her too-knowing eyes swept the landing pad before finding Xylo, and something in her expression softened.
“You haven’t slept,” she announced as she reached him. Not an accusation. Just fact.
“Neither have you.” Xylo set the younger cubs down and brushed a gentle hand over her ear. She leaned into the touch despite herself. “How was the journey?”
Meti’s jaw set in a way that reminded him painfully of Selena. “Mama’s sad. Something happened. She won’t tell us.”
“I’ll take care of her.” He met the cub’s gaze with quiet certainty. “That’s what we do.”
Behind Selena, the rest of the clan emerged from the ShadowClaw.
Zirene first—massive, shadow-wrapped, the Sovereign reduced to a male desperate to keep his mate in sight.
V’dim and Z’fir followed in perfect synchronization, tentacles and vines settling into relaxed positions now that they’d reached safe ground.
And there—hovering at the edge of the group, crimson scales catching afternoon light—Zyxel.
The serpent male’s posture screamed uncertainty—tail coiled tight, chartreuse eyes darting between faces, body angled as if ready to defend or flee depending on his reception. Like he still couldn’t believe both she—and everything that had happened—were real.
Through the bond, Xylo examined the new thread properly for the first time. Crimson, yes—deep and rich, woven into Selena’s golden mental shield with surprising stability for such a fresh connection.
Interesting.
The observation carried no jealousy. Only recognition. The Stars had led Zyxel to Selena for a reason, just as they’d led Xylo himself. The scientist in him appreciated the precision of fate.
The Abyss’s ramp descended, and Kaede strode down with predator’s grace—visor retracted, neon green eyes already scanning the perimeter even as his body oriented toward Selena.
He’d been flying escort the entire journey, Xylo knew.
Protecting from a distance because that’s what he excelled at—and the ShadowClaw was too crowded for the male who preferred working alone.