Chapter 7
Odelm
The dining hall glowed with warm light, and Odelm’s fingers moved across the strings of his velishra before he could think too hard about what he was doing.
Play. Just play.
The melody came out light. Airy. Something that skipped across the tension thrumming through the room like a stone across still water. Nothing that would draw attention—just background noise to mask the silence no one wanted to fill.
Through his empathic senses, he felt them all.
Selena’s exhaustion pressed against him first—bone-deep, laced with a love so fierce it burned.
She sat at the center of the long table, spots flickering through muted blues and violets, her rounded belly a reminder of everything they’d built together.
Everything at stake. Zirene loomed at her left, shadow-wrapped and massive, his fear for her safety a cold spike beneath his controlled exterior.
Kaede flanked her right, iron control welded over something rawer—the need to eliminate every threat before it touched her.
The princes radiated steady concern from across the table. V’dim’s tentacles rested still against the wood, but his turquoise thread hummed with barely contained worry. Z’fir’s vines curled around the base of his goblet, his thread an echo of his bondbrother’s unease.
Xylo’s presence brushed against Odelm’s awareness—quiet devotion, clinical assessment, the healer already cataloging what needed mending and knowing he couldn’t fix any of it.
And there—a new note in the symphony of his nestqueen’s constellation.
Zyxel.
The serpent male’s uncertain wonder pulsed at the edge of the gathering, still learning the shape of this family.
His crimson thread was fresh, bright against the older bonds, and his emotions tasted like someone who’d stumbled into sanctuary after years in the cold.
Like he still didn’t believe it was real.
Odelm understood that feeling.
He shifted his fingers, letting the melody breathe.
His regenerating appendages ached with the effort—the delicate tendrils still too short, barely in existence—but the discomfort grounded him.
Kept him present when his instincts screamed to cross the room and wrap himself around Selena until the rest of the galaxy ceased to exist.
Not clingy. You promised.
He’d sworn it to himself in the quiet hours before dawn.
Sworn it to Xylo when his bondbrother had found him staring at the ceiling, heart racing from another nightmare of empty bonds and severed threads.
Sworn it silently to Selena every time she’d smiled at him through their connection during the journey home.
He would be better. Stronger. Supportive instead of suffocating.
Even if the empath in him wanted to drown in her presence until he forgot what loneliness tasted like.
The cubs’ chatter cut through his spiraling thoughts—bright, careless, the sound of children who didn’t understand what tomorrow would bring.
Nocrez and Neazzos argued over the last roll while little Meti tried to sneak bites from both their plates.
Their laughter rang against the vaulted ceiling, and something in Odelm’s chest loosened.
This. This was why he played.
Not for audiences or acclaim. For moments like this—when music could mask the tremor in Zirene’s jaw, could give Selena’s shoulders permission to unknot, could make a dining hall feel like shelter instead of the eye of a storm.
The household staff moved between seats with practiced efficiency, refilling glasses and replacing empty dishes.
They’d served this clan through celebrations and crises, through gatherings and departures and the long nights when Selena had been gone and the villa had felt like a tomb.
They understood the weight of tonight without being told.
Odelm let the melody shift, adding warmth where there had been lightness. The velishra’s strings hummed beneath his fingers, the instrument responding to his emotional state the way it always had—more honestly than words ever could.
Then his gaze caught on Meti.
Their daughter watched the table with eyes that held too much knowing.
Her small face carried the same weight her mother bore—awareness of undercurrents, of the fear adults tried to hide.
She picked at her food without eating, attention drifting between Zirene’s rigid posture and Selena’s forced smiles.
She understood.
The realization lodged like a splinter beneath Odelm’s ribs.
He adjusted the melody, weaving in something warmer. Something that might reach a child who’d learned too young that safety was temporary.
“Pass the greens.”
Selena’s voice drew his focus. She held her hand out toward the center of the table, and Zyxel—coiled on the large cushion beside her—reached across to hand her the dish before anyone else could move.
“Thank you.” Her smile warmed, spots flickering pink at the edges.
Zyxel’s forked tongue flicked out—not nervous anymore but pleased. Tasting her approval in the air. “Of course, enax.”
The endearment slipped out naturally, without the hesitation that had marked his first time with the clan on Destima.
He’d claimed his place on that cushion like he belonged there, massive serpentine body coiled in relaxed loops, his upper torso angled toward Selena with quiet attentiveness.
The uncertainty that had clung to him during his first arrival to the villa had begun to shed like old scales.
Through the bonds, Odelm felt the shift in Zyxel’s thread—still new, still bright crimson against the older connections, but settling. Finding its rhythm within the constellation. The scholar who’d spent so long alone was learning what it meant to be kept.
Something in Odelm’s chest eased at the sight. He understood that journey. The slow realization that belonging wasn’t conditional. That Selena’s love didn’t require earning—only accepting.
His chest tightened.
Focus. Play.
Further down the table, Tori laughed at something Auro said, the sound bright and human in the midst of so many alien voices.
Her three Swynemi mates surrounded her—Celyze’s cosmic-touched wings folded against his back, Luwyn leaning close to murmur something that made her blush, Auro’s arm draped protectively across her shoulders.
They’d found their place in Selena’s orbit too, ambassadors who’d become something closer to family.
Oeta sat near them, the Nyaviel female’s sharp gaze following every exchange with the same ruthless precision she brought to her work.
She hadn’t come to Destima by chance—she was Mwe’s daughter, Selena’s adopted sister in all but blood, sponsored by Selena and the Aldawi to continue her late mother’s reproductive research when the galaxy would have quietly buried it instead.
Odelm watched her with a mix of relief and unease.
She was powerful—dangerously so. As formidable as Ryzen, perhaps more.
He’d heard the threats she’d made when pushed far enough, the calm certainty with which she’d spoken of stripping minds bare if crossed.
If this was what she was willing to admit aloud, he didn’t want to imagine the full extent of what both she—and Ryzen—might be capable of.
And yet.
She was loyal.
Loyal to Selena. To the clan. To the fragile, defiant future they were trying to build out of grief and war. That loyalty mattered. It anchored her power, gave it direction instead of letting it turn inward and consume everything around it.
For that, Odelm was grateful—more than he let himself show.
At the far end of the table, Ryzen sat apart.
The Verya had accepted the invitation to join them—a small victory, given his self-imposed isolation—but he might as well have been light-years away.
He ate mechanically, each bite precise and joyless, his gaze fixed on nothing.
The emerald runes along his skin pulsed in slow rhythm, muted compared to their usual erratic flare.
His spirit daggers were missing—thankfully—but Odelm’s relief didn’t last. Ryzen didn’t misplace weapons. He breathed with them. Slept with them. Woke already reaching.
So where were they?
Close. They had to be close. Nothing in plain sight. Nothing obvious.
That meant hidden.
On his body, maybe—woven inside his vest. Or tucked somewhere within reach.
Ryzen’s powers reflected his mental state, and that stillness spoke of something beyond grief. Something hollow.
A void where his twin should be.
The Circuli didn’t have true twins, but the thought of losing Xylo—of waking to silence where his bondbrother’s presence should anchor him—
No. He shut the thought down before it could take root.
Selena had stabilized Ryzen somehow. Odelm didn’t understand the specifics—the new connection between them was something outside his empathic comprehension, a thread that wasn’t quite a bond but wasn’t nothing either. Whatever she’d done, it had brought Ryzen back from the edge.
But brought him back to what?
The hollow male at the end of their table wasn’t whole. He was holding on, but only barely. Only because Selena had given him something to hold on to.
The meal progressed in fits and starts. Zirene spoke quietly to Kaede about security rotations. V’dim and Z’fir debated supply logistics for the fleet. Xylo watched Selena eat with a healer’s critical eye, calculating calories and nutrients and rest she probably wasn’t getting.
Normal sounds. Normal rhythms.
The shape of family gathered around a table, pretending tomorrow wouldn’t shatter everything.
Odelm let his music fill the spaces between conversations. Let it say what none of them could voice: I’m afraid. I love you. Don’t leave.
The melody shifted without conscious thought, finding a livelier rhythm. Something with movement in it. Something that made feet want to tap and bodies want to sway.
Tori’s head came up first. Her eyes brightened, and she turned to her mates with a grin that held none of the evening’s heavy weight. “Dance with me.”
It wasn’t a question.