Chapter 8
Zirene
The gazebo sat at the edge of the garden like a promise half-forgotten.
Zirene found her there, short silver hair catching moonlight, the soft curve of her belly pressing against the shawl she’d wrapped around her shoulders. Lunkai painted everything in shades of pearl and shadow—the climbing vines, the stone bench, the female who’d somehow become his entire universe.
She didn’t turn when he approached. Didn’t need to.
His shadow moved before he did, slipping across the grass to curl around her ankles, her calves, the familiar shape of her that it knew better than he knew himself. The darkness was possessive in ways Zirene had long stopped trying to control. It wanted her close. Always close.
So did he.
The night air carried the scent of active night plant-life and something sweeter beneath—Selena’s own fragrance, that impossible blend of exotic flowers and warmth that had imprinted itself on his very soul.
He breathed it in as he stepped into the gazebo, letting the familiar comfort of it settle into his bones.
She leaned back into him before his arms even found her waist.
“I could feel you watching from the doorway.” Her voice was soft. Tired in ways that had nothing to do with sleep.
“I wasn’t watching.” His chin found its place atop her head, his paws spreading across the swell of her belly where their daughter grew. Another impossible miracle that he’d never expected to have—again. “I was memorizing.”
Selena’s laugh was quiet, barely a breath. “That’s worse.”
Perhaps it was.
But tomorrow he would board the ShadowClaw and fly toward a war that might swallow him whole, and he needed this image carved into the marrow of his being.
His Nova, bathed in moonlight, safe within the circle of his arms. The weight of her against his chest. The steady pulse of her life force through their bond—that blazing gold that anchored him when nothing else could.
His Nova. His light in the darkness—even his own.
His shadow tightened around them both, a living cocoon of darkness that blocked out everything beyond this moment.
Things weren’t supposed to be like this.
The thought crept in unbidden, familiar as an old wound.
He was supposed to be Royak’s right paw, his brother’s shadow in truth—the weapon wielded by a wiser hand.
Instead, Royak served as his. The Aldawi Sovereign, a title Zirene had never wanted, had never prepared for, thrust upon him by the cruel machinations of fate.
Ruling hadn’t made life easier. Only lonelier.
Until she’d returned to him. And now, he was leaving her…
“You’re thinking too loudly.” Selena’s fingers traced patterns across his forearm, her touch grounding him in the present.
“I have much to think about.”
“You always do.” She tilted her head back, ocean-deep eyes finding his in the darkness. “But tonight isn’t for strategy or war councils or the fate of the empire. Tonight is ours.”
Ours.
Such a small word to hold so much meaning.
He’d lived for too many years, and he’d never had an ours until Selena crashed into his existence like a comet burning through atmosphere.
Never had a family outside of Royak and Masmi, beyond the clanbrothers bound to him by duty and blood.
Never had cubs of his own —something male Aldawi simply did not expect to have.
Their females only took partners during heat, brief and fiercely guarded, and cubs were raised communally, mothers sharing the burden with other females rather than forming lasting family units.
It was how their people had survived centuries of loss.
But watching the Harvest Festival—watching what Selena and the clan had dared to be—stirred a quiet, dangerous hope in him. Perhaps, after this war was won, things could change. Perhaps Aldawi children might grow up with families again, with fathers who stayed instead of stepping aside as sires.
Healing that kind of generational damage would take time. More than one lifetime, maybe. And it would be a debt his lineage owed—a reckoning long delayed.
And yet here he stood, arms wrapped around a human female who carried his children, surrounded by males who’d chosen this impossible family as fiercely as he had.
The Fates had strange plans.
“The dreamscape,” Selena said quietly. “When you’re... out there. In the war.” Her voice caught on the last word. “You still promise that we will meet there?”
Zirene’s arms tightened around her. The dreamscape—that shared mental space where Shadows and their Novas could exist together regardless of physical separation.
He’d used it before during his search, pulling Selena into constructed worlds of his making where they could be together without the galaxy between them.
Even though he’d stubbornly avoided sharing it with her since she’d been discovered, only joining her scarcely. His actions had caused a decay in their Shadow-Nova bond and had made her doubt him and their relationship, something he needed to mend.
Another thing he didn’t have the time to do, because the Stars and Fates had other plans.
But this deployment would take him to the front lines. Light-years from Destima. Light-years from her.
“I will find you.” The words came out rougher than he intended. “Every night I can manage it. Even if I have to fight through exhaustion and battle-fog to reach you.”
“Promise?”
“I swear it.”
She turned in his arms then, pressing her palm flat against his chest where his hearts beat in tandem. Her eyes searched his face, looking for something—reassurance, perhaps, or the truth behind his vow.
Whatever she found made her expression crumple.
“My constellation is being divided,” she whispered. “You. V’dim and Z’fir. Everyone scattered across the galaxy while I stay here, heavy with our daughter, unable to do anything but wait and worry and—”
“You will be protected.” His hands came up to cup her face, thumbs brushing the tears that had begun to track down her cheeks. “Kaede remains. Xylo. Odelm. Zyxel. And the others—your ambassadors, your friends, everyone who loves you. You won’t be alone, Nova.”
“That’s not what I’m afraid of.”
He knew. Stars above, he knew.
She was afraid of losing him. Of watching pieces of her carefully woven family fly off into the void and never return. Of sitting in this beautiful villa, surrounded by people who adored her, while the bonds in her web went dark one by one.
The same fear clawed at Zirene’s chest every time he let himself think about it.
“I barely had time,” he said quietly, the confession slipping out before he could stop it. “To understand what we had. What you gave me. This family—this life—it still feels like something I stole from the universe. Something I don’t deserve.”
Selena’s brow furrowed. “Zirene—”
“My brother and Vikvez.” The words kept coming, unstoppable now. “They had a Shadow-Nova bond too. And you were the one who’d pieced it together. How didn’t I know after I became Sovereign? After everything fell apart and I was left trying to rule an empire I never wanted while searching for you.”
He’d never told her this. Never told anyone.
The knowledge sat heavy in his chest—that Royak had loved, truly loved, and Zirene had been too blind to see it.
That his brother had understood this feeling, this consuming devotion to another soul, and had carried it in silence because duty demanded discretion.
How lonely that must have been.
How familiar it felt now, with war demanding he leave his own Nova behind.
“I didn’t know,” Selena said softly. Her hand pressed harder against his chest, feeling the rhythm of his hearts.
“About Royak and Vikvez, until your brother had requested for our cubs’ healer to be discharged from our clan and reassigned to his side.
From how he was asking me, from his wording, it all made sense. ”
“And yet, I should’ve been the one who’d realized what they had.” His jaw tightened. “I was supposed to be his right paw. His closest confidant. And I never knew the most important truth about him.”
“Some things we keep secret to protect them.”
“Or to protect ourselves.”
The moonlight caught the shift in Selena’s spots—that soft bioluminescence that betrayed her emotions even when her face stayed composed. They flickered through lovely pinks and purples, settling into worried oranges as she studied him.
“You’re not just worried about the war,” she said. “You’re worried about us. About what happens if you don’t come back.”
He couldn’t deny it.
The Quaww were formidable—their numbers out massed the Aldawi. The Verya remained a shadow threat, their true intentions still unclear outside of wanting Selena. And Zirene would be commanding from the front, leading his forces into battle after battle, each one a gamble with his life.
If he fell...
“Destima will be safe,” he said instead of answering directly. “This system is fortified. The villa is shielded. Your royal guards are loyal beyond question, and our clanmates would burn down the galaxy before letting anything happen to you or the cubs.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I know.”
Selena made a frustrated sound, her hands fisting in the fabric of his cape. “When will we have peace, Zirene? When will time just stop for once?” Her voice cracked, breaking at the edges. “Let us breathe? Let us live without someone trying to destroy what we’ve built?”
He had no answer.
In all of existence, during all the years of his rule as prince, and he’d never found that peace she craved.
Politics and war and threats from every corner of the galaxy—it was the only life he’d ever known.
The Aldawi Sovereignty was built on conquest and maintained through strength and alliances, and there was always someone waiting to challenge both.
He’d accepted that reality long ago. Made his peace with the weight of it.
But then she came.