Chapter 16 #2
The distance was staggering. I felt myself stretch, attenuate, spread thin across impossible space. My physical body grew distant—a shell I’d left behind in a gazebo somewhere far, far away.
And then—
Zirene.
I touched his consciousness like dawn touching dark water. He was on a ship—I felt the hum of engines, the tension of command, the weight of a hundred decisions pressing down on him. He was exhausted. Grieving. Fighting a war he wasn’t sure they could win.
But when he felt me—
“Nova.” His mental voice was ragged with surprise and fierce, desperate joy. “You’re awake. How—”
“Training with Ryzen, remember?” I sent back. “He’s helping me strengthen my reach.”
He accepted me instantly, pulling me deeper into his consciousness with a hunger that bordered on desperation. The connection solidified—for one shimmering moment, it was almost like the dreamscape. Almost like being held.
But something else lurked beneath the surface of his mind. Something darker.
His shadow. The feral edge he’d warned me about. It stirred at Ryzen’s presence in our connection—sensed the emerald thread anchoring me to another male’s consciousness.
And it rejected him.
The darkness inside Zirene surged without warning—a wave of primal, possessive rage that slammed into Ryzen’s anchoring presence like a physical blow. “Not yours,” it snarled. “She is MINE. My Nova. My light. MINE.”
Ryzen’s consciousness recoiled.
I felt him withdraw—not slowly, not carefully, but a sharp, defensive retreat that yanked the foundation out from under me. One moment I was stable, anchored, reaching across the stars. The next I was flailing in nothing, my connection to Zirene stretching thin without Ryzen’s support.
“Zirene,” I sent desperately. “It’s okay. He was just helping me—”
His shadow didn’t care. It pushed against me now, trying to pull me closer, hold me tighter—but I didn’t have the strength. Didn’t have the range. Without Ryzen’s anchor, the distance was too vast, my power too thin.
I started to fade.
“Nova—” Zirene’s mental voice cracked with panic. “No, don’t—stay—I can feel you slipping—”
His shadow tried to hold on, desperate and clawing. I felt the push and pull of it—his feral need to keep me close warring with the physical reality that I was light-years away and running out of strength. The connection stretched—thinning, fraying—like silk webbing.
I snapped back into my body with a gasp.
Strong arms caught me before I hit the cushions. Ryzen. His chest was solid against my back, his breath harsh in my ear, and through our bond I felt the aftermath of Zirene’s attack—the echo of that possessive fury still rattling through him.
But beneath that—
Need. Raw and aching. Not for possession—for connection. The same loneliness I’d glimpsed in his memories, now cracked wide open by the violence of Zirene’s rejection.
“Selena.” Xylo’s voice, sharp with worry. I felt his cool hands on my face, checking my pulse, my temperature. “You pushed too hard. Your vitals spiked—”
“I’m okay.” My voice came out hoarse. I didn’t try to pull away from Ryzen’s hold. Couldn’t, really. My limbs felt like water. “I touched him. Zirene. I… I felt him.”
Ryzen’s arms tightened around me. His shields were cracked now, leaking emotion he normally kept locked away. I felt his desperate need for her light—my light—bleeding through the connection between us.
“His shadow,” Ryzen said quietly. “It’s stronger than I anticipated.”
“You pulled back.” I turned my head enough to meet his eyes. They were closer than I expected—inches away, emerald and aching. “You left me.”
Pain flickered across his features. “I wasn’t welcome in his mind. Staying would have made it worse.”
“But I couldn’t hold the connection without you.” The words came out more accusation than I intended. “I don’t have the range. The power.”
“Yet.” His thumb brushed my arm—unconscious, I thought, or maybe not. “You don’t have the power yet. That’s why we’re training.”
The intensity in his gaze shifted. Deepened. I felt the change through our bond—the way his need was crystallizing into something more focused. More intentional.
“Again,” he said.
“Ryzen—” Xylo started to protest.
“Again.” Ryzen’s voice was granite. “The only way to build strength is to push limits. Controlled. Careful. But pushed.”
We went again.
And again.
Each time, Ryzen held me closer. Each time, our minds tangled deeper. I learned the architecture of his consciousness—the sharp edges of his grief, the hollow spaces where Xenak should be, the fierce determination that kept him moving when everything in him wanted to crumble.
And he learned me.
I didn’t try to reach Zirene again—not fully. That required more preparation, more strength, more… understanding of the shadow that lurked in my mate’s soul. But I practiced extending. Stretching. Holding our connections farther and for longer periods.
The third attempt left me gasping, head pounding with the effort of maintaining focus across distance.
Ryzen’s hands steadied my shoulders, his presence both anchor and safety net.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I felt Xylo’s concern pulsing through our bond—teal worry threaded with professional assessment. He wanted to stop us. He didn’t.
Because he understood what I was becoming. What I needed to become.
On the fourth attempt, I reached farther than I ever had before.
Not just stretching—searching. Hunting.
The realization came as I followed the pull threading through me, sharp and aching and not entirely my own. Xenak. That was what Ryzen had been reaching for all along. Using my strength, my range, my stubborn refusal to stop, to search for his brother across the dark.
I let it happen.
I wanted to help. Wanted—desperately—to give him something solid.
Evidence. A spark of connection. Anything that might ease the raw, bleeding absence he carried with him every waking moment.
I chased the echo of Xenak’s presence until my head rang and my vision blurred, until my pulse thundered in my ears.
For a breathless handful of seconds, I thought we had him.
Then my strength gave out.
The connection snapped, leaving only the hollow aftertaste of failure and the ache of what I couldn’t reach. No proof. No voice. No peace to offer—only the certainty that I had tried, and that trying hadn’t been enough.
I sagged back into myself, shaking. But even as disappointment settled heavy in my chest, one truth remained.
I’d gone farther than before.
Progress.
Proof.
“You’re pushing too hard,” Xylo said quietly. His voice seemed to come from far away. “Your body is flagging.”
“One more.” I didn’t recognize my own voice—hoarse, determined, edged with something that might have been desperation. “Just one more.”
Ryzen’s grip tightened on my shoulders. Through our bond, I felt his concern warring with something else—admiration, maybe. Recognition of a stubbornness that matched his own.
“One more,” he agreed. “But this time, I’m going to guide you differently. Less anchor, more… fuel.”
Before I could ask what that meant, he opened his consciousness to me fully.
The rush of it nearly drowned me. His power—raw and vast and aching with loss—poured into my mental reserves like water filling empty wells.
I gasped at the intimacy of it. This wasn’t just showing me his thoughts or memories.
This was sharing his essence. Letting me draw on his strength as if it were my own.
I pushed outward again.
Not toward any of my safe anchors. I followed the pull that wasn’t mine—the raw, aching vector that had been tugging at me since the moment I’d touched Ryzen’s grief.
Xenak.
The moment I aligned with it, everything snapped into terrifying clarity.
I wasn’t searching anymore.
I was seeing.
Green flooded my senses—thick, luminous fluid pressing in from all sides.
Xenak was suspended inside it, his body bound upright in a cylindrical canister, tubes threaded into his spine, his chest, his temples.
The liquid pulsed faintly with each sluggish beat of his heart.
Runes—Verya in origin—burned along the glass, suppressive, invasive, feeding on him even as they kept him alive.
His eyes were open.
Too open.
The instant he realized he wasn’t alone, his gaze locked onto me—onto us. Recognition flared, sharp and immediate, followed by something like panic.
“No.”
The word slammed into me without sound.
“Get out! Leave! You can’t be here!”
I felt his fear spike—not for himself, but outward. Protective. Desperate. He surged toward the connection with everything he had left, shoving hard, violently, like hands to my chest.
“They’re watching. You have to—”
The link collapsed.
Not gently. Not naturally.
He slammed it shut.
The backlash threw me back into myself, breath ripping from my lungs as if I’d been struck. The green vanished. The pressure vanished. The echo of him lingered only long enough to leave my hands shaking.
I staggered, vision tunneling.
His arms wrapped around me from behind, pulling me back against his chest with a gentleness that seemed at odds with everything I knew about him. I felt his chin brush the top of my head. Felt the ragged edge of his breathing against my hair.
“He pushed you out,” Ryzen said hoarsely, already knowing.
I clutched at his shoulder, heart hammering. “He’s alive,” I whispered. “He’s trapped. And he’s terrified we’ll follow. Worried we’ll be caught too.”
Through our bond, something shifted.
The desperate loneliness I’d sensed in him earlier—it was still there. But now it had direction. Purpose. Need focused into a single, searing point.
Her.
Me.
Him.
He needed my light. My guidance. Needed me—not just as a tool to reach his brother, not just as a student to train, but as…
I turned in his arms.
His eyes were wild. Cracked open. Vulnerable in a way I’d never seen from the lethal, controlled Verya male who kept the world at dagger’s length.