Chapter 27
Selena
The sky didn’t look any different without them in it.
That was the cruelest part. The same gold-washed morning, the same salt breeze pushing warm across the landing pad, the same ocean folding against Destima’s shore as if two of my mates hadn’t just torn themselves from my orbit and vanished into the void.
Scorch marks still darkened the stone where thruster wash had kissed it.
The heat hadn’t faded from beneath my feet.
But the bonds held.
I closed my eyes and reached. V’dim’s turquoise thread stretched farther with every passing minute, thinning but alive, his grief a low pulse that matched my heartbeat.
Beside it, Z’fir’s thread sang quieter—steady, deep-rooted, the patience of a male who loved in silences and growing things.
They’d cleared the atmosphere. Past the Lunkai now, heading for their fleet waiting for them within the sol system’s perimeter.
Still there. Still mine.
I opened my eyes and let the threads thin to their resting hum. My training had worked—the stretching exercises, the meditation with Ryzen, the deliberate, painful practice of holding bonds across distances that should have shredded them. The connections were thinner but they refused to break.
Now I have to forge my own path into darkness.
“It’s time.”
Kaede materialized at my side—absent one breath, present the next, visor down, hand resting on the hilt of his psydagger with the easy readiness of a male who hadn’t truly relaxed in years.
His thread pulsed with controlled urgency.
Ice over fire. The particular tension he carried when he’d accepted the danger ahead and was ready to walk straight into it.
I nodded. No more stalling. No more pretending we had time.
“How are you holding?” His mental voice was quieter than his spoken one—private, tucked into the space between our minds.
“They’re past Lunaki now.” I sent him the feel of the bonds—the stretched-silk quality, thinning but whole. “Still connected.”
“Good.” He nodded, his mental voice softer. “And you?”
I looked at him—past the visor, past the armor, past the lethal composure that had kept me alive more times than I could count. Beneath it all, his thread hummed with something fierce and tender and terrified. Not of the mission. Of what could happen to me during it.
“Scared,” I admitted. No point lying to the male who knew me so well. “But ready.”
His gloved hand found the small of my back. Brief. Grounding.
“Then let’s move.”
The Abyss waited on the far landing pad, dark-hulled and angular, engines cycling through pre-flight ignition.
Kaede’s ship—his weapon, his sanctuary, the vessel that had carried us through my rescue mission and the desperate flight from Liskta when the galaxy cracked open beneath our feet.
Vowels stood at the base of the ramp, his golden mental presence calm and immovable at the edge of my awareness.
My team spread across the pad.
Ryzen leaned against the vessel, emerald runes pulsing faintly along his forearms, his spirit daggers holstered within his skin.
He’d been steadier since Zirene’s departure—still fighting whatever dark silence his brother left him, but fighting it with purpose now.
With the focus of a male who’d been given a mission he believed in.
Zyxel stood apart, still adjusting to his demi-human form with careful, deliberate movements.
His crimson thread pulsed at the edge of my web—brighter, carrying that particular intensity of a male still learning the shape of belonging.
His chartreuse eyes tracked Kaede, then the ship, then me.
Cataloging. Protecting. The scholar turned sentinel.
“The Abyss is prepped,” Zyxel pathed, his mental voice quiet and precise. “Kaede says we’re twenty minutes from launch window.”
“Twenty minutes.” I let the number settle. Twenty minutes to say goodbye to everyone I was leaving behind.
Eshe appeared at the top of the Abyss’s ramp, her burnt-orange fur catching the morning light, Royal Guard flanking her in formation. She met my gaze and gave a single, sharp nod. All clear.
These people would die for me.
The cubs came running.
Not running—marching. At least Neazzos was, his small jaw set in the expression he’d been wearing since I assigned him the role of Shield.
He held Nocrez’s hand, guiding his forward with the serious authority of a cub who’d decided overnight that childhood was something he could no longer afford.
Meti trailed behind them, barefoot on the warm stone, moving at her own pace with the quiet sureness that always made the back of my neck prickle.
I knelt.
The movement pulled at my belly—the pregnancy making itself known in the particular way it did when I bent or twisted or tried to pretend my body hadn’t become someone else’s home. I pressed my hand there instinctively. Settling her. Or maybe settling myself.
Neazzos reached me first. He stopped at arm’s length—not launching himself at me the way he would have months ago, before the war, before the weight of what we were settled on his small shoulders.
“We’ll guard the clanfathers, Mama.” His voice didn’t waver. His chin trembled, but he locked it in place with a force of will that was pure Zirene. “The Shield never breaks.”
My throat closed. I reached for him and pulled him into my arms, and for three seconds he let himself be a cub again—pressing his face into my neck, breathing me in, his small fingers gripping the fabric of my gown with the desperation he was trying so hard to outgrow.
I kissed the top of his head. Memorized the weight of him.
“I know you will,” I whispered against his hair. “I’m so proud of you, Neazzos.”
He pulled back. Squared his shoulders. Returned to his post beside Nocrez with the measured steps of a guard resuming his station.
That was what wrecked me. My daughter who felt everything, stood solemn, her paws tucked behind her.
“Keep the safe, Mama.” Her voice was small but sure. “I’ll keep everyone fed while you’re gone. I already told the kitchen staff what to make.”
A laugh broke through the ache in my chest—startled, wet, the kind that was almost a sob. “I bet you did.” I kissed her forehead. “Take care of your brothers. And listen to your clanfathers, even when they’re being ridiculous.”
“They’re always being ridiculous.”
“Exactly.”
She took my hands and locked eyes with my own. Her awareness—deeper than a child’s should be. She saw things—things beyond her age. We all knew it. We didn’t know what to do about it.
“Beacons light the way, Mama.” Her voice carried no tremor. No uncertainty. “Even in the darkest void.”
The words landed in my chest like a brand.
“Meti…” I swallowed. “Where do you hear these things?”
“I don’t hear them.” A small, certain smile. “I see them.” She squeezed my hands—a grown-up gesture in a child’s body. “You’ll know what to do when the time comes. You always do.”
My strange, knowing, impossible daughter. She saw too much. Knew too much. But her faith in me—I would carry on this mission like armor.
I pulled all three of them into my arms. Held them against me while the morning light spilled gold across the pad, while the Abyss hummed behind us and the bonds stretched into the stars and the galaxy waited for me to stop being a mother and start being a Beacon.
They could wait.
Xylo’s thread brushed mine—gentle, aching. “They’re ready, nestqueen. They’re stronger than either of us expected.”
“They’re children,” I pathed back, and the raw edge of it must have bled through because Xylo’s thread pulsed warmer. “They shouldn’t have to be this brave.”
“No.” Odelm’s thread joined his bondbrother’s, layering over the ache with something warm and melodic—the echo of the hopeful song, woven into his mental voice. “But they are. Because they’re yours.”
I kissed each of them one more time. Stood. Let go.
Xylo waited until I released the cubs before he pressed a med-kit into my hands. Small, compact, packed with precision.
“Anti-nausea compounds for the pregnancy. The blue vials are for pain—don’t take more than two in six hours. The red ones are—” His voice broke. He clenched his jaw, pulled it back together. “The red ones are emergency stimulants. If you lose consciousness and need to—”
“Xylo.”
“Promise me you’ll use them.”
I cupped his face. My Favored. My Primary. The male who healed everything he touched and couldn’t fix the one thing that was breaking him.
“Come back to us.” His teal thread blazed against mine—hot, desperate, the professional composure stripped away to reveal the raw truth beneath. “All of you. Please.”
“That’s the plan.”
“I’ll hold the web,” he pathed, the words layered with a steadiness his spoken voice couldn’t manage. “Destima’s network won’t falter while you’re gone. I promise. Focus on the mission and let me carry this.”
“I know you will.” I pressed my forehead to his. Breathed him in—teal-tinted warmth, the sterile-clean scent of a healer, the underlying sweetness that was purely Xylo. “You’re my anchor, Xylo. You always have been.”
Odelm was steadier than yesterday.
“I’ll play every night,” he said. The words were the same he’d given V’dim and Z’fir, but the weight of them had changed—heavier now, loaded with the understanding that this time the distance would be greater. The danger closer. “Listen for me across the stars.”
“I will.” I held his gaze—those warm pale green eyes that saw music in everything, that had watched me with a devotion he never thought he deserved to give. “Play the hopeful one. Every night. Promise me.”
“Every night.”
“Odelm.” I reached for him through our bond, letting him feel what I couldn’t say aloud—the fierce, aching love that swelled every time he picked up his velishra, every time he turned his pain into something beautiful. “You are not the weak link. You never were. Do you hear me?”
His jaw clenched.
“I hear you, nestqueen.” A pause, thick with emotion. “Always.”
He kissed my knuckles. Stepped back.
Oeta stood apart from the others, as she always did. Watching. Waiting. When our gazes met, I felt the echo of what she’d told me on the balcony the night before.
If you need me, call. I will hear you. And I will come.
A single nod. Precise. Final. Everything she’d promised compressed into one motion—defender, researcher, ally, sister, the female who’d chosen to remain on Destima not out of obligation but out of conviction.
Behind that nod lived the Nyaviel-Aldawi alliance her father was building, the political earthquake forming in silence while the rest of the galaxy looked elsewhere.
I returned the nod. Held it.
Thank you, Oeta. For all of it.
The walk to the Abyss felt longer than it was.
Kaede fell in at my left, silent, his thread a wall of ice-wrapped determination.
“You’re always with me.”
The briefest flicker through his thread—warmth, sharp and unexpected, before the ice sealed back over it. “Always.”
Eshe and the Royal Guard had already boarded. The rest of my heart, my clan, my family and friends all watched us board.
At the base of the ramp, I stopped.
Turned.
The villa rose behind the landing pad, warm stone catching the morning light, the gardens a blur of green where Z’fir had coaxed life from Destima’s soil.
My family stood grouped at the pad’s edge—Xylo with his arm around Odelm, the cubs pressed close to their sides, Oeta a still figure at the margin.
Household staff clustered behind them. Everyone watching. Everyone silent.
I raised my hand.
They raised theirs back. Every one of them. Cubs and mates and the Nyaviel who didn’t do sentiment and the household staff who’d served this family through celebrations and catastrophes and the long, hollow months when I’d been gone and the villa had felt like a tomb.
Xylo’s thread surged—bright, almost blinding. “We’ll be here. Whenever you reach for us. We’ll be here.”
Odelm’s melody threaded through, layered beneath his bondbrother’s words. The hopeful song, given freely. “Listen for me,” he pathed. “Across any distance. I’ll be playing for you.”
“I know.” My chest ached with it—the love, the fear, the impossible weight of walking away from everything that mattered. “Keep each other safe. Keep the cubs close. And if anything changes—”
“We’ll reach you,” Xylo finished. “Always.”
I carried them with me. Every bond a thread of light stretching across the void. My constellation, scattered but connected. My family, waiting for me to come home. And behind them all, an alliance forming—Nyaviel and Aldawi, preparing to stand together against the darkness.
I turned. Walked up the ramp. Kaede beside me, Ryzen and Zyxel behind.
Kaede’s hand brushed my elbow at the threshold—guiding, not pulling. “Don’t look back,” he pathed. “It makes leaving impossible.”
“Speak from experience?”
A beat of silence on the thread. “Every time.”
I didn’t look back.
The ramp closed with a hydraulic hiss. The morning light narrowed to a bright wedge, then a sliver, then nothing. The seal engaged and the Abyss swallowed us whole.