Chapter 28 #2
“She’s pregnant.” Zyxel met the Verya male’s eyes—emerald to chartreuse, two species united by the unconscious woman between them.
“She didn’t sleep last night. She barely slept the night before.
She left every person she loves behind on Destima, and she’s been holding the bonds open since we launched—reaching for them across light-years, refusing to let go. ”
He paused, lifting an eyebrow. Let the weight of it settle.
“Her body demanded what her mind refused to give.”
Ryzen’s jaw shifted. Something in his expression changed—the combat alertness draining, replaced by a quieter understanding. His arms tightened fractionally around Selena, and the daggers dimmed, settling into a lower orbit. Protective rather than aggressive.
“Should I put her down?”
“No.” Zyxel shook his head. “Don’t move her yet. Let me—”
He pressed deeper through the bond. Carefully. The way one handled delicate specimens—with reverence and a steady grip. He sent warmth. Not words, not thoughts, just a slow pulse of presence through the crimson thread. “I’m here. You’re safe. You can stop holding.”
Something in her shifted. A small, involuntary unclenching—like a fist loosening in sleep. Her spots flickered once. Warm blue. Then settled again.
Still unconscious. But calmer.
“She needs a bed,” Zyxel said. “And she needs her mates.”
The word came out naturally. Her mates. Plural. A constellation of males scattered across the galaxy, most of them too far to do anything but worry—but two of them right here, kneeling on the cold deck of a warship, holding the woman who held them all together.
Ryzen nodded once. “Kaede.”
“Kaede.”
The pulse Zyxel sent through the bond was sharp and deliberate—not a request, not a question. An alarm.
Kaede materialized in the lounge three seconds later.
Zyxel recorded the response time with the part of his brain that never stopped measuring.
Three seconds from alert to arrival, which meant Kaede had been deep in the Abyss’s tactical systems when the call came—pulling him out of what he was doing instantly as soon as it registered that Selena is in danger.
Kaede’s eyes found her immediately.
Not the room. Not the tactical layout. Not the exits or the potential threats or the defensive positions he normally swept in the first breath of any new environment.
His gaze went straight to Selena—limp in Ryzen’s arms, spots shifting between brown and black, silver hair trailing over the Verya male’s forearm.
Something crossed Kaede’s face.
It was fast. Controlled. The kind of micro-expression that most beings would miss entirely, but Zyxel had spent decades reading the subtle language of bodies, and Kaede’s body spoke volumes in the space between one heartbeat and the next.
Possessiveness. Raw and involuntary—another male holding his mate, his star, unconscious and vulnerable. The predator beneath the strategist baring its teeth at the sight.
Then discipline crushed it flat.
“What happened?” The voice was ice. Operational.
“Exhaustion.” Zyxel rose to his feet—his demi-human knees protesting the shift with a stiffness his Ezzaska joints never carried.
“She hasn’t slept. Hasn’t eaten properly.
She’s been maintaining every bond in her web since departure—stretching herself across light-years to keep the connections alive. ”
Kaede’s jaw tightened.
Zyxel caught it—the particular tension of a male who’d seen this coming and failed to prevent it. Kaede had known. The shadows beneath Selena’s eyes, the barely touched food, the three-hour vigil at the viewport. He’d watched the same signs Zyxel had observed and arrived at the same conclusion.
And he hadn’t intervened. Because Selena didn’t respond to intervention—she responded to need. Her own never qualified.
It was the one flaw in her otherwise extraordinary architecture.
The female who could hold an entire galaxy’s worth of bonds, who could reach across light-years and touch a mate’s sleeping mind, who could stand before the most powerful Assembly in the known universe and demand they see her as a person rather than a specimen—that same female could not, would not, admit that she was running dry.
Zyxel had seen it in his research. The data on demi-human physiology was sparse—most of it classified, much of it destroyed during the Yarrkins purge—but what remained painted a clear picture.
Adaptive biology demanded fuel. Mental projection demanded more.
And pregnancy on top of both created a metabolic demand that could strip a body to the bone if left unchecked.
He’d told Xylo. Xylo had packed the medical kit accordingly. But kits didn’t help if the patient refused to stop.
“The baby?” Kaede crossed the remaining distance in three precise strides, his hand finding Selena’s belly before his eyes left her face.
“Healthy.” Euouae materialized before them. “The pregnancy is stable. She’s depleted, not damaged. But if she keeps spending herself at this rate—”
“She won’t.” Flat. Final.
Kaede straightened. Turned to Ryzen, and something passed between them—not warmth, not even tolerance, but the cold mutual respect of two predators who’d found themselves protecting the same territory.
“I’ll take her.”
Ryzen didn’t hesitate. He shifted Selena’s weight with careful precision, and Kaede gathered her against his chest in a single fluid motion—one arm beneath her knees, the other supporting her shoulders, her head settling into the hollow of his throat like it had been designed to fit there.
The transfer was seamless. Practiced. The choreography of males who’d both learned how to hold her without waking her.
Her spots flickered at the contact. Warm blue pulsing once against Kaede’s living suit before dimming again.
Even unconscious, she knew him.
Zyxel catalogued that too. The way her biology responded to Kaede’s proximity like a compass finding north—automatic, cellular, beyond conscious decision.
Their bond was the strangest among her living connections, forged in the desperate days of her rescue during his heat cycle, tempered through trials and near-deaths and a love so fierce it had terrified everyone who witnessed it.
He didn’t envy it. He’d made peace with the architecture of her heart weeks ago—a structure that held many rooms, each one essential, each one differently shaped to accommodate a different kind of devotion. His room was newer. Quieter.
But it was his. And he would fill it well.
Zyxel watched the way Kaede held her—the absolute control in his arms, the barely perceptible adjustment of his grip to accommodate the weight of her belly, the way his chin dipped to press against her hair. Possessive. Protective. Reverent.
The same way Zyxel had held her the night the war began. Different body. Different anatomy. Same consuming need to keep her whole.
“She needs her nestbed.” Kaede’s voice had shifted—still controlled, but something beneath the ice had cracked open. He was speaking to himself as much as them. “And she needs her mates.”
He looked at Zyxel.
Not Ryzen. Him.
“Come with me.”
Not a request.
Zyxel followed.
Through the corridor that connected the observation lounge to the Abyss’s residential wing, past the crew quarters where Eshe’s Royal Guard ran their rotational watch, toward the nestbed chamber Kaede had configured for this journey.
The ship’s lighting dimmed automatically as they moved deeper—recognizing the route, anticipating the need.
Kaede walked without hurry. Each step measured, deliberate—the stride of a male who fully understood that the female in his arms was the most valuable cargo this ship had ever carried and refused to jostle her for the sake of speed.
Through the crimson bond, Zyxel tracked Selena’s state. Still unconscious. Still drained.
Behind them, Zyxel felt Ryzen’s presence at the edge of his awareness—not following but watching. The Verya male stood at the threshold of the lounge, spirit daggers settled to low orbit, emerald runes dim against his forearms. His expression held something Zyxel couldn’t name.
Not jealousy. Not longing.
Purpose.
The male had been a just commander barely a few months ago.
A Verya—one of the very people they’d all sworn to protect.
And now he stood at the edge of their circle, held at arm’s length by circumstance and species and the complicated politics of a bond that existed but hadn’t been claimed, and he stayed anyway. Guarded anyway.
Zyxel understood that particular kind of devotion. The kind that lived in the gap between welcome and belonging.
The door to the nestbed chamber opened at Kaede’s approach—biometrics reading his signature, the lock disengaging without sound.
Inside, the space held the particular warmth Selena demanded of any room she slept in—golden-toned lighting at ten percent, temperature calibrated to her preference, the bed massive and layered with the silk sheets and pillows, and weighted blankets that grounded her.
Kaede laid her down gently. Her head found the pillow. Her body settled into the sheets. One of his hands lingered on her belly, palm flat, feeling the life beneath.
Zyxel stood in the doorway and understood what was being asked of him.
Not protection. Not strategy. Not the scholar’s analysis or the warrior’s readiness.
Presence.
Kaede looked up. The visor was off—rare enough that it registered as significant.
His neon-green eyes held the particular exhaustion of a male who’d spent the past week holding the galaxy together through sheer refusal to let it collapse, and who was now, in the quiet of this room, admitting that he couldn’t do it alone.
“She’ll wake disoriented.” Kaede’s voice was low. Rough. “The bonds will be thinner and strained. She’ll reach for the others and find cold distance instead of warmth.”
A pause. Heavy with everything he didn’t say.
“Be here when she does.”
Zyxel crossed the threshold.
He lowered himself onto the edge of the bed—this strange, flat body folding into the space with a care that felt almost adequate—and settled his hand over Selena’s. Her fingers were cool beneath his. Through the crimson thread, he felt the faintest pulse of recognition. A flicker. A sigh.
“I’m here,” he sent. “We’re here.”
Kaede moved to her other side. The bed dipped beneath his weight, and his arm curved around her—over the belly, across the sheets, until his fingers brushed Zyxel’s wrist.
Neither of them pulled away.
The Abyss hummed around them—engines and recycled air and the particular vibration of a vessel cutting through the void at speeds that made light look lazy.
Beyond the hull, the galaxy streamed past, indifferent to the war tearing through it, indifferent to the woman who carried its future in her belly and its hope in her web of bonds.
Kaede’s breathing slowed. Not sleep—he wouldn’t sleep, not yet, probably not at all—but the careful deceleration of a body that had been operating at combat readiness for too long.
Zyxel stayed awake.
He watched the slow pulse of Selena’s spots in the dim light—warm blue cycling back in gradual increments, her body remembering its rhythms now that it had been given permission to rest. Her face had softened.
The tension lines between her brows eased, and her breathing deepened into something that approached peace.
She carried too much. She always carried too much.
And she had never once, in all the time he’d known her, asked anyone to carry it for her.
His thumb traced the ridge of her knuckles. Small, methodical circles. The kind of repetitive motion that soothed his own nerves and might, through the bond, soothe hers.
Two days until the CEG Space Station. Two days to prepare for the trap they were walking into—the galactic Assembly, the enemies wearing diplomatic smiles and filing their teeth behind closed doors.
Two days to make sure she was strong enough to face them.
He would not fail her.
Whatever this body cost him—the discomfort, the displacement, the persistent wrongness of wearing a life that didn’t fit—it was nothing compared to the weight she bore. He would hold his shape. He would hold his ground. He would hold her, in this borrowed skin, for as long as the war demanded it.
Selena’s fingers twitched. Curled. Found his hand and held.
In the dark, in the hum of the Abyss, with his enax sleeping between him and a male who had every right to end him but instead shared a bed in silence—Zyxel let himself breathe.
And for the first time since Destima fell behind them, the crimson bond stopped aching.