Chapter 29
Selena
Iwoke to fingers in my hair and the low murmur of a voice I’d know in any galaxy.
Kaede.
The neon-green thread between us pulsed steady and warm—close, so close—and for a disoriented moment I couldn’t piece together where I was.
Not Destima. Not the villa. The hum beneath me was wrong—metallic, constant, the deep vibration of a ship in transit.
The light was wrong too. Cooler. Artificial.
Filtered through panels instead of the lavender sky I’d grown used to.
The Abyss.
Memory crashed back. The viewport. The stars streaking past like grief made visible. Standing there for hours, watching everything I loved fall behind me—
And then nothing.
“You passed out.” Kaede’s voice was quiet. Matter-of-fact. His fingers never stopped their slow stroke through my hair. “You’re in your nestbed now. Where you should have been since we took off.”
I blinked. The ceiling above me was unfamiliar—polished dark metal inlaid with ambient panels that cast everything in soft blue-white.
A royal chamber. The kind built for an Aldawi Beacon who traveled with their entire court.
The nestbed was massive beneath me, layered in the deep-pile fabrics that the Circuli Nestqueens demanded for comfort that only Aldawi royalty could affordand I was sunk into it like I’d been placed there with care.
Because I had been. By the male whose lap cradled my head.
Guilt rose fast and sharp. I should have been stronger than this. Should have held it together. The Beacon didn’t collapse in observation lounges while her people prepared for war—
“Don’t.” Kaede’s thumb traced my temple. His voice was stern, but that touch was impossibly gentle. That contradiction was so perfectly him. “You’re pregnant. You’re exhausted. You didn’t sleep. You left everyone behind.” A pause. His jaw flexed. “You’re allowed to need rest, Selena.”
I exhaled. Let the guilt settle. It didn’t leave—it never left—but it made room for the warmth of his hand in my hair, the solid presence of his body beside mine.
“How long?”
“Four hours. Zyxel checked you with a medpack and confirmed with Euouae. You and the baby are fine.” His neon-green gaze tracked mine, reading everything I wasn’t saying. “Your body shut down because your mind wouldn’t.”
That sounded about right.
I lay still for a long moment, letting Kaede’s presence anchor me. Then I reached.
Not physically. Through the web.
All of them. Scattered. Stretched. The constellation that had held me together for months now pulled across the galaxy like stars drifting from their orbits.
The distance hollowed me out.
I needed something close. Something I could touch, could taste, could wrap myself around until the emptiness stopped screaming.
As if Kaede had read my mind—or felt it through the bond—the nestbed shifted. A presence in the doorway. A thread flaring crimson-bright.
Zyxel.
He stood in the frame of the door in his demi-human form, and the sight of him made something clench in my chest. The curved black horns sweeping back from his crown.
The long black hair falling over broad shoulders.
The angular face with those devastating chartreuse eyes that tracked everything with quiet, scholarly intensity.
He looked like Kaede in silhouette—close enough to make a stranger look twice.
The same lean fighter’s build. The same height.
The same horns and dark coloring that read as demi-human, as Ezzaska-born.
But where Kaede was sharp edges and controlled violence, Zyxel was careful stillness and banked heat.
Where Kaede commanded a room by entering it, Zyxel observed from its margins until he chose his moment.
Opposite ends of the same spectrum. Both mine.
The crimson bond between us thrummed with concern. He’d felt my collapse. Felt my waking. And now he stood in the doorway like he wasn’t sure he was invited into the room where Kaede had already settled.
“I need—” My voice came out rough. Scraped raw. I swallowed and tried again. “I need you both. Close. Please.”
Kaede didn’t hesitate.
“Zyxel. Nestbed. Now.”
Not a request. An order wrapped in understanding.
Kaede knew what I needed better than I could articulate—had always known, from the first moment our bond snapped into place, and even before that.
He felt the hollow ache through the golden thread and answered it the only way he could: by giving me more of us.
Zyxel crossed the room. His gait was steadier than the last time I’d watched him walk—the training with Kaede and Ryzen had done its work.
He still moved with too much deliberation, each step a conscious choice rather than instinct, but there was a new fluidity beneath the effort.
He settled onto the nestbed on my other side, and the mattress dipped under his weight.
His hand found mine. Long fingers—warm brown skin where scales used to be—curled around my palm, and the crimson thread between us sang.
I had two of my stars within reach. The rest were scattered across the dark. But these two were here, and for tonight, that had to be enough.
But it wasn’t.
Close wasn’t enough. Their warmth on either side of me, their hands in mine—it should have been enough. I should have closed my eyes and let their presence lull me back to sleep the way a good, reasonable, resting-for-the-baby nestqueen would.
But the hollowness wouldn’t stop. The ache wasn’t just emotional. It was physical—bone-deep, hunger-sharp, the kind of need that settled between my hips and radiated outward until my skin felt too tight for my body.
I turned my head and found Kaede watching me. Those neon-green eyes, slitted and knowing. His pupils had blown wide in the dim light, and the way he looked at me—assessing, certain, already three steps ahead—sent heat licking down my spine.
He knew. Of course he knew.
“Tell me what you need, star.” Low. Private. A command disguised as permission.
I didn’t have pretty words for it. Didn’t have the careful phrasing that made desire sound poetic instead of desperate. All I had was the truth.
“I need to feel you. Both of you.” I wet my lips. “Inside me. Around me. I need to stop thinking and just—”
Kaede’s mouth found mine before I finished.
The kiss was immediate and commanding. No hesitation. No slow build. He kissed me like he’d been waiting for me to ask—like the only thing that had kept him from taking me apart the moment I opened my eyes was respect for my rest and the thin veneer of his legendary control.
His forked tongue slid against mine and I moaned into his mouth, my whole body arching toward him. The neon-green thread blazed between us—his want flooding through, urgent and possessive. He tasted like the tea he’d been drinking while he watched over me, and beneath it, something sharper. Hunger.
The crimson bond flared on my other side.
Zyxel. Close enough to feel the heat pouring off both of us, close enough to hear the sounds I was making against Kaede’s mouth.
I reached for him blindly, my free hand finding his chest—warm, solid, the hard planes of muscle beneath unfamiliar skin. His heart hammered under my palm.
Kaede broke the kiss. His lips were wet, his breathing barely controlled.
“Zyxel.” That voice. The one he used in combat. In strategy sessions. When directing his drones through an assassination. Cool. Precise. Completely at odds with the heat I could feel scorching through our bond. “Slow. Follow my lead. She’s carrying, so we take care with her.”
“Always.” Zyxel’s voice was rough. He’d been quiet so long I’d almost forgotten how it sounded in this form—deeper than his mental voice, resonant, with a faint rasp that vibrated through my chest. His hand tightened around mine. “Show me.”
Something about that exchange—Kaede commanding, Zyxel yielding, both of them focused entirely on me—made my pulse kick so hard I saw spots.
Kaede sat up. Reached for the base of his living suit and deactivated it, the disc collapsing in his hand.
The suit peeled away and left him bare, the dim light catching the planes of his chest, the faded scars, the dangerous architecture of a body built for killing and somehow also for this—for tenderness delivered with lethal hands.
He tossed it onto the side table with the same precision he brought to everything—controlled, deliberate, already mapping the next ten moves.
“Sit up,” he told me. Gentle beneath the command.
I obeyed. Zyxel helped me—his hand at the small of my back, steadying me with the specific care of a healer assessing a patient’s limits. But his touch lingered. His fingers spread wide against my spine, and the warmth of them sank into muscles I hadn’t realized were knotted.
Kaede knelt in front of me. Pressed his palm flat against the disc on my collarbone and deactivated my living suit. It slithered off my skin in a whisper of smart fabric, leaving me bare too. The cooled air of the ship kissed my overheated flesh, and I shivered—not from cold.
He dropped his gaze. Tracked the changes in my body with a focus that bordered on reverent.
The slight swell of my belly. The fullness of breasts heavy with pregnancy.
The pink spots that pulsed faintly along my shoulders and collarbones, responding to my arousal with a bioluminescent flush I couldn’t control.
“Stars.” Kaede breathed. His thumb traced the curve of my belly, and through the bond I felt the staggering force of what he kept locked behind his control—love and want and a fierce, territorial pride that made my throat tight. “Look at you.”
Behind me, Zyxel’s breath caught.
I turned my head. Found those chartreuse eyes tracking the same path Kaede’s had taken—my neck, my breasts, the constellation of spots glowing pink and purple against my dark skin. His lips were parted. Fangs visible. That forked tongue flickered once, unconscious, tasting the air between us.