“REI, can you manifest, please?” Kaede asked out loud, making sure the room could hear the exchange. “Bring Euouae, too.”
Side by side, the two Oetsae manifested—one teal, one gold, in matching baggy pants and vests.
Zirene hissed and scooped the sleeping Selena into his arms, ready to defend her. Surprisingly, his actions didn’t wake her. She snuggled into her Shadow.
The Circuli princes tried to stand, but their bodies were too weak to do more than sit up. Their appendages moved frantically as though struggling to defend their nestqueen anyway.
“All is well,”Euouae announced, raising his hands in a placating gesture. His warm tenor voice washed over the room.“We come in peace.”
“How else would we come?”REI crossed her arms and lifted an eyebrow at the golden Oetsae.
“They wouldn’t know.”
“Everything is fine. They won’t hurt you.” Kaede sighed, combing his hair back. He hated complications, especially ones where he couldn’t use force to get his way. There wasn’t much he could do between his overly-possessive boss and his two nestbrothers, whom he feared might crumble if he so much as breathed too strongly in their direction. “The price Selena paid? The echo you’ve heard in her mind? That’s them.”
“Correction—that’s me.”Euouae placed a hand on his chest.“I am Euouae, Selena’s Oetsae. She calls me ‘Vowels’ or ‘E’ for short, and we have a symbiont-host relationship. My specialty is energy medicine, a form of healing that uses my host and the surrounding bodies of energy. It has been my duty to heal and monitor Selena’s body since we joined. “
REI chimed in.“I am Kaede’s Oetsae.”
“What is your specialty?” Zirene’s tail swooshed agitatedly.
“Telekinesis.”REI tilted her head toward Kaede’s discarded lifesuit disk.“I am the reason Kaede can now teleport without his suit.”
“I didn’t know you were seriously injured when you stopped by Destima before you took off after Selena,” Z’fir muttered, relaxing. “Did you encounter trouble while you were searching for her?”
“I was injured, but not as badly as Q or Selena,” Kaede replied, crossing his arms as he stepped beside REI. “It was a solar flare’s decision. I took a risk placing Euouae inside Selena, knowing if I didn’t, there was a high chance she would die in the Cryopod. She was already too far gone to stabilize. I didn’t want her to wake alone with an Oetsae, so I placed REI into my data jack in the back of my head. That way, I didn’t need to hardwire a connection to control her or share information.”
“You wanted to make sure Selena didn’t feel alone,” V’dim muttered. “To relate to her by experiencing the same things she did.”
“It was only fair.” Kaede nodded. “Waking up with another being permanently living inside you without your permission isn’t easy. However, we adjusted to our symbionts before we arrived, and, now, we are living normal lives.”
“How is she?” Zirene asked, glancing warily between the two glowing beings. “Is she well? Does she need anything we aren’t providing her?”
“She is well,”Euouae reported, stepping onto the bed in one gliding movement. He stared down at his host sleeping comfortably in Z’s arms.“She is tired but mentally and physically sound. Her biggest desire is to see her clan reunited as soon as possible. You all are what brings her happiness.”
“What about the network?” Kaede asked, wondering about the status of yesterday’s prime topic of conversation.
“It is stable. There is no need to worry about causing damage when Selena forms a clan network surrounding her in the moon-wide web. I wouldn’t be shocked if she started to organize the strands, once her Favored are awake and well.”
Chapter Fifteen
Selena
“Forgive me, my little Nova.”
I didn’t need to turn around to know where he was. His vast, dense aura radiated behind me, pinpointing his location.
“For what?”
“For taking you too roughly,” Zirene whispered, tucking my hair behind my ear as he leaned in and caged me against the porch’s stone railing. “For being too weak to control myself around you.”
“You didn’t hurt me.” I leaned into his embrace, placing a hand on top of his. “You aren’t weak, either. Not many can stand up to their sire or rule an empire.”
“No, but my sire made me question our connection and doubt everything,” he admitted, his tail tickling the backs of my legs. “If I had only challenged him earlier—even if I had waited until right before I met you on the CEG Space Station—I could’ve made the empire safer for you and our cubs.
“I knew my sire wasn’t a fit ruler. He killed my mother, and the male she slept with, because he was jealous and didn’t want her to tarnish his reputation. Then he scarred Masmi, so she would live alone in shame. I didn’t know his hatred for females and Shadow-Nova relationships ran so deep, until he was willing to get rid of you to keep our bloodline pure, even though losing you would make me unstable.
“Because of him, I feel paranoid that anyone might betray me. I question the intentions of everyone around me, wondering whether they are out to steal my position, my Nova, or our cubs.”
