Pregnancy was draining her. Stealing energy she didn’t have to spare.
Xylo had warned them this stage would hit hard. Carrying a demi-human child demanded a toll even on Selena’s remarkable body.
Zyxel coiled nearby in his serpentine form—massive, crimson-tinted scales catching the room’s soft glow as he offered her a cup of something warm. Steam curled between them. The serpent pressed the vessel into her hands with reverence that came too close to worship.
Tori sat cross-legged on a nearby cushion, her Swynemi mates flanking her in protective formation. Celyze hovered close, silver speckles flickering across his sapphire skin—steadying the air, anchoring it, as if his presence could soften the sharp edge of the future.
Selena had claimed a new mate—and from Kaede’s reports, a new bond pulsed with her mental shields. Zirene could see it in the way she tilted toward Zyxel, the new ease between them.
Crimson. Permanent.
Another thread tying her to another male.
Something twisted in Zirene’s chest. Not pure jealousy—he’d outlived the kind of ego that thought love was a single blademeant for a single sheath. But the Aldawi didn’t share mates like this. The old rules had teeth, and he’d been raised on them.
It was more like... concern. Another male bound to his mate meant another consciousness tied to her mental web—and through her, to the rest of the clan. Another thread that could be exploited. Another target for anyone seeking to hurt her through those she loved.
Selena wasn’t Aldawi.
Selena was the reason rules kept breaking.
Watching Zyxel angle his body to shield Selena and the cubs from even the viewport’s faint chill, Zirene couldn’t deny the serpent’s devotion. The bond had sealed for a reason. Selena’s heart chose with brutal honesty.
He would learn to accept it.
Eventually.
The darker thought coiled underneath, quiet and patient.
Zyxel was tied to her now. Kaede. V’dim and Z’fir. Xylo. Odelm. All of them woven into her web—able to feel her emotions, hear her loud thoughts, sense when she was afraid, know when she was hurt.
They would feel it if something happened to her.
Zirene would not.
He’d refused the bond. Claimed it was to protect her—that his shadow, his darkness, could poison what she’d built. That the abyss in his mind might drag her down.
That wasn’t the full truth.
The truth was smaller. Uglier.
He was afraid.
Afraid of what she would see if he let her in completely. The violence. His shadow’s endless hunger. The moments he’d been too close to letting his shadow consume everything just to stop the pain of loss. If she saw all of that—truly saw it, not throughthe dreamscape they shared but through an intimate mental bond—would she still love him?
Would she still look at him like he wasn’t just a monster wearing a crown? That he was worth saving?
Now, facing war on two fronts, facing the possibility of leaving her alone while he burned across the stars, that fear felt like cowardice. If something happened to her while he was at the front, he wouldn’t feel it. Wouldn’t know until a message arrived, cold and clinical, informing him that his Nova had—
His jaw locked until it ached.
No. He wouldn’t indulge it. Not now.
Movement pulled his attention to the far corner of the war room.
Ryzen stood at the viewport, silhouette carved against star-streaked transit space. One spirit dagger spun lazily between his fingers—a casual motion that belied the violence coiled in those weapons. The emerald runes etched into his pale skin flickered erratically, pulsing bright then fading then flaring again like a dying heartbeat struggling to maintain rhythm.
He hadn’t spoken since boarding. Hadn’t eaten. Hadn’t done anything except stand at that window, staring into the void as if searching for something—or someone—lost in the darkness between stars.
