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 holdher,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 hisenaxsleeping 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.
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.
TheAbyss.
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.
