“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.
