She deserved to choose mates because she wanted them. Not because she needed an arsenal.
And Ryzen—
Kaede watched the slow pulse of emerald runes against his golden skin. The warrior’s face pressed into Selena’s hair. The arms that held her with the desperate grip of someone who’d been drowning and finally found air.
Ryzen didn’t know how to love her. Not the way Kaede did, not the way his clanbrothers did—the years of learning her rhythms, cataloging her tells, understanding that her stubbornness was armor and her bravery was a psyknife she held to her own throat as often as she pointed it at enemies. Ryzen knew her spiritforce. Knew the shape of her mind. Knew the taste of her body after tonight.
He didn’t know that she cried in her sleep sometimes. Didn’t know she needed pressure across her hips when the pregnancy ached. Didn’t know she’d eat an entire plate of food before admitting she’d been starving for hours.
He’d learn. Or he wouldn’t. Either way, the bond was permanent now, and Kaede would deal with the reality of it the way he dealt with everything else.
By making it work.
Euouae had been watching him. The Oetsae’s golden form shimmered with patient light, his ancient presence steady.
“The bond is not what you fear,” Euouae said finally. His projection drifted back toward Kaede, ponytail trailing like spun gold. “It is not romantic. Not the way your bond is. What they share is… kinship. Purpose. A warrior’s oath made permanent.”
“I don’t care what it is.” A lie. They both knew it.
“Her spiritforce is stronger now. The emerald thread gives her access to his weapons—spirit daggers she can absorb and summon independently. In a confrontation at the CEG, that advantage could save her life.” Euouae paused, golden eyes steady. “Your daughter’s life.”
Low blow. Accurate, but low.
Kaede leaned back in the chair. The metal creaked beneath him—Verya engineering apparently prioritized function over silence. His gaze tracked the slow rise and fall of Selena’s breathing. The soft swell of her belly pressed against Ryzen’s abdomen.
His daughter. Growing inside the female he’d built his world around. Protected now by a bond with a broken Verya warrior and eight spirit daggers that lay scattered across the floor like forgotten promises.
“She’s sound?” he asked. Stripped the emotion from the question the way he’d strip a weapon. Clean. Functional. “No complications? The pregnancy, the bonding—no adverse effects?”
“None.” Euouae’s form brightened fractionally. “The merging was clean. His spiritforce integrated with her existing web without disruption. Her shields are intact, her threads stable, and the baby’s neural development has actually—” He caught himself. Recalibrated. “She is well, Kaede. Both of them are.”
Something unknotted in his chest. Fractionally. A tension he hadn’t acknowledged releasing its grip on his lungs just enough to let him breathe.
“And when she wakes?”
“She’ll be hungry.” A flicker of warmth in Euouae’s voice. Almost amused. “She’s always hungry these days.”
Kaede’s mouth twitched despite himself. A muscle memory of humor in a body that didn’t feel much like laughing.
“When it comes to her,” he said quietly, “there’s everything to worry about.”
Euouae studied him. The ancient Oetsae’s projection shimmered—gold rippling through gold, layers of consciousness older than most civilizations considering the male before him.
“You are a good mate,” Euouae said. Simply. Without qualification.
Kaede didn’t respond to that. Couldn’t. The words hit something raw that he refused to examine, and he buried it the way he buried everything that didn’t serve the mission—deep, locked, dealt with later.
Euouae’s golden form flickered once, then dissolved, sinking back into Selena’s body like sunlight absorbed by water. Gone. Returned to the spiritforce web where he resided, tethered to her consciousness the way all the Oetsae were tethered to their hosts.
The room settled into silence.
Just Kaede and the two sleeping figures on the bed and the dark spirit daggers scattered across the floor and the living suit disk turning, turning, turning between his fingers.
He pulled the chair closer to the bed.
Settled in.
And waited.
