The connection held.
It would complicate everything. I knew that—and yet, I didn’t regret it.
“Good,” I said softly, refusing to let go of his hand. “Then you know I mean it when I say you’re not alone.”
His fingers tightened around mine—brief, desperate. Like he’d just remembered how to hold on.
“It won’t be simple,” he murmured. “This connection. Your mates—”
“Will have questions,” I said gently. “Concerns. Opinions.” A faint smile curved my lips, fragile at the edges. Some more than others.“But they know me. They know I can’t watch someone drown when I have the power to reach them.”
His gaze searched my face, disbelief and something like hope tangled together.
“Even when helping someone makes everything more complicated?”
I squeezed his hand, anchoring him there—with me.
“Especially then.”
Ryzen’s laugh was broken. Brief. But real—and that felt like a small victory.
“The Verya won’t stop,” he said, and his voice steadied as the runes found their rhythm. “They’ve been tracking you since they discovered what you are. A genetic anomaly. A bridge between species.”
A chill ran along my spine. Intellectually, I’d known. Celyze’s vision. Kaede’s explanation. The warnings stacked like stones on my chest.
Hearing it from Ryzen—someone who’d grown up under Verya rule, who knew their patience and cruelty like muscle memory—made the threat solid.
Not future tense.
Now.
“They want you,” he said, quieter. “Whatever the Stars made you—whatever you can do—they want it.”
My hand went to my belly before my mind could catch up. Instinct. Protection. The weight of everything I had to lose.
“I know,” I said. “Kaede told me.”
“And you’re still here. Kneeling in front of a broken male whose species ruled the galaxy that enslaved your ancestors.” His eyes searched my face, looking for something I couldn’t name. “Why?”
“Because you reached formewhen you were dying. Because you foundmewhen you needed an anchor.” I held his stare, repeating my explanation, trying to get him to understand. “And because I know what it feels like to lose everything and have no one reach back.”
Silence stretched between us—not the crushing void of before, but something softer. The quiet that came after a storm passed.
Then Ryzen stilled.
The spirit dagger hovering at my throat slid away at his unspoken command, drifting back into the loose orbit around him. His hands closed around my arms—firm, steady—and he drew me up from where I knelt at his feet, one hand still braced instinctively over my stomach. The other daggers parted as he guided me past them, clearing a path without a single sharp edge turned toward me. He steered me to the bench beneath the viewport and eased me down, careful, deliberate, as if he were afraid of breaking something precious.
Only once I was settled did he speak, his voice carrying the steel I’d heard before—the same resolve that had built sanctuaries for refugees and defied the empire that shaped him.
“He’s alive.” The words came out like a vow. “Xenak. They wouldn’t kill him. He’s too valuable.”
My breath caught. “You can still feel him?”
“Not through the bond.” His jaw tightened. “That’s—” He swallowed hard, and grief tore through our connection like ablade between ribs. “That’s gone. Severed. It’s like losing a limb and still feeling the phantom pain. I wake up reaching for him and find only silence.” His hands flexed, white-knuckled with restraint. “But I know my brother. I know how the Verya think. They don’t waste resources. They don’t destroy what they can use.”
“So Xenak is…”
“Bait.” The word landed hard.
