The thought rose unbidden, certain in a way his emotions rarely were. This was the moment. The one he’d been waiting for without knowing it.
He’d written a song, once.
During the dark months. When Selena had been taken—ripped from their bonds so violently that the absence had felt like open wounds. When he’d spent endless nights staring at instruments he couldn’t play properly. His tentacles gone, too newly regenerating to even break from his skin, making him incapable to manage the precision his music demanded.
He’d written the song anyway. Clumsy. Imperfect. Full of all the grief and desperate hope he couldn’t speak aloud.
He’d never played it for her.
It had felt too raw. Too revealing of the depths of his need—the obsessive fixation that his clanbrothers whispered about when they thought he couldn’t hear. Playing it meant admitting how close to the edge her disappearance had pushed him. How much of his sanity had hinged on the belief that she would return.
But tonight was the last night.
Tomorrow, Zirene would board theShadowClawand fly toward a war that might kill him. V’dim and Z’fir would follow within days, commanding fleets instead of sharing meals. The constellation Selena had built so carefully—woven bond by bond, thread by thread—would fracture across light-years.
They might never all be together again. Not like this. Not with the warmth of shared food and the sounds of cubs and the comfort of walls that had witnessed their best and worst moments.
If he didn’t play it now, when would he?
His fingers shifted position.
The dining hall seemed to hold its breath.
The first notes emerged low. Tentative. A single thread of sound that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than music usually lived.
Around the table, conversation stilled.
The melody climbed slowly, finding its footing. It wasn’t perfect—his regenerating appendages stumbled over passages that once flowed like water—but the imperfection made it honest. Real in a way polished performance could never be.
This was what grief sounded like when you couldn’t hold it anymore. When the wordsI thought I lost youweren’t enough.
He played the endless nights. The weight of bonds gone quiet. The way hope had felt like a psyblade pressed against his throat—cutting if he held it too tight, killing him if he let it go.
He played the fear that never quite left. The knowledge that the galaxy kept trying to take her, and one day it might succeed.
He played love.
Not the comfortable love of settled bonds and easy rhythms. The sharp, desperate kind. The kind that woke him in the dark with her name on his lips and terror in his chest. The kind he’d promised to temper, to control, to make smaller so it didn’t overwhelm her—
But music didn’t lie.
The clan sat frozen. Zirene’s shadow had gone still, no longer rippling with its usual restless energy. Kaede’s hands remained steady, his piece of wood and psydagger clutched tightly in his grip. The princes had leaned together, V’dim’s tentacles intertwined with Z’fir’s vines in unconscious unity.
Xylo’s thread pressed against Odelm’s shields—wordless understanding, the solidarity of a bondbrother who knew exactly what this cost him.
Even Ryzen had looked up. Something flickered behind his hollow gaze. Recognition, maybe. The acknowledgment of one grief touching another.
But Odelm’s attention was on Selena.
Her spots had shifted.
Deep violet bled through the softer colors, the bioluminescence responding to emotion too powerful to contain. Tears tracked silently down her cheeks, catching the light, and she made no move to wipe them away.
Through their bond, her feelings crashed into him.
You kept me alive.
The thought wasn’t words—just raw understanding, the shape of what his music had given her without either of them knowing. He’d poured his grief into song while she was gone, and somehow that grief had become a tether. A promise that someone was waiting. Someone would keep holding on no matter how long the dark lasted.
