Because the space where Zirene should have been ached like a wound that wouldn’t close.
I could still feel his kiss burning on my lips. Could still see the look on his face as he’d walked up that ramp—the Sovereign’s mask barely containing the male underneath. He’d touched my belly. Pressed his forehead to mine. Made promises we both knew the war might not let him keep.
And then he’d left. Flown toward the front lines while I stood on that platform with our cubs pressed against my sides and his taste still on my tongue.
Gone.
The word echoed through me, hollow and impossible.
A shriek of laughter cut through my thoughts. Meti launched herself off the pool’s edge, silver fur flashing brilliant in the sun before she crashed into V’dim with enough force to send water spraying in all directions. His tentacles caught her mid-collision, wrapping around her small form with practiced ease, and the mock-growl he produced sent the cubs into hysterics.
Nocrez and Neazzos circled him like tiny predators, their dark striped forms slicing through the water with a coordination that spoke to their royal Aldawi blood. Even at their age, they moved like hunters. Like warriors in training.
They shouldn’t have to be warriors. They were children.
But the galaxy didn’t care what they should have to be.
Odelm treaded water at the shallow end, his violet skin glinting wetly as he watched the chaos unfold. His presence in the pool wasn’t incidental—he positioned himself between the cubs and any threat that might materialize, even here in our protected grounds. His empathic awareness hummed at the edges of my consciousness, a steady warmth that helped blunt the sharper edges of my grief.
He knew. Of course he knew. He always knew.
V’dim’s tentacles proved excellent pool toys—one advantage of mating with an Ulax that I hadn’t anticipated when I’d first met him. He lifted Nocrez high above the water, the cub’s dark fur streaming rivulets down V’dim’s muscular arm, then launched him in a perfect arc that ended with an enormous splash. Neazzos immediately demanded the same treatment, his small voice carrying clear and demanding across the yard.
“My turn! Vee, my turn!”
V’dim obliged with the patient steadiness I’d come to depend on from him. His bond with the cubs had grown stronger even with their time separated from us—father in every way that mattered, even if their blood came from different sources. He loved them. Protected them. Would die for them without hesitation.
And soon he would leave them too.
The thought made my throat tighten.
“You’re not watching them,” Tori murmured, her voice pitched low enough that only I could hear. “You’re somewhere else entirely.”
I tore my gaze from the pool and found her studying me with those knowing bright green eyes. Tori had been through hell of her own—abducted like me, transformed by circumstances beyond her control, building a new life among aliens who had once seemed like monsters. She understood loss in ways the others didn’t. Understood what it meant to grieve for a life that kept shifting beneath your feet.
“I’m here.”
She didn’t believe me. The slight furrow between her brows said as much. But she didn’t push—just shifted closer, her shoulder pressing against mine in silent support.
I didn’t deserve her friendship. Didn’t deserve any of this—the mates who loved me, the cubs who called me mother, thetitle that made me beacon to an empire that had once wanted me dead.
At least, the late Sovereign did.
But I had it anyway. And by how my people reacted to me at the Harvest Festival, they were overall welcoming to both me and what I stood for: change.
The backyard sprawled around us, deceptively peaceful under Destima’s perpetual mild climate. The villa’s white walls gleamed in the sunlight, decorated with climbing vines that flowered in soft blues and purples. A privacy barrier shimmered at the property’s edge—invisible most of the time, but I could feel its hum if I reached for it. Protection. Always protection. As if walls and barriers could keep out the things that really threatened us.
To my left, near the flowering vines that crept up the villa’s eastern wall, Xylo and Zyxel sat in deep conversation. Their heads bent close together, two scholars finding common ground despite the vast differences in their forms. Xylo’s dark gray-almost black skin caught the morning light, its galaxy-like patterns shimmering as he gestured toward something on the tablet between them. His delicate features were pinched with concentration—that particular expression he wore when a problem captured his attention completely.
Zyxel’s massive serpentine body coiled beside him, crimson scales gleaming where the sun touched them. His tail curled behind Xylo as he absorbed nutrients from the ground. My newest mate had found unexpected kinship with my healer—both of them peering at the world through the lens of knowledge, of understanding, of questions that demanded answers.
They were working on strengthening the recovery ointment Zyxel had developed, and Xylo was attempting to strengthen. Zyxel’s medical knowledge—gained during his desperate flight from Verya space—combining with Xylo’s healing expertise.Adapting it for the types of wounds war would bring. Burns and lacerations from plasma and spirit weapons. The thousand ways bodies could break when violence came calling.
Preparing for injuries that hadn’t happened yet.
The thought lodged like a blade between my ribs.
Nearer to the villa’s entrance, Kaede stood with Eshe. Even from this distance, I could read the tension in my assassin’s shoulders—the way his psydaggers hovered at his hips, their glow muted but ready. Always prepared. He’d been carved from discipline and duty long before I’d known him, shaped into a weapon by our old masters and now worked for the empire that depended on his blade.
