She understood more than she should. More than any child should have to.
V’dim stopped at the gazebo’s edge, his tentacles coiling in the way they did when he was processing difficult emotions. Water still dripped from his muscular form, pooling on the stone beneath his feet.
“The deployment orders came through.” V’dim’s voice was steady, but I felt the turbulence beneath it through our bond. The careful control that kept him functional when everything in him wanted to rage against circumstance. “We’re to rendezvous with the female fleet in fifty-three hours.”
Fifty-three hours.
The number crashed through me like a physical blow.
“The Lunkai Sol system,” Z’fir added, his vines rustling with agitation despite his controlled tone. Their movement gave away what his voice wouldn’t—the anxiety, the reluctance, the desperate wish that duty pointed anywhere else. “We’ve been assigned to Lunkai’s defense. Protecting the Aldawi’s capital and origin point.”
Lunkai.
Lunkai hung in Destima’s sky—its moon and the new Aldawi capital, close enough to feel like it was watching over us. A world I hadn’t visited yet but longed to. Once the seat of Zirene’s rule, it had been remade into the heart of Aldawi power, bound to Destima and kept always within reach, always in orbit.
My mates would protect it. Would protect us.
While I remained here. Preparing for a different battle entirely.
“When do you leave?” My voice came out strange. Distant. Like it belonged to someone else.
“Shortly after dawn. Day after tomorrow.” V’dim’s tentacle reached for me, and I let it curl around my wrist—let him anchor me the way he always did when the ground shifted beneath my feet. The familiar pressure helped. Barely. “We wanted you to know now. Before—”
He didn’t finish.
Before we ran out of time. Before another piece of our constellation broke away. Before the distances between us grew too vast to bridge.
Z’fir’s vines brushed my cheek—cool and steady, grounding me when everything else felt like freefall. “We will reach for you through the bond. Every night. Every morning. As often as we can.”
“I know.” The words caught in my throat. “I know you will.”
But knowing didn’t make it easier.
Another fracture. Another absence that would ache like a wound ripped fresh each morning.
First Zirene. Then V’dim and Z’fir.
And soon—after them—I would leave as well, answering the CEG’s summons. I would face a galaxy that wanted me controlled or captured or dead, while the males who should have stood at my side spread out across the stars to hold the line elsewhere.
The cubs would lose their clanfather figures one by one. The constellation would stretch until the bonds strained at their limits. And I—
I would return and stay here. Growing heavier with Kaede’s daughter while the males I loved flew toward danger.
Helpless.
The thought burned through me, sharp and acidic. I watched V’dim and Z’fir return to the pool, giving me space they knew I needed—the privacy to process, to grieve, to find the strength that felt so far from my grasp. The cubs immediately demanded their attention, Meti asking pointed questions about where they’d been and why they looked so serious.
Watching them deflect—watching them pretend that nothing was wrong, that their family wasn’t about to shatter—made something crystallize in my chest.
No.
I was not helpless. I refused to be helpless.
There were things I couldn’t control. The war. The deployment orders. The political machinations of empires and councils and enemies who wanted me dead or captured or studied.
But there were things I could control.
My abilities. My readiness. My capacity to reach my mates across any distance.
