“Then you know I need to be prepared.” I moved closer, watching his daggers for any sign that I was overstepping. They remained calm. Steady. Their patterns didn’t shift. “During the Harvest Festival, you taught me to extend my mental range. You showed me how to reach my Primaries when the distance should have made it impossible.”
Something flickered through his expression—there and gone before I could name it. Memory, perhaps. Or anticipation of what I was about to ask.
“I remember.”
“I need more.” The words came out stronger than I felt—projected confidence I wasn’t sure I possessed. “I need to reach farther. Hold the bonds tighter. Keep my constellation connected no matter how scattered we become.”
His daggers paused their orbit. The silence that followed carried weight—calculation, consideration, the precise evaluation of cost and benefit that drove every decision Ryzen made.
“You understand what that training requires.” His voice carried an edge that might have been warning. “The exercises necessary to extend mental range... they deepen connection between teacher and student. They require intimacy of thought that cannot be undone.”
I met his gaze without flinching. “I understand.”
“Our bond would strengthen.” His jaw tightened, just slightly—the only sign of tension in his otherwise controlled form. “The thin thread between us now—it would grow into something more substantial. More permanent.”
I knew what he wasn’t saying.
The connection between us had always been different from my bonds with the other males. It had formed out of necessity during the crisis that had nearly shattered his mind after Xenak’s capture. I’d stabilized him. Saved him.
“I’m prepared to do whatever it takes.”
Ryzen studied me for a long moment, his emerald eyes searching for something I couldn’t identify. Whatever he found—doubt or determination, desperation or strength—it shifted something in him.
His daggers resumed their orbit. And I felt the change in him through our thin connection—the calculation giving way to something else. Something that approached acceptance.
“Dawn.” His voice was quiet now. “Training begins at dawn in your royal backyard.”
Relief flooded through me so sharply it threatened to buckle my knees.
“Thank you.”
His daggers settled into calm orbit, their patterns steady and purposeful. Through our thread—that thin connection I was asking him to strengthen—I felt his respect.
And something else.
Something neither of us would name.
12
Kaede
Forty-seven hours.
Kaede stared at the tactical display, numbers flickering across the holographic surface like stars burning out one by one. Forty-seven hours until they boarded theAbyssand carried Selena into the heart of the CEG Space Station, where every species in the galaxy would be watching. Waiting. Judging.
Hunting.
“Security analysis at seventy-three percent,”REI reported, her voice threading through his mind with clinical precision.“CEG station protocols have changed since the last Assembly session. Increased checkpoint scans. Biometric verification at all primary access points. They’re paranoid.”
“They should be.”Kaede’s claws tapped against the war room’s obsidian table, the sound rhythmic, controlled.“Two major species are at war, and the Verya are invading the galaxy. Every species with half a brain is fortifying their positions.”
The war room sat deep within the mountain base above the villa, a space Kaede had claimed the moment they’d returned to Destima. Black stone walls swallowed the glow of holographic projections, making the displays hover in the darkness like fragments of distant galaxies. From here, he could see everything—every approach, every blind spot, the villa and its backyard spread below, making it easier to protect those he’d sworn to defend.
In one corner of the feed, Meti and her brothers played in the backyard. The cubs tumbled over each other with the reckless energy of youth, their laughter silent through the display but somehow still palpable. Eshe watched from a respectful distance, her presence a comfort rather than a restriction, even though the clan was present.
In another feed, V’dim’s tentacles wrapped around Selena as she rested on a lounger near the pool. Her soft swollen belly caught the afternoon light, and even from here, Kaede could see the exhaustion shadowing her features. The pregnancy was draining her. Xylo had warned them—had stated that even with her Oetsae she could still experience nausea, tiredness, pains and swift hormone changes—but his warnings didn’t ease the twist in his chest every time he saw how drained she’d become.
The sight should have calmed him.
