“Who says you can’t do those things again?” V’dim gave Odelm a pat on the back, rubbing light circles along his spine between his tentacles. “She isn’t dead.”
“No, but she isn’t with us either. Do you feel her? Because I don’t!”
“I do!” V’dim grabbed Odelm’s web thread—and slightly cursed at himself for not forming a nestbrother bond with Selena’s Favored before now, which would have been a more straightforward task than going through Destima’s Circuli’s web—and shoved Odelm’s pale-green thread against his nestqueen’s golden one. “See? Her presence is faint, but she is still with us. Something—or someone—must be isolating her like Master Chamber Mwe did during her trial—”
“Or when she slipped into her void chamber with you and Z’fir. Xylo and I felt as if she had died,” Odelm muttered, his gaze heavy. “I don’t like this. This is the third time someone—or something—has broken her barriers and taken her away from us, pulled her from the living.”
He pointed toward Selena, lying on the medical bed. “I don’t know about you, but this isn’t sustainable. It’s not right. Her body is barely alive while her mind—her spirit—is elsewhere. There has to be something we can do to prevent this from happening again. I fear there will come a time when she doesn’t come back to us. Then what are we supposed to do? We’d have, what, three or four months to live without her until we fade away?”
Odelm pulled away from V’dim. Instead of his usual shades of violet, his coloring ranged from scared white to angry red, reflecting Kaede’s aura when he’d last seen him. V’dim watched the fuming musician pace along the lobby’s square seating, wondering what had triggered the male to turn from troubled to raging.
“She isn’t dying, Odelm,” Z’fir scolded from Selena’s bedside. “Get a hold of yourself.”
“No, she isn’t dying—yet,” Odelm seethed, turning toward the Wudox prince. “I don’t know about you, but if she doesn’t come back, that’s it for me. Now that I’ve had a taste of what a real nestqueen is like, I’ll never be satisfied with another. I was already severed once, cast aside because I wasn’t willing to give up a part of me for someone who didn’t value me for who I am. Selena only asked for one thing—to be loved. If she dies, I will die with her. The Stars better lead me to her in the afterlife, because she will forever be my nestqueen.”
“No one is dying on my watch,” Oeta declared, as she walked up beside Odelm, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Sleep.”
Odelm’s eyes widened as his pupils rolled into the back of his head. A moment later, his knees buckled. Kaede swooped in behind him and hooked his arms under the musician’s armpits, steadying him before he crashed to the floor.
Instantly, all of the Circuli members within the room sprang to high alert, appendages fully extended and ready in their defensive stance.
“A little warning next time?” Kaede hissed, dragging the unconscious male to the nearby couch to drape him across the cushions haphazardly.
“Why did you let the fragile male work himself up into another panic attack?” Oeta scoffed. “I could feel him from my apartment across the island. There’s no way I can concentrate with him hovering nearby.”
“What did you do to my nestbrother?” Xylo questioned, advancing a few steps toward the fallen clan member. “I thought you were on our side.”
“You have nothing to worry about, Xylo.” Her fuchsia gaze surveyed the room, studying every male as her stained-glass-like wings twitched. “I only put him in a deep sleep for his own good. I was afraid he might go on a rampage or do something he would regret later. This way, I’m saving him from himself.”
V’dim knew there weren’t many Nyaviel remaining in the galaxy, and the commanding female was the only one in her generation. He was glad that her species was rare; the idea of a population the size of the Quaww, all as powerful as Oeta and incredibly long-lived, was alarming. He’d always believed that a cosmic power kept the universe in balance. If a species boasted great strength in one attribute, then it lacked something of equal value. The Nyaviel were, in his opinion, too powerful for their own good, with abilities that strengthened exponentially throughout their long lives. The cosmic power had to handicap them somehow, which explained their reproduction problems.
In a way, Oeta was much like Selena, the only female of her kind. V’dim didn’t count Kaede and the Fab Five as part of her kind, for though they were elite demi-humans like Selena, they’d been built as soldiers instead of breeders.
At least Selena had access to older generations to potentially mate with. He understood why Chamber Master Mwe had wanted his daughter to join Selena’s research team to solve their species’ fertility issues.
V’dim hoped that they weren’t approaching his nestqueen to use her for nefarious reasons, like trying to convince Selena to mate with a Nyaviel male to guarantee more offspring in Oeta’s generation. If Xylo was correct about Selena entering her heat cycle once every moon, then she could quickly contribute to repopulating the Nyaviel.
He wasn’t a Favored in their clan, but if anything close to the topic came up, V’dim would go against tradition and bypass her Primary and Second to state his disapproval directly to Selena. He hoped the other clan members would support him in preventing her from mating a Nyaviel.
He refused to watch his nestqueen become someone else’s puppet, used for someone else’s gain. He was already concerned that she’d fallen unconscious once again, and he had a feeling the mysterious voice that had attacked her before was responsible.
What did he want from her? And to what lengths would he go to get what he sought?
“Are you going to stare at each other all night?” Kaede growled. “Or are
