Only then could I hope to scale the social classes.
And I had given it all up for a single touch of her skin, unable to control myself or hold myself back any longer from her.
And yet, not an ounce of regret weighed on my mind.
Only the look of hurt on her face when I told her what would happen to her if we remained together.
Only that played on my mind, only that cut deep.
Now, I was destined to return to the Citadel empty-handed, to my groveling station inside the empire.
I would never rise, would forever remain where I had been born.
An underling.
A nothing.
And even that would have been bearable if I could have been with Ava.
But it didn’t work that way.
Now I realized why the Elders were so afraid of love.
It was the one thing that threatened their unyielding grip on power.
Love was the one thing the Shadow would fight for before the empire.
When those two great loves were joined together, anything was possible.
But if one day the love of the family ran counter to the love of the empire…
When a Shadow had to choose between his empire and his family…
It wasn’t much of a challenge.
It would be a dark day for our tyrannical Elders.
And that wasn’t something the Elders were willing to risk.
I reached down and pried loose the bent fastenings holding the panel in place.
With a final yank, it snapped free and floated in a revolving spin out to meet the space and stars.
It would continue its journey, possibly for eternity, into the void of space.
I knew exactly how it felt.
I considered releasing the magnets from my boots and let myself sail into the void.
I would become a blip on a future ship’s scanners, centuries or even millennia in the future.
The pain at losing Ava was too intense to bear.
I shook my head and got back to work.
Existence without Ava was bad enough, but I had our memories to keep myself entertained with.
And I wouldn’t sacrifice those for anything.
I brought the ship in to land at the Shadow Citadel’s eastern launch pad.
I came in a little shaky with the missing thruster panel and planted her at an awkward angle.
But at least I had landed her.
A lesser captain would have failed to do even that.
The engineers weren’t best pleased with the state of the ship.
In the Shadow Empire, no one owned anything—including their fated mates.
The ships could only be borrowed, and even then, only with permission.
Hunting down fated mates was the biggest event of the Shadow Empire calendar, so, it was always an immediate acceptance.
The engineers tried to force me to pay for the damage I’d incurred but I was in no mood to argue.
They might be talented with tools but they sat even lower on the socio-economic ladder than I did.
Besides, soldiers were good with tools too—pointy ones with razor-sharp edges—and it was not wise for an engineer to pick a fight.
I left them to fix the ship and headed inside the Citadel.
It was the center of all power and influence in the Shadow Empire.
Originally, it had been the heart of all religions but had since been converted into its current use.
When the Elders took control of the Citadel, they took control of the faith too.
It made for a powerful and potent mix.
Other Shadows, having successfully brought their fated mates back with them, surrounded me on each side, all heading for the main hall.
They gripped their fated mates with a possessive hand around the back of their necks.
Their fated mates wore the same expression:
Grim acceptance.
Most probably didn’t even know the truth of their nightmarish situation, and it was a good thing too, or they would be fighting to escape.
The fated mate pairs were diverse—on both sides.
The Shadow assimilated other cultures into their own, but only from a young age.
Beyond the age of six or seven, they were considered too set in their ways and sent to work at one of the empire’s many mines.
We had each passed through the intense military training, each been force-fed the same common beliefs and love for the empire.
Their fated mates came from an even broader range of species.
Some had blue skin with ripples of yellow and pink across their limbs.
Others had horns, not like mine, but twisted and curled.
Others possessed a single eye, others five.
I even saw a species with their eyes in the palms of their hands.
I didn’t see another human.
They were new to the gene pool and there would be more and more of them over the coming years.
Fated mates from all four corners of the known galaxy.
Each of the Shadow warriors wore the same expression of grim determination.
I wondered if they felt the same warm pulse in the center of their chests as I did.
I knew they did, but did they understand the full significance of it?
How deep and powerful it ran?
Or were they blindly following what they had been brainwashed into believing?
That Shadows couldn’t love.
I suspected I would never know.
The Shadow were experts at keeping their cards close to their chest.
I felt that distant pulse in my chest, of Ava.
Over the past few hours, it’d grown more and more distant with each passing second.
It would never fully leave me and would always be there, buried in my heart, giving me a single pulse of signal now and then.
At least, so long as she drew breath it would.
It was a painful reminder of what I had given up.
I would carry her for the rest of my days.
I wasn’t the only Shadow to fail in bringing his fated mate back.
Fifty percent of all Shadows failed in that mission.
It might seem a shockingly high ratio, but given we were at war with our M’rora halves, it was not surprising.
Inside the great hall, we were split into two groups.
On one side, those who had succeeded in their mission stood with their fated mate beside them.
Those who had failed stood on the opposite side.
We failures stood with our shoulders slouched at having failed not only ourselves but the worse crime—the empire itself.
In truth, I felt
