He’d effectively been cut off from the rest of the universe until now. Not that he cared about the rest of the universe—Kiara was his universe. She was all that mattered. And he’d been unable to contact her for twelve years.
He couldn’t imagine the hurt it must’ve caused Kiara to go so long without hearing from him. The guilt had kept him up at night more times than he could count, eating away at his heart, whispering in the back of his mind. The way he’d had to leave was bad enough on its own, but having been unable to even send her a message in all the time since? Having never once been able to see her face as she grew into a woman, having never been able to hear her voice as it subtly altered with age?
Things changed over time. People changed. How different were he and Kiara now? They’d never seen one another as adults, hadn’t talked in more than a decade. He knew he wasn’t the person she remembered. What if she wasn’t the person he remembered?
Bollocks. She’ll always be my Kiara. Always.
…and I’ve been sitting here staring out the window in silence for at least a full minute.
Volcair hurried out of the hovercar, closing the door behind him, and stood up straight to draw in a deep breath of clean countryside air. The atmosphere of every place, of every world, had its own feel, but none could compare to this. It smelled—and felt—like he was finally home.
He smoothed the wrinkles out of his dress uniform and strode toward the front door. His stomach quivered and twisted, unable to decide whether he was eager or anxious, nervous or overjoyed. All those combat situations he’d weathered had been matters of life and death, but they seemed unimportant as he mounted the step leading to the home’s entrance. This was far more dire a situation—it was a matter of love and destiny.
Clenching his jaw against his agitated nerves, he extended an arm and pressed the button for the doorbell. That familiar chiming sound—Kiara had told him it was meant to mimic church bells, though this lacked the same resonance and power—came from inside, muffled by the big double doors.
Seconds passed after the bell went silent, each more difficult to endure than the last. Volcair tensed his muscles to force them to keep still. He knew this sort of anticipatory energy too well, had dealt with it often over the years. Were he sitting, his legs would undoubtedly be bouncing, and he’d be fighting the urge to worry at his lower lip.
This was a moment twelve years in the making; the emotions welling up within him were too big to confront, too complex to decipher. He was going to see his mate, his Kiara, for the first time in what felt like an eternity. And he would spend the rest of his life trying to make up for having not spoken to her in so long.
The latch clicked, and the right door swung open to reveal Kiara’s father.
Isaiah Moore’s eyes widened. Regardless of what seemed unchanged outside the home, Isaiah served as proof that time left nothing untouched. The lines around his mouth and at the corners of his eyes were new, as were the white hairs sprinkled throughout his short hair and beard—the latter of which was also new.
“Volcair?” Isaiah asked incredulously.
Volcair offered a nod and a salute. “Good afternoon, Minister Moore.”
Isaiah seemed to shake off his surprise. “Please, just Isaiah. I retired from my post several years ago, and you’re an old friend of the family, regardless.” He stepped aside, opening the door wider. “Please, come inside. It has been…it’s been a long time.”
There was a hint of strain in Isaiah’s tone, something Volcair couldn’t quite place.
“Thank you,” Volcair said as he crossed the threshold. His eyes swept around the foyer; though the décor and lighting were exactly as he recalled, it seemed somehow smaller.
Isaiah closed the door and turned to face Volcair, looking him up and down. “The uniform suits you.”
Far better than the career my father envisioned for me would have.
Volcair prevented himself from giving that thought voice, but only barely. This wasn’t the time or place, and it would not do for him—especially wearing the uniform of an officer of the Entris Dominion—to speak so disrespectfully of his father to one of Vantricar’s associates.
“Thank you,” Volcair repeated.
“Come”—Isaiah gestured to an open doorway to the left of the front entrance—“have a seat. Would you like something to drink?”
“No, thank you.” Volcair stepped through the doorway. The room had a couch and several chairs positioned around a dark, patterned carpet at the center. Only a few pieces of décor were on the walls, and most everything in the room was purely functional.
This had been introduced to him long ago as the drawing room. He’d been forced to sit here a few times as Vantricar and Isaiah chatted, both men often skirting around the business they truly meant to conduct while subtly positioning for the ongoing negotiations between the United Terran Federation and the Entris Dominion. Those few meetings had been the main reason Volcair had laughed when Kiara first referred to it as the boring room—though as they’d grown a little older, they’d changed the name to the bollocks room. Both seemed fitting.
Being in here now, as an adult, was an odd sensation for Volcair. Part of him still felt like a child called into a world of grown-ups; this wasn’t his place, wasn’t the environment he was meant to be in.
Isaiah walked to one of the chairs and seated himself, gesturing to the sofa as he did so. Volcair moved to the indicated spot and sat down. A nagging notion in the back of his mind suggested something was wrong here, something was off, and it was more than just Isaiah inviting him into this room—this room that had always been used, ultimately, to conduct business, however informally that business was sometimes handled.
“It’s been a long time, Volcair,” Isaiah said. “Twelve years or so, correct?”
“Indeed.” Volcair struggled to keep his voice from sounding tight. He’d not come here for this, but he couldn’t deny Isaiah this time. “Circumstances have kept me away from Earth for far too long.”
“If I recall correctly, you must be in what, your seventh or eighth year of service?”
“I’ve just completed my eighth year.”
“Nearly done then. Have you decided what you’ll do when your term is over?”
I decided that years ago, and he knows it.
“I had planned to determine that with Kiara.”
Isaiah pressed his lips into a tight line and nodded, but he did not reply.
“Is your daughter in, Sir? I’d hoped to see her. She’s the only reason I’ve come to Earth during my leave.”
Placing his hands on the armrests, Isaiah leaned back in his chair. The old leather creaked with his movement. “Kiara doesn’t live at home anymore. She moved to a flat in Knightsbridge after university.”
Volcair furrowed his brow. “Knightsbridge? Is that in London, or—”
“Yes. The West End, bordering Hyde Park. Lovely area. But it’s best you don’t go there, Volcair.”
Heat suffused Volcair’s face, and his anxiety quickly beat back his eagerness, allowing dread to pool low in his gut. “Why?”
Isaiah’s eyes were hard—with anger, it seemed, but also with something deeper, something more vulnerable. “When was the last time you spoke to Kiara?”
“The day my father took me away,” Volcair replied in a low voice.
“That is why, Volcair. My daughter spent eleven years waiting for you. Those ought to have been the best years of her life, but she spent them waiting. Waiting for her life to begin.” Isaiah leaned forward and shook his head. “Not a single word from you in all that time. Do you know what it was like to watch her joy dwindle? To watch disappointment grow in the eyes of my sweet, loving child? Imagine how it must’ve been for her!”
Volcair clenched his jaw as a resurgence of shame joined his dread, but there was something else in him now—fires of anger and frustration sparked in his chest. “My situation prevented communication before now. That’s why I’m here. I came the first
chance I had.”
A hint of sorrow gleamed in Isaiah’s dark eyes. “I understand. More than most humans, perhaps. I know what duty means to your people, and I have an idea of what’s expected of you. But Kiara was very young when you left, and she didn’t share that understanding. I don’t think you did, either. Time has a way of seeming at once insignificant and impossibly slow when we are young, and I’m certain you had so many plans in place…
“But it’s too late now, Volcair. She waited all that time without a word, without knowing whether you were dead or alive, and watched everyone around her live their lives. She finally moved on. She finally sought something more for herself. She’s found happiness again.”
“What does that mean?” Volcair rasped.
Isaiah leaned toward Volcair, settling his elbows on his thighs, bowed his head, and released a heavy sigh. The anger that had briefly given fire to his voice and posture seemed to have deflated just as quickly. “Kiara is engaged to be married.”
Volcair’s breath caught in his lungs, his heart ceased beating, and silence gripped the entire universe. Those words echoed in Volcair’s head, devoid of meaning. Perhaps it was a matter of his grasp on the English language having deteriorated over the years. Perhaps he’d simply misheard. Perhaps there was some misunderstanding.
But even if he’d lost some of his knowledge of English, his translator implant would’ve picked up the slack, and the look on Isaiah’s face—the sorrow and conflict—made it clear that this wasn’t a misunderstanding. He’d said exactly what Volcair had heard.
Kiara is engaged to be married.
Volcair opened his mouth to speak, but only a soft, helpless sound emerged from his throat. The heat suffusing his face spread like wildfire along his qal to encompass his entire body. He couldn’t tell if it was despair, anger, jealousy, or pain, and it didn’t seem to matter. His lungs burned and his chest ached, and he couldn’t draw in air, though he needed it desperately. He absently lifted a hand, clutching at the fabric of his uniform as though it could somehow alleviate his discomfort.
Isaiah reached across the distance separating him from Volcair and placed a solid hand on Volcair’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “Breathe, Volcair. Nice and easy.”
Volcair couldn’t understand how he felt so empty and yet so impossibly full of churning emotion in those moments. He couldn’t understand how his mind could be simultaneously blank and tumultuous. For twelve years, only one thing had been a constant, only one thing had been dependable—Kiara was waiting for him. Without that, nothing made sense.
He finally managed to take a quick, shallow breath, and followed it with a few more. “I… I just… To whom?”
Isaiah frowned. “His name is Daniel. They met at university, and were friends for a few years before she accepted that you weren’t coming back.”
“I was always going to come back.”
“She thought that for a long time. So did I. But you didn’t, Volcair.” Isaiah released another sigh and tightened his grip on Volcair’s shoulder just a bit. “I understand your duty to your people, but you have to make an effort to understand Kiara’s position, as well. She was a girl when you left. You meant the world to her. Twelve years was nearly half her life. Do you understand the significance of that? How she felt trapped and unmoving while everything went on around her? How she felt alone despite the friends she had?”
Volcair gritted his teeth as his anger intensified. Even if he’d been unable to contact her, unable to return before now, he’d remained faithful. He’d never given up hope—hope had been the only thing to keep him going up to now.
“She made a promise to me,” he growled. “Do you think I didn’t feel alone? Even after days of fighting with little rest, I would lie awake thinking of her, knowing that she was out of my reach and that I was unable to change it. I swore I would return, and she promised to wait.”
“And she was fourteen, Volcair,” Isaiah said, unfazed by the display of anger. “She was a girl, and you were her everything, and when you left the light in her eyes dimmed. She tried to stay strong for so long, so much longer than I could have. But she was never the same with you gone. That’s changed with Daniel. She’s finally acting like her old self.”
The fierceness of Volcair’s anger recoiled from another stab of shame; it felt like his insides were flooded with chilling ice and consuming flames, opposing forces locked in a terrible, impossible balance.
Who was he angry at? Kiara…or himself? Who was more worthy of his rage—the one who’d waited for over a decade without any reason to hope but the promise of an immature, sixteen-year-old volturian, or the one who’d failed to send even a single word to her in all that time?
Volcair bowed his head, closed his eyes, and forced himself to take a deep breath. The air still burned his lungs and throat, and the tightness in his chest did not ease. “Is she happy?”
“Yes, she is.” Isaiah withdrew his hand, and the leather on his chair creaked again as he shifted upon it.
Clenching his jaw, Volcair exhaled heavily through his nostrils. Hearing that she was happy hurt almost as much as everything else because he was supposed to be the one making her happy. More than ever before, he felt…untethered. He felt like his place in the universe was no longer set, like he was no longer connected to anyone, to anything. Like he’d simply drift through the void alone forever.
She was his mate. That had been an indisputable fact since the moment he’d met her, regardless of what Volcair’s father had tried to say over the years. Kiara was his. But she’d chosen another. She’d moved on. He couldn’t fault her for seeking happiness; if anyone could relate to that desire, wasn’t it him, who’d spent so much of his youth moving from place to place and feeling disconnected from everything?
“She still has Cypher?” he asked; the words nearly stuck on his too-dry tongue.
Isaiah chuckled softly. “They have been inseparable. I had to have quite a few conversations with the headmistress while she was in school because she refused to leave Cypher home during class.”
Despite everything, a tiny smile tugged up the corners of Volcair’s mouth. His headstrong Kiara. Cypher was a part of Volcair…just like Kiara always would be. As long as she had Cypher, Volcair was with her, even if it wasn’t in the way he’d always wanted. Even if it wasn’t the way he’d always dreamed.
He’d asked too much of Kiara when he’d left Earth, hadn’t anticipated the pain he would cause her by telling her to wait for him. Even now, he longed to ask Isaiah for her address, to have the driver take him to her flat, no matter how far the journey, so he could see her. So he could speak to her. So he could tell her that she was his, and that he wanted her—needed her.
But that she would have to wait even longer for them to be together.
And what would that accomplish? What if she didn’t want him anymore? What if she truly was happy with this Daniel, and Volcair’s sudden appearance disrupted that happiness?
Would he be able to bear the sight of her with another male?
Would he be able to bear the rejection?
His little smile faded even faster than it had come. He had endured so much to make it to this point, but the thought of her with another male—happy with another male—was too much. The thought of her joy being disrupted by his arrival was more than he could withstand.
Not ten minutes ago, he’d reflected upon the worst day of his life, the hardest day—the day he’d been forced to leave her. But he knew now he’d been naïve to think of it that way. This was the hardest day of his life.
This was the day he had to choose to let her go. The day he had to choose to let her have what happiness she’d found.
Opening his eyes, he forced his face into as calm an expression as he could muster—a task in which he succeeded only due to his years of experience on the battlefield, where his soldiers depended on him to appear confident and decisive no matter how he felt. Behind that mask was a different story; he was in a million pieces,
and his heart had been pounded to dust. His limbs were weak and threatened to tremble, his mouth was dry, and his chest was constricted like it were caught in the coils of one of those large Earth snakes Kiara had shown him at the London Zoo many years ago. But Isaiah Moore didn’t need to know about any of that. He was just a man who loved his daughter and wanted her to be happy.
Volcair had to follow that example—he had to do what was best for Kiara.
“I’m sorry for disrupting your afternoon, Minister Moore,” Volcair said as he pushed himself to his feet. Fortunately, his legs accepted his weight, and his knees didn’t buckle despite how ill he felt. “I’ll take my leave. Please give my regards to your wife.”
Isaiah’s frown only deepened, reflected by the sad gleam in his eyes. “You don’t need to leave so soon, Volcair. Please, stay for tea, or for dinner. Jada and I would love to have you.”
Volcair didn’t know what was worse—the invitation after what had just transpired, or the fact that he knew Isaiah was being sincere. “I appreciate the offer, but I must go. My leave is temporary, and there are only so many shuttles that will allow me to link up with the Dominion fleet. Good afternoon, Minister Moore. I’ll…I’ll see myself out.”
He turned away and exited the drawing room before Isaiah could reply, moving at the rapid walk that had become his normal after years in the military. He didn’t allow himself a moment’s hesitation in opening the front door and moving through, didn’t hesitate to send out a pickup call on his holocom once the door was closed behind him.
And he didn’t allow himself a backward glance as he continued his brisk walk toward the tree-lined lane.
His Kiara had moved on. Volcair had to do the same; he knew if he looked back even once, that would be impossible.
Six
Aboard the Trading Frigate Starlight
Somewhere in the outer fringes of Entris Dominion space
Terran Year 2101
Heart racing, Kiara ran down the corridor, keeping one hand on the blaster at her hip. Her crewman, Tekel—a large, brown-furred azhera—ran just ahead of her, while Cypher kept pace at her side.
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