“It will be.” He rolled them, pinning her beneath him, bracing himself so he could see her face. The starlight caught her features—the kiss-swollen lips, the mark on her shoulder that proclaimed her his. “We have the orrery. We have the focus ring. We have the mated pairs and two dragons and a community that’s chosen to stand and fight.”
“The most stubborn.” He kissed her softly. “I didn’t survive all those years of feeling nothing just to lose you to some ancient void parasite. Whatever it takes, Luna. Whatever the Convergence throws at us. I’m not letting anything take this away from me.”
“From us,” she corrected.
“From us.”
“When did you become such a romantic?”
“Sometime around the third time you called me Mayor Clipboard and I realized I was completely gone for you.”
“That was week one.”
“I spent three weeks pretending I wasn’t terrified of how much I didn’t hate you. There’s a difference.”
She dragged him down for another kiss, and the conversation was abandoned in favor of more pressing matters.
Dawn was breakingby the time they finally slept.
The skylight framed a rectangle of brightening sky—stars fading, the first hints of pink and gold creeping over the horizon. Soon, those same stars would align in patterns that hadn’t been seen in twelve decades, and the battle for Haven Shores would begin.
But not yet.
Tonight—this morning—there was only this. Lunaria’s warmth pressed against him. The soft pulse of their fragile bond. The mark on her shoulder that declared her his, and the answering certainty that he belonged to her.
She shifted in her sleep, nuzzling closer, her hand finding his chest and settling over his heart. Even unconscious, she reached for him. Even dreaming, she chose him.
Hux had spent his entire adult life feeling bereft. Incomplete. Convinced his capacity for love had been stolen from him before he had a chance to fight for it. He’d watched other people fall in love, watched them find their fated mates, watched them build the kind of happiness he’d convinced himself he could never have.
Now, with his mate in his arms and their bond flickering between them, he knew exactly what he’d been missing.
Not just love. Not just belonging.
Home.
He pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
The signs grew stronger with each passing hour, the stars aligning toward an inevitable dawn.
But whatever came next, one thing was certain: he would never be void again.
Luna was his.
And he was hers.
Forever.
THIRTY-SEVEN
LUNARIA
The sky split open at dawn.
Lunaria stood in the heart of the Celestial Pavilion, watching the impossible unfold through the cracked glass dome above her. Stars blazed in the daylight sky—not faint suggestions of light but burning points of brilliance, visible despite the rising sun. The constellations shifted, rotating into position.
The Convergence had arrived.
The gardens responded. Every flower in the restored beds bloomed simultaneously—moonflowers and sun-roses and constellation orchids. The orrery beneath her hands thrummed with power, its living mechanism tracking the celestial alignment with perfect precision.
