within Vasic.
Not any longer.
I am very well, Son. And he was. The sunshine was warm on bones that felt far older than his years. It was the weight of sorrow, the weight of memory, the weight of promises he’d made to himself to see through his Sunny’s dream.
Here in this sun-drenched orchard while his son played with a child who had chosen Vasic as his father, and an empath laughed in unfettered joy, that dream came true. The Psy race was no longer a place only of chilling Silence, the PsyNet no longer a stark black-and-white landscape devoid of emotional bonds.
The time of endless darkness was over.
There, Sunny. It is done.
• • •
VASIC felt his grandfather go. No emotional bonds showed in the PsyNet but for mating bonds, not yet. But Vasic knew they existed, felt them in his soul. And he knew when his bond with his grandfather snapped forever.
Grief speared him as he teleported the short distance to Zie Zen.
His grandfather’s cane lay fallen on the ground, but Zie Zen’s head didn’t loll. It simply leaned gently against the back of his chair. His eyes were closed, the faintest smile on his lips. It was as if he were sleeping, but even as Vasic reached out his fingers to check his grandfather’s pulse, he knew Zie Zen was gone.
Ivy’s hand locked around his as it fell to his side, the words she spoke breathless from her run to Zie Zen and wet with tears. “He was at such profound peace before he went. It felt like . . . like a beautiful heartsong.”
Ivy would know, not only because Vasic’s wife was an E, but because Zie Zen had been linked to her in the Honeycomb. Vasic’s grandfather had smiled at Ivy’s request for a connection, then said, “I have come full circle at last, joined once more to an empath.”
“Grandfather?” Tavish’s plaintive voice snapped Vasic out of his shock and sorrow.
Reaching down, he picked up the child, his single arm more than strong enough for the task. He needed to hold the boy and Tavish needed to be held. “Grandfather’s left us, Tavish,” he said, finding it difficult to speak but knowing that at this instant, the pain felt by the small vulnerable heart in his hold was more important than his own grief. “But he was ready to go.”
Ever since Zie Zen had told Vasic about his Sunny, Vasic had known that his grandfather was only counting time on this earth. The Psy race might not believe in an afterlife, but Zie Zen had believed his Sunny waited for him. He just had to finish his work here before he could go to her, to the woman he had always loved.
“But he can’t go!” It was a child’s angry cry. “Tell him to come back!”
Vasic felt Ivy’s love, the infinite gentleness of her, surround them both.
Reaching up to cup Tavish’s wet face, she shook her head. “We’ll all miss him desperately, but you see his smile? It means he was happy to go on his next adventure.” She was crying, too, made no effort to hide her tears.
Ivy. Vasic’s throat was too thick to speak. I need you.
His empath tucked herself against his chest a heartbeat later, wrapping her arms around him and Tavish both. It was enough to keep him going, so he could do what needed to be done.
He couldn’t cry, not then. He’d been an Arrow too long.
It wasn’t until deep into the night, the world silent and his mate holding his head against her shoulder, that Vasic Zen cried for the man who had made him who he was, a man who had lived a lifetime with his own grief and who had left the world a far better place than it had been before he first turned rebel.
• • •
ASHAYA received word of Zie Zen’s death directly from Ivy Jane. “He would’ve wanted you to know,” the empath told Ashaya before dawn the morning after Zie Zen’s passing, her eyes red and swollen on the comm screen.
“Thank you.” Ashaya’s own grief was a raw wave inside her. “You’ll let me know the funeral arrangements?” Under Silence, Psy had held no funerals, celebrated no lives, but Zie Zen deserved every honor they could do him.
He’d saved Ashaya’s son, saved Ashaya herself.
And they were only two of hundreds, perhaps thousands.
“Yes,” Ivy said. “You know more of a certain part of his life than we do. If you think there are others who should be