Waiting

3.

Orion POV

It was time for Arie to have his mate. Centuries had passed, but I still remembered that fateful day—and my role in it.

… The Past …

I couldn’t understand why we were considering this. Why were we allowing the Morning Star to have a mate? His integrity had become questionable. There were a few times when his loyalty was uncertain—moments when he went against authority in fulfilling his duties and expectations. So why, of all females, were we discussing this one as his mate?

It rubbed me the wrong way. I still didn’t know why, but it was more than just a feeling. We were, however, bound to uphold ancient laws, and for whatever reason, the Fates had decided this union would happen.

She was the last of her race, and as one of our children of creation, we now owed her. The Demi-Gods had destroyed the remaining Leviathans in the Great Blood Wars. She had barely escaped, but one thing was certain—she would never spread her wings and fly again.

When she originally came to us seeking justice for her clan, she also stated that she wished to rebuild. Rebuild her people. Rebuild her world. Rebuild her life. And bring generations and legacies forward.

She had asked for his brother to be her mate because she knew and understood his power—to which we all said no. She didn’t question our answer. But I had already grown wary and curious about her request. Had she simply been testing us?

I knew Lilith understood that we would never agree to her having access to him—let alone his power. The Angel of Death was the most critical being in all the galaxies, and not just anyone could be his mate. Especially someone known to have bloodlust.

I suppose that was why some of us felt a sense of relief when the Morning Star was the one who saved her life on that fateful day. Fate, for once, had chosen a path that did not immediately set my instincts on edge.

When he gazed upon her, something inside him awakened. I felt it ripple through him—unexpected, unguarded. His heart sparked, bright and sudden, and he fell in love without hesitation or calculation. It was rare to see Lucian so openly altered by anything other than purpose.

To our surprise, she accepted him when Lucian asked for her hand.

That alone should have eased my concerns.

And yet, it didn’t.

I wasn’t sure whether he knew she had once considered him a compatible alternative to her first choice—or whether that knowledge would have changed anything if he had. Lucian had always believed himself chosen by devotion rather than circumstance. I did not have the heart—or the proof—to take that from him.

Still, I watched her closely.

Her acceptance was calm. Measured. Not reluctant, but not reverent either. She did not look at him the way beings often looked at their destined mate—with awe, or relief, or surrender. Instead, there was something assessing in her gaze. Something old. Something calculating.

I wondered—quietly—whether she saw Lucian as he was, or as what he resembled.

He was, after all, the mirror of his brother. The same face. The same celestial architecture. A different flame—but one that might be mistaken, at least at first glance, for the power she had originally sought.

I wondered if she believed that what flowed through Arie might also flow through Lucian, if given time. If she thought proximity could become access. If love—real or feigned—could one day become leverage.

Or perhaps I was projecting suspicion where none belonged.

Perhaps she accepted him simply because he was the one who saved her. Because he was kind. Because he offered her survival, status, and a future when all else had been stripped away.

At the time, there was no way to know.

“Sir, I know what you’re thinking,” the Madam in front of me said, her voice calm, measured, eternal. “Our beautiful Bright Light has served faithfully. He needs a mate, and she has accepted him. Besides, we are hopeful it may help smooth out the more questionable characteristics of his being.”

I inclined my head in acknowledgment, though unease still coiled beneath my composure.

Hope had never been my concern.

Motives were.

I considered her words; however, I knew the Leviathan would never truly be able to appease his appetite. Lucian had always thought of himself as more than everything else in existence—greater than the laws that governed us, greater even than creation itself. Where Arie was made to pull the soul from the mortal form at the end of its journey, Lucian had once been entrusted with the inverse: he was the one who gifted souls into mortal vessels at the beginning of life, breathing divinity into flesh at the direction of the Celestial Collective.

It was sacred work.

And he believed it made him indispensable.

When he first rose against us, it was not merely rebellion—it was entitlement. He acted without consent, without balance, and without restraint. He created life without our blessing, shaping the Demi-Gods in secret, bending raw soul-light into weapons of will. When we discovered what he had done, we were left with no choice.

We stripped him of the power to gift souls.

Had he not acted as he did—had he not created the Demi-Gods in defiance—there would not have been oceans of midnight blood spilled across the heavens. There would not be billions upon billions of graves, each one illuminated by candlelight, glittering across the galaxies as far as the eye could see. Entire races would not have been erased. Entire histories would not have ended in screams.

And still, Lilith never knew.

She never learned that the very being she came to us seeking justice against—the architect of the Demi-Gods who obliterated her people—was the same one who later stood before her as her savior. She never knew that Lucian himself had forged the instruments of the Great Blood Wars that destroyed her tribe.

Perhaps it was mercy that kept that truth from her.

Or perhaps it was simply another cruelty layered into fate.

Nothing and no one would ever be able to fill the void Lucian had carved into himself through his own unchecked free will. With every decade—every century—every millennium that passed, he became more volatile, more untethered, more convinced that the universe owed him recompense for what we had taken.

And what, then, were we to do in response to his defiance?

We were going to reward him.

We were going to give him a mate.

Then it dawned on me—his twin.

“What of his brother?” I asked. “Our Angel of Death has also served. He, too, will require a mate. With Lucian’s power of creation already stripped from him, the cosmos is out of balance. We cannot deepen that imbalance by granting Lucian a mate while denying one to Arie.”

The realization settled fully into place, solid and undeniable.

This was the solution.

We could not risk further destabilization. Balance was not a suggestion—it was law. Our Morning Star could not be blessed with a mate unless our Evening Light was granted one as well. To do otherwise would fracture the equilibrium we had already strained.

All of it—every decision, every consequence—had to be weighed against balance.

At the birth of creation, we had agreed that the Morning Star and the Evening Light would exist without mates. They were the most significant forces ever brought into being. We could not afford for either of them to be led by emotion, nor by the whims of an unstable partner.

But we had been wrong.

Because the Morning Star had already allowed himself to be ruled by emotion—without the influence of a mate, without the tempering presence of an equal. His heart had moved him long before love ever entered his life, and that truth unsettled me more than any prophecy ever had.

The Third One spoke.

“You are correct, which is why the Evening Light will be granted a mate when the time is right. The universe is growing at an unfathomable rate, and he will need to lead his successors and expand for generations in order to help him with his work. We obviously cannot give him just anyone. She will need to be a combination of our bloodlines—not merely another creation. Giving birth to her will take time.”

What was he trying to tell me?

We could not create a life together. Not directly.

Yes, we were the parents of creation, but he knew—as all of us did—that we were more akin to potters shaping clay upon a wheel. We allowed it to speak to us, to tell us what it wished to become. We molded it, guided it, refined it—and when we were satisfied, our creation was placed into the kiln.

Then it was set free.

Free to become what it was meant to be.

I realized then that this was not an idea newly formed. This plan had been shaped over eons, refined and reconsidered until every weakness had been accounted for.

Still, I needed clarity.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “How will she carry our bloodlines? We are forbidden to mate with one another. Such unions would fracture the balance.”

The Third One regarded me steadily.

“You already understand why the Nephilim were never permitted to flourish,” he said. “Divine-mortal hybrids existing freely within the human plane would destabilize creation. So we ensured they did not endure.”

I inclined my head. That truth was not new to me.

“What is new,” he continued, “is the purpose for which we now bend that law.”

I felt it then—the shift. Not revelation, but calculation.

“Our children with mortals are different,” he said. “They are bound to time. To death. To consequence. Yet they can carry our essence forward without tearing the veil between realms.”

The pieces aligned.

“You intend to seed her lineage,” I said quietly.

“Yes,” he replied. “Each of us will take a mortal life in turn. Each of us will procreate. Not together—but deliberately. Our bloodlines will pass through generations, braided and refined, until she is born.”

Not created.

Endowed.

“She will not simply carry our power,” he went on. “She will harmonize it. She will become the convergence of all that we are—without being bound by what restrains us.”

My attention sharpened.

“And when she comes to know Arie,” I said, understanding dawning fully now, “she will awaken.”

He did not deny it.

“With him,” the Third One said, “she will come into her power.”

More than a mate.

A counterweight.

A successor.

A being who could stand beside the Evening Light—and eclipse even us.

“What says the rest on the order of her lineage?” Orion asked as he pondered how each of their bloodline would be braided into each other”

“Rhiannon-Selene has requested that she be born of Earth, bearing supernatural blood like that of her moon children.

Ix Chel has insisted she carry the blood of the land itself—rooted, enduring like those of the Mexica people.

Amun-Ra has decreed that she live a sheltered life, hidden from knowledge of what she is, until the time comes for her to be known, like those who secretly study in the Valley of the Kings.

Other than those requests, we will gather to take our turns one by one.”

Everything accounted for.

Everything controlled.

I exhaled slowly.

This was not balance preserved.

This was balance engineered.

And when the time came—when Arie finally met the one promised to him—creation itself would change.

“Those were all beautiful and acceptable requests—but what did this mean for her?” I asked.

“If she were born human, how would she be bound to him? He was immortal. Humans lived no more than a few blinks compared to our endless span of existence. Suppose he found her—bonded to her—only to lose her to time. Death, subjected to grief, would be catastrophic. He possessed the power to obliterate all we had created with a single pulse of his will.”

With every word, my resistance grew.

“When this task is complete,” she said calmly, “she will carry all of our blood within her. Only then will she receive her eternal light. When the time comes—when she has reached her age in the human world—you will give her a choice.”

A pause. Deliberate.

“If she chooses her destiny, her light will awaken. She will become immortal and take her place at Death’s side.”

There was a smirk beneath her words.

She knew she had me.

Death had lived a long and solitary existence. Countless ages ago, he had asked whether he would ever have a mate of his own. We had considered it carefully and told him, in time, he would be granted one. Later, we understood the truth—his purpose was far too great for chance. We could not risk imbalance. We could not afford unpredictability.

And so, long ago, we had abandoned the idea entirely.

Now, after all this time, we were resurrecting it—only this time, with absolute control.

“Very well,” I said at last. “I agree. But I will not remain here to witness the destruction our ferocious Morning Star and his Leviathan bride will undoubtedly bring upon the heavens with their union.”

I knew—without doubt—what was to come.

They would destroy much of what we had created.

Lucian’s ego left no room for anyone else in his heart, and Lilith possessed an insatiable bloodlust, driven by emotion and hunger rather than reason. He would never love her in the way she needed to be loved, nor would she ever be satisfied by devotion alone. Their union was not balance—it was combustion.

But this was what the Fates demanded.

We were giving Lucian his mate.

“In the meantime,” I continued, my voice steady despite the weight of what lay ahead, “I will travel through the worlds among mortals. When the time comes—when it is my turn to contribute to the bloodline of Death’s perfect mate—send word to me.”

And with that, the decision was sealed.

…The Present…

With my eyes closed, I listened to my granddaughter’s beautiful voice as she once again began to read to me. Every word wrapped around me like a blessing, and I committed the sound of her to memory.

I needed to prepare both her and my daughter for my departure.

For a brief moment, I hesitated.

Leaving them was going to shatter their precious hearts, and that knowledge weighed heavier than any war I had ever witnessed. But my leaving was necessary. This ending—this pain—was part of something far greater than any of us could see from within it.

I only hoped they would forgive me.

Especially my little shine.

One day, I would introduce my true self to her—and to her mother. The truth would come, whether I wished it or not, and when it did, it would rewrite everything they believed about the world, about magic, about themselves… and about me.

Still, I knew my girls would survive this heartbreak.

They were stronger than they understood.

And my granddaughter—my Summer—would embrace her destiny when the time came. Of that, I was certain. Like all forces of creation, she possessed free will. Fate may have woven another soul into her path, but choice would always be hers.

I knew her heart.

I knew she would accept Arie with every piece of herself—heart, soul, and spirit. She wouldn’t fully understand it at first. Not until she received her light. Not until the truth awakened inside her.

But when it did…

She would love him completely.

Although I had to admit, the mortal boy the Fates had created was compatible—and a natural-born leader. He was strong, steady, and deeply caring toward those under his protection. However, there was something underneath, hidden behind his charisma, that always sat uneasily with me. Despite all of my power, I couldn’t see it clearly—but I knew that underneath it all he was not right for her, and I was confident she would not choose him. Her purpose was far too powerful to be ignored.

I knew the Alpha would never be able to make her whole. If she did choose him, he would never be able to give her children. Being mortal, his limitations would eventually turn into resentment. His small-mindedness would begin to place blame where it did not belong, causing him to grow distant, then cold. Without an heir, I knew he would ultimately come to blame her for what he lacked.

The souls of her potential children were never meant to take physical form unless she embraced her destiny.

I thought of all the love I had for my little sunshine, and she deserved everything destined for her. Now I just needed to make sure her fated mate didn’t blow it — and that he understood, and knew, what the stakes were. I was so focused on my granddaughter and the grand design of her coming into being that I wasn’t able to react fast enough. Suddenly, my existence was yanked from my human body. No! My girls, not yet! It’s too soon. I need to be able to say goodbye. My girls still need me.

I stood there in the room with her behind the veil. She couldn’t see me, no one could. I watched as my granddaughter stood in shock, while all the doctors and nurses worked on my empty vessel. What seemed like forever was only seconds, and I watched a nurse escort her out the door.

What the hell happened? Death wasn’t here. I had felt him. I hadn’t seen him, so how was I pulled from my body?

I bid my girls a silent farewell and sent out my spiritual beacon, which I knew he would pick up. My soul’s pull would allow Death to find me quickly — annoyed and irritated, I guess. Now was as good a time as any to face him and give him the news he had been waiting to hear for a long, long, long time.