Zodiac Academy 8: Sorrow and Starlight
Sorrow and Starlight: Chapter 57

Wide. Awake. That was me.

Sleeping was the game, losing was my name.

I barely even blinked as I stared out the window at the cold moon dancing with Venus in the sky.

I’d fucked that moon, that beautiful, mystical moon with all her charm and wiles. But nothing. NOTHHIIIINNNNNGGG. Could match the way it had felt to fuck Caleb Altair. Moon craters be damned, I had experienced something transcendent, but hell did it feel temporary.

Cal was sleeping, or maybe he was pretending to sleep like I was, but I didn’t dare ask, laying there and replaying it all in my mind again and again as the night closed in on dawn.

While the night was still here, it felt like I was lost to an enchantment that was bringing my wildest dreams to life, but I knew the cresting sun over the horizon would break the spell. Caleb would wake up, no longer drawn to me by Venus, and there would be nothing but stark truths to face in the morning light. Why was everything so much easier in the dark? Sex, secrets, snacks. All three were best indulged in at midnight. But the dawn always came, and I couldn’t hold it off now even with all the will in my heart.

I lay there like that, languishing in the weight of his arm curled tight around me, afraid to break the spell of that moment until I could no longer see Venus or the moon playing together, the stars glittering faintly as the sky paled, stealing them away, giggling at me as they vanished.

I shifted a little, wondering if it might be best to slip away before Caleb woke up. Then, when I saw him next, I could just go on acting like nothing had changed. But fuck, everything had changed. It would be a bitch move, but I just didn’t know how to deal with the serious conversations that needed to be had. I could see where the lines were drawn. Was I supposed to pour my heart out now and tell him that I’d been in love with him for fuck knew how long? Or would that send him running for the hills?

Maybe I should play it cool, keep hooking up with him here and there, never playing with fire too long and avoid being burned too deep. Or, I could hook up with him as much as I possible and embrace the inferno that was going to engulf me when reality came crashing in.

The problem with all those options was that none of them ended in a happily ever after. I had to pick a fate that would inevitably lead to my heart being obliterated, and yeah Caleb was worth the heartache, but by the stars, why couldn’t there be an option D where this all worked out?

Haha…option D.

Caleb’s arms tightened around me, drawing me harder against the firm planes of his body and I relented, snuggling back into him as the Wolf inside me wagged its tail contentedly. This here, was the reason I’d inked a clock on my back with no hands. I wanted time to stop whenever I was with him like this, no tick, tick, tick of the unavoidable passage of time that would lead to us parting.

What if you tell him you love him, and he says he loves you back?

A rogue voice spoke in the back of my head that sounded an awful lot like Darcy.

Dammit, I missed my little Phoen Dream. But the tiny version of her in my head was full of shit. Caleb was exploring his new urges in a safe space, AKA, me. And maybe there was something there between us, but from his side, I couldn’t see it being love. Not ever if I was totally honest with myself. I was his bro. And beyond that, we were both duty bound regardless of how we felt about one another.

One day, if we took our parents’ seats on the Council, we would have to provide Heirs of our own that upheld the long lineage of balanced power. We had to provide separate Heirs from separate partners who would keep our bloodlines going. And they had to be raised independently, their opinions their own and their bond with the other Heirs of their generation one of mutual love and respect, while they maintained their own independence from one another as representatives of individual houses.

Hundreds of years ago there had been tens of bloodlines with power equal to ours, but through inter marrying – and more than a few of the families being annihilated by their rivals – most of the powerful families had been lost. By the time our ancestors realised that our tendency to cross marry between our families was slowly carving down the number of bloodlines left with our level of power, it was too late to stop the decline in numbers. Laws had been put in place to prevent marriage between the most powerful bloodlines left in Solaria, but it had come too late. There had only been eight viable bloodlines remaining at that point, and then there’d been a war which saw the other four wiped out.

Luckily for us, the Capellas, Altairs, Rigels and Acruxes had been on the winning side of that war, but unluckily for me there was no way in hell that we would ever be able to be together like that. The rules were clear, the laws set down so firmly that there was no way around them and our responsibility to our kingdom was unavoidable. Fuck, I had never in my life wished to be rid of my title and the power I owned, but for him, I almost wished I could give it all up.

My mind was working on overdrive now for solutions while tiny-brain-Darcy cheered me on. And I was lost to the thrill of even thinking about a future where Caleb loved me enough to try and stay with me.

I supposed we could give up our position as Heirs to a sibling, but we were in the midst of war and Hadley, Athena and Grayson hadn’t had nearly enough training to take up those roles. Xavier might be able to play catch up if he could be convinced into the Fire Lord position – and frankly, he probably wouldn’t be getting a choice about it in the end.

But for Cal and I to give up our positions during this time of kingdom-wide conflict after we’d already lost Darius? That would be selfish as fuck, and more than that, it could shake the foundations of everything we’d built our entire lives, gaining favour with the people and preparing to rule. We were going to have to call on those very people soon, rallying them to our army publicly. We were only biding our time until we made that call official. Waiting until we’d gained a real foothold in the kingdom so that we had somewhere to summon them to. There were thousands of Solarians who supported us, who had been fully invested in our rise to power for years, and who would no doubt come to our aid if we could offer them protection from Lionel’s tyranny once they’d been rallied.

No, abdication wasn’t an option. And I would never ask it of Caleb anyway, even if I was somehow lucky enough for him to want me as fiercely as I wanted him.

We were a guaranteed train wreck, but right now we were still sailing along the track. So let the clocks stop ticking.

Caleb stirred and released a low hum in his chest, a sound that made me feel so safe, I never wanted it to end. The sun wasn’t here yet, we still had a few more moments of dark. Maybe only a minute more, and it really felt like the apocalypse was coming the second the dawn came.

“Morning,” Caleb said gruffly, his lips brushing the back of my neck as he shifted my hair aside.

The touch of his mouth set off fireworks in my chest, and I mentally danced under their raining sparks of light.

“Do you remember who you’re in bed with?” I asked, a teasing lilt to my voice and his hands slid up to my pecs, cupping them and squeezing.

“Bessy, isn’t it?” I could feel his smirk against my skin as he kissed me again and it sparked a smile of my own.

“That’s my sister, you cad,” I gasped, faking insult as he chuckled and ran his hand down over my abs, then lower still until he was squeezing my already hard cock.

“Cal,” I said breathlessly, the light creeping higher in the sky like a loaded gun about to point directly between my eyes.

He ground into my ass from behind, showing me how turned on he was already, and that last night hadn’t just been a dream stacked on a rainbow.

He leaned forward, his fangs scraping my ear and making me shiver against him, his fist beginning to roll smoothly up and down my length in slow, languid strokes.

“Any regrets?” I asked him roughly, reaching back to fist my fingers in his curls, and he nipped at the swell of my bicep as he drew me onto my back.

“I do have one,” he murmured.

“Oh yeah?” I asked, tone casual, heart hammering painfully.

“I left the butt plug in,” he snorted, and I burst out laughing.

“Dude.” I shoved him off me, rolling him onto his front and reaching down to take it out for him, tossing it away between the sheets.

He remained lying on his front, one muscular arm curled up around his head while he peeked at me sideways. I dragged the covers down his bare body, admiring all that hard, silken skin. He was paler than me, skin like sun drenched moonlight whatever the fuck that meant. But it was true.

I rolled my fingers down his spine, over his broad shoulders and he watched me admiring him, navy eyes pinned on my expression. I’d seen his body infinite times, but never like this, fully relaxed, post sex, in a setting where I could just admire him.

My hand reached the base of his spine and I ran my palm over the firm muscles of his ass, kneading my fingers into his skin as I went, my eyes darting up to see his reaction.

“We’re a bad idea,” I voiced part of my fears, feeling the rising sun gilding my back in gold.

“The worst,” he agreed, and a sharp lump rose in my throat. “Now get over here and kiss me, Capella.”

I pressed my tongue into my cheek then leapt onto his back, making him wheeze a breath as I didn’t even try to save him from the impact of my weight. Then I pushed his legs wider with my knees and reared over him, my cock pressing between his ass cheeks and making his shoulders stiffen.

I caught his hair in my grip, yanking his head around to steal a kiss from his mouth and grinding down on him. “Do you wanna replace out what it’s like to be a bottom, Cal?”

He tried to push to his knees, but I pressed my weight down to keep him in beneath me, and he snarled, fangs bared as I kissed him lightly with a taunting grin.

I drew back a little to see his expression and whether he might be tempted, the sunlight spilling between us and making me lose my grip on his hair. He looked celestial, like some otherworldly creature created by the stars, his curls turning to liquid gold in the light, and his eyes softening to two pools of the most intense blue I’d ever seen.

The words came to my lips unbidden, and I bit them back, the I love yous champing at my tongue and demanding I give them away. But what would he say? He’d probably run. It would be too much on top of everything else, and it would break this fragile thing we had between us. Despite that, I still wanted to release this truth in me. It was like a caged bird that had never spread its wings and was doomed to gaze at a sky it could never truly touch.

Say it.

No tiny Darcy – it’ll ruin everything!

But the words were coming, my lips were parting, tongue shifting into that position for the L part of the sentence, while the back of my throat tightened on the I.

“Seth?” Cal frowned like he could sense some impending truth headed his way.

I was a car skidding on ice, and he was a gambolling fawn who’d stumbled into the road, about to be hit by a speeding ton of metal. I couldn’t stop it. It was happening. I was no longer in control of it-

The door flew open, and I looked around in alarm, the car crash occurring in my body instead as my heart collided with my throat.

The worst possible people to ever walk into this room strode in, and I gaped in horror at my mom and Caleb’s.

“Tory Vega, we really must-” Mom started, then her jaw fell slack and Melinda let out a shrill cry as she spotted her son pinned beneath me.

“Get out!” I shouted and Caleb reared back, throwing me off of him so I hit the bed at his side, before grabbing the comforter and dragging it over us.

But they didn’t get out, oh no, they moved closer, eyes wide and stern expressions knitting their eyebrows together.

“Seth Capella,” Mom snapped, clutching the collar of her blue shirt.

“What in Solaria do you think you’re doing?” Melinda whispered shouted at Caleb.

Caleb sat up in bed and clutched the comforter tight to his abs, holding it high enough to hide his boner. Mine was sinking like it was a boat that had struck rocks, heading to the bottom of the ocean never to return.

“Do you have any idea of the scandal this could cause?” Mom barked, an Alpha ring in her voice that made me wince. “How many people know about this? Is Tory here too? Have the three of you been at it together or-”

“Tory isn’t here,” I snapped. “And no one says ‘at it’ – gah.”

“No one knows,” Caleb answered quickly, and I nodded in agreement to that, but Mom’s eyes narrowed on me and she pointed right at my face.

“Don’t you lie to me, pup. You can’t keep your mouth shut about anything. Or is this the first time this has happened? Have you not had a chance to go blabbering about it yet? Oh stars, please tell me this is the first time.”

“Yes,” Melinda said hopefully. “Venus and the moon led you to each other’s beds, right? That’s okay. It happens to the best of us. Remember that time there was a Lunar Eclipse when we were studying at Zodiac Academy, and you, me, Tiberius and Radcliff let Hail Vega dom all of us?”

“Oh yes,” my mom chuckled. “That was a fun night.”

My jaw fell slack as she let that bomb drop on our heads and blow up in our faces.

“You fucked Tory and Darcy’s Dad?” I breathed.

“And each other?” Caleb gasped, which actually might have been more of the shock here.

Melinda quickly cast a silencing bubble around us all, and swung the door shut with a vine cast from her hand. She sat on the end of the bed, and I shrank away into the pillows as my mom decided to sit right next to her too. On the bed. Right on the very mattress Cal and I had fucked on.

Oh my stars, this is not happening.

“We all have urges,” Melinda said in understanding, looking between the two of us with a doting smile, like this wasn’t weird as fuck. “And there is something wildly alluring about doing the deed with the other Heirs, what with it being so taboo, so scandalous-”

“Doing it?” Caleb blanched while I just begged the bed to swallow me whole.

“There’s nothing strange about feeling a pull to the kind of power only our four families and the Vegas wield – nothing at all. So long as it’s simply casual orgasms and kept private then it’s fine,” Melinda said soothingly, patting Caleb’s hand but he snatched it away like he was remembering the fact that it had been wrapped around my cock thirty seconds ago.

“My Seth can never control the whims of his winky,” Mom laughed, and heat flooded my cheeks.

I couldn’t look at Caleb. Possibly ever again.

Why did she have to say winky?

“So tell me, was it just last night?” Mom pushed, looking me right in the eye and stars help me, I couldn’t fight the divine force at work behind her gaze, and I started shaking my head.

“Seth,” Caleb snapped, punching me in the arm.

“I’m sorry,” I breathed, unable to tear my gaze from my mother’s concerned face as she turned to Melinda.

“This is not good,” Mom whispered to her like we were no longer a part of the conversation. “It was one thing when Caleb was fooling around with Tory – everyone knew then that she would never take the crown and that it wasn’t serious. But times are different now. We can’t allow the world to see you as party boys anymore, dipping your dongles in whatever honeypot catches your eye.”

“Kill me,” I breathed. “Please, just kill me and let it be done.”

“Antonia is right, Cally,” Melinda agreed. “The kingdom needs to take you boys seriously now more than ever. They need to see you as unbreakable pillars of strength, they need to be assured that you care about propriety and our laws. Even a dalliance with one another will look bad now – everyone likes getting their wick wet, but the two of you are the future leaders of your bloodlines. You know the law. There’s no future in it, and it will only look bad if it comes out that you’ve been spending your time between battles doing the sideways salamander, okay Cally?”

“Please don’t call me Cally right now,” Caleb said, burying his face in his hands and Melinda breathed a laugh.

“After what you burst in on me and your father doing last night I would have thought you’d be a bit less precious about your own sex life,” she said and I almost asked the question before realising I didn’t want to know.

“We already have one scandal to deal with after last night’s antics, though I think Tiberius is already spinning the tale to cover the damage,” my mom said thoughtfully.

“What antics?” I asked, instantly regretting it because it only dragged this conversation on for longer.

“Oh, Max bent that Grus girl over a rock and gave her a jolly good rodgering in front of the entire rebel camp last night,” Mom explained. “The footage is all over social media of course, but she is a very vocal advocate of the Vegas and was on all fours in front of an Heir so…the story was easily spun to look good for him – at least as good as a public romping can look of course.”

“By the stars,” Caleb groaned between his fingers and I could already imagine Geraldine reading that article and retaliating tenfold. Poor Max. But also, poor me and my poor boner because it was well and truly dead.

“Right, we need to do some damage control. Firstly, who knows? We need a list of names.” Melinda went into politician mode, and I was pretty sure my dick deflated so far that it crawled up inside me never to return.

“Seth,” Mom growled. “Start talking.”

“No one knows,” I lied, feeling Caleb’s eyes on me now like he was wondering if I really had told anyone.

“Pup,” Mom pushed, a warning in her voice. “I’m going to count down from three, and if I get to zero and you haven’t told me, then I’m going to ban you from running with my pack for a week, and I’ll tell that strapping Oscura Dragon to refuse to let you run with the Oscura pack too.”

“Mom!” I cried. “That’s not fair, I don’t have any other Wolves to run with.”

“Well you should have thought of that before you boinked your friend,” Mom said sternly.

“Don’t say boink,” I begged.

“Three,” she started. “Two.”

I pressed my lips together, refusing to give that answer.

“One,” Mom growled, arching a brow at me. “Oh, you are being a naughty little pup. You will give me that list even if I have to get a Cyclops to pull it out of your head.”

“There’s no list,” I pressed, but I wasn’t sure if anyone in the room believed me.

Melinda spotted something on the floor and shot over to pick it up. If I’d thought this morning couldn’t get any more mortifying, it somehow did as she picked up the XL Darius Dragon vibrator and looked to my mom in shock.

“Oh stars, this is because they’re mourning their friend.” She looked to us in sympathy. “Did you all used to romp together at King’s Hollow? Are you trying to rekindle some of the magic?”

“No!” I cried, but Melinda didn’t seem convinced, laying the huge, scaly, golden dildo on the end of the bed like it was some kind of sacred offering to us.

“Right,” Mom said firmly. “You two need to get up, get dressed, and part ways. No more of this. Imagine the scandal. We can’t have this getting out. People are already shaken by the new power in Solaria, we can’t have them thinking there’s any threat to the bloodlines. If you two need comfort sex, then replace it elsewhere.”

“It’s not comfort sex,” I blurted, refusing to let her dismiss this, even as embarrassment nearly choked all words away from me. I felt Caleb’s eyes on me as my mom’s brows lowered and a dangerous glint of fear winked at me from her irises.

“Then what is it?” she hissed.

I opened and closed my mouth, a dumbass fish dragged from the water and dying on dry land. I couldn’t speak. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. It wasn’t supposed to end yet.

“It’s nothing,” Caleb cut in. “We were just fucking around.”

“Yeah,” I rasped as his words gutted me, slicing through the muscle of my heart and carving it up on a silver platter complete with a sprig of coriander as a garnish. “Nothing.”

That word echoed on inside my skull and both my mom and Melinda looked seriously relieved.

“Well then, that makes this easier,” Mom said, wiping a metaphorical bead of sweat from her brow and breaking a laugh. She patted my leg through the comforter and I cringed, shrivelling inside. “We all have our fun when we’re young, and it’s natural to want to try out different things. After being with less powerful Fae for so long, it can be thrilling to have a bit of nookie with another Alpha on your level. But we must be careful. There are other Alphas out there, ones almost as powerful as you, so you don’t need to seek this from each other. Especially now while your public image is so important. Okay, pup?”

“Whatever. And I’m not a pup,” I muttered, though I felt like one right then.

“Okay, Cally?” Melinda asked Caleb.

“Yeah,” Caleb murmured.

“Hey, why don’t you go have a romp with Jerry Bodkin’s boy?” Melinda suggested to Caleb excitedly. “He’s had his eye on you for weeks.”

“Oh that sounds lovely,” my mom encouraged, turning to me. “And you could have a threeway with Mr Berrick’s son, Timothy, and his friend, oh what’s his name again, Melinda?” She snapped her fingers as I gaped at them in horror of their efforts to set us up with their friends’ kids.

“Egbert?” Melinda said.

“That’s the one!” Mom smiled.

“No,” I growled. “I don’t care who Egbert and Timothy are, and I don’t want anything to do with them.”

Mom tutted like I was being unreasonable. “Well, if you want something a bit more taboo, Mr Berrick himself is single and quite the looker too. Do you like a bit of an age gap, pup? You always did say Professor Orion was – oh what was the word – dashing?”

“I didn’t call him dashing,” I balked. “Who the fuck uses that word?”

“I’m sure it was that – or maybe you said he was debonair,” Mom continued while I willed the pillows to grow mouths and swallow me whole.

“Debonair?” I breathed, shaking my head in refusal. “That word’s never left my mouth, ever.”

“So where is Tory if she didn’t take part in this rumpus? We need to speak to her,” Melinda questioned, looking around the room as if she wouldn’t have been at all surprised to replace Tory had been involved in this somehow after all.

“Gone,” Cal said darkly. “She left Geraldine in charge.”

“Gone where?” Melinda frowned.

“She has something she needs to do. She didn’t explain more than that in the note she left. I don’t know how long for, so your conversation with her will have to wait.”

“That girl,” Mom scoffed. “She can’t just wander off here, there, and everywhere whenever she feels like it, then place people in charge as if it’s her right to do so. We are the Councillors, and it’s about time everyone remembered that.”

Caleb muttered something that sounded a whole lot like ex, but our moms either didn’t hear him or ignored it.

“Good luck convincing the rebels of that,” I said, and Mom clucked her tongue at me.

“You should be out there winning their favour, pup. You were always so good at that. Come replace me later and we’ll do some moral boosting around the island, how about that?”

I shrugged, non-comital.

“Well, we’ll leave you to get dressed,” Melinda said brightly.

“Gosh what’s your father going to say about all this?” Mom asked with a chuckle.

“Don’t tell Dad,” I begged, but she waved me off like I was joking, heading out of the room with Melinda and the door swung shut behind them. I was almost certain I heard the name Hail Vega and the words ‘tied us up’ but I shut my ears against listening to another fucking word of that before I was mentally scarred for life.

Silence fell over us and neither us moved as we sat in the fallout of that nuclear bomb, not looking at each other.

“Well then,” I said at last, shoving out of bed and grabbing my boxers from the floor, pulling them on. “I’m going to go shower in boiling hot water and see if my dick will ever come out of hiding.”

“Me too,” Cal muttered, and I glanced back at him, replaceing him standing and fully dressed, having used his Vampire speed to do so. “Like, not with you. In a separate shower. Somewhere…else.”

I nodded stiffly and his mouth twitched like he wanted to say something more, but then he was gone, speeding out the door and leaving me there with the scent of him still plastered to my skin.

A horrid certainty washed over me that we were never going to hook up again, and I stood in the despairing light of the sunrise which devoured the last of that perfect night.

Time didn’t stop, it never did.