Chapter Sixty Seven: The Guilt Beneath the Glow

Chapter Sixty Seven: The Guilt Beneath the Glow
The garden was quiet again. Kehan was gone. And Freya stayed rooted to the same spot, unsure if her legs could even move.

She could still feel the ghost of his lips—warm, electrifying, wrong. Or was it?

She slowly sat down on the mossy bench, a soft whimper escaping her lips as her hands clutched her forehead.

What just happened?

The kiss wasn’t planned. It wasn’t even invited, was it? And yet… she didn’t pull away.

Worse—she kissed him back. Not just a flinch of a kiss, not some confused response. She had grabbed his face and deepened it. As if… as if her heart had made a decision without her permission.

Her chest ached.

I love Axir.

The words echoed again and again in her head, as if the repetition would make it truer, louder, stronger than the chaos swirling inside her.

Of course, she did. She wouldn’t have left Earth, everything familiar, everything safe, if she didn’t love him. She wouldn’t have stepped into his world—his galaxy—with no promise of return. She wouldn’t have memorised the look in his eyes when he said she was his kai’thera, his light, his home.

And yet.

Then Kehan came.

Like a comet crashing through her orbit. Unexpected. Bright. Undeniable.

She never meant to fall into this mess. She never asked for her heart to shift this way. She was supposed to be awkward around Kehan, laugh at his ridiculous jokes, feel irritated at his endless flirting.

But now…

Her hands curled into fists.

Why did Kehan have to say those things? Why did he have to kiss her like that? And why, why, did it feel like something inside her had awakened? Something that had been sleeping for a long, long time?

The guilt washed over her like a wave.

Was she betraying Axir?

Was she betraying herself?

She leaned back and stared at the glass canopy above. The auroras of Nimoa danced beyond the dome, streaks of color weaving across the stars in slow motion. The glow bathed her face, softening the edges of her sadness.

But it didn’t erase it.

Could someone love two people at the same time?

She thought of stories she had read—of humans torn between lovers, pulled between promises and passion. But this wasn’t just a story. This was her life now. Two men. Two hearts. Both alien. Both brave. Both kind in very different ways.

Axir was her anchor. Her protector. Her first taste of adventure, of possibility, of love beyond the confines of Earth.

But Kehan… Kehan was a wildfire. Something untamed. A warmth that wrapped around her like a secret she hadn’t known she was keeping.

And that kiss—

Her fingers brushed her lips unconsciously.

Was it just the moment? Was it because she was confused? Or did it mean something she wasn’t ready to admit?

She didn’t want to lose Axir. The idea alone hurt.

But she couldn’t deny that Kehan made her feel something too. That flutter in her chest. That laughter that bubbled up without warning. That sense of being seen even when she tried to hide.

Her eyes welled up, but she blinked the tears away.

“I didn’t ask for this,” she whispered to the garden.

One of the tiny light orbs floated near her shoulder, pulsing gently like a heartbeat. As if the universe itself was listening to her heartache.

What do I do?

She didn’t know how long she stayed there. Maybe minutes. Maybe an hour. She just sat in the hush of greenery, letting herself feel everything. The guilt. The longing. The confusion.

Eventually, the cold started to seep through her skin. She pulled Kehan’s blazer—still wrapped around her—from her shoulders and stared at it.

It smelled like him. Clean. Zesty. A little like the plants around her. Comforting.

She should return it.

But not yet.

As she stood up, she let her fingers drag along the glass walls, her thoughts still tangled.

There were battles to fight. A core to retrieve. People depending on her. But inside this garden, time had stopped. It allowed her to simply be Freya. A girl from Earth. A girl lost in a galaxy not her own. A girl holding two hearts in her hands.

She exhaled slowly.

“I have to figure this out,” she whispered to herself. “Soon.”

Then she walked away, leaving the garden behind—but not the storm inside her.