“No.”
“Understood. He’ll be curious. Possibly defensive. Your history with the serpent has been... contentious.”
That was one word for it.
Kaede’s fingers brushed the hilt of his psydagger, the weapon’s familiar weight grounding him. He remembered the moonlit confrontation in the garden, blade pressed to Zyxel’s throat. The bitter words exchanged over Selena’s file. The resentment that had simmered between them since the serpent first slithered into their lives with his secrets and his claims of fated connection.
He’d threatened to cut out Zyxel’s tongue once. The memory brought no satisfaction.
“I don’t have time to repeat history.”Kaede turned from the console, rolling his shoulders to release some of the tension thathad settled there like armor. His living suit rippled in response, the gel-like material adjusting to his movement.“I have time for solutions.”
The war room doors slid open.
Zyxel entered in his natural form.
Not the Ezzaska disguise he wore—the comfortable skin he’d inhabited for years—but the massive Rkekh body he’d revealed to Selena during the Harvest Festival. Obsidian-black scales gleamed with iridescent crimson streaks layered tight over a lean, brutal frame, each edge catching the light like a honed seam. His neck was ringed in stacked segments that flexed when he moved, and blade-like ridges flared along his forearms before tapering back into smooth scutes. A long tail dragged behind him in a controlled arc, its underside studded with subtle spines; at the tip, fiber-optic strands gave off a faint ember glow in the dim room.
He was larger in this form. More imposing. Yet the same upright, almost scholarly posture sat on top of something made for killing—beneath that civilized exterior coiled enough muscle to crush bone.
Chartreuse eyes locked on Kaede, bright and clinical, that familiar, measuring focus scraping at his nerves like it always did.
But today, irritation was a luxury he couldn’t afford.
A crimson mental thread reached out and Kaede instantly grabbed it, no use wasting time.
“You summoned me.”Zyxel’s mental voice brushed against Kaede’s shields, controlled and cautious—like a healer approaching a wounded predator.“Is something wrong with Selena?”
“If something were wrong with Selena, you would have felt it through your bond.” Kaede gestured sharply toward the tactical displays. “And I wouldn’t be this… relaxed.”
Zyxel shifted, and the room recalculated around him. Obsidian plates slid with a soft scrape, his mass claiming air in a way that made the space feel suddenly too small. The scent rolled in after—mineral heat and spices—settling heavy at the back of Kaede’s throat.
He tipped his head. The ridges and crown spines along his skull caught the holographic spill, throwing hard highlights over his plated armor.
“Then why am I here?”
Kaede didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he circled his clanbrother, taking in the full scope of his natural form with tactical eyes. The size—a liability in tight corridors. The presence—impossible to ignore, impossible to conceal. The unmistakableothernessthat marked him as something ancient and dangerous and rare.
Something that would make every diplomat, every guard, every curious observer in the CEG stop mid-step and stare.
The same stunned pause they’d given him—like they were trying to decide if he was real or a mistake. His lethalness unsettled them enough to openly stop. The same hungry, unsettled attention they always turned on Selena, as if her existence rewrote the rules around her.
A presence you couldn’t ignore.
“We depart for the CEG Space Station in forty-seven hours,” Kaede said, his voice flat as a blade’s edge. “You’re part of the security detail.”
“I’m aware.”
“And you planned to attend in this form?”
Silence stretched between them, dense with what neither of them bothered to say. Zyxel’s body drew in on itself, coils tightening by degrees, obsidian scales sliding with a faint, dry whisper—armor settling into a guarded configuration. It was subtle, practiced, the kind of defense that pretended to be calm.
Kaede clocked it anyway. He always did.
“My Ezzaska form would be—”
“A target.” Kaede stopped in front of him, close enough to see his own reflection in those chartreuse eyes—dark and sharp and uncompromising. “You bonded to the Beacon. That means every intelligence agency, every bounty hunter, everyishingQuaww operative in the station will be running your profile the moment you step off theAbyss. When news spread, the Verya would soon know of your existence and location. They’ll dig. They’ll analyze.”
Zyxel’s spines flattened against his back, the motion involuntary—fear or submission or both.“You think they’ll identify me as Rkekh?”
