“Training yard. One hour from now. I’ll have Ryzen there.”
“One hour?” Zyxel’s surprise rippled through the air. “We’ve been training for two already. You want to continue today?”
“I want youfunctional.” Kaede’s expression didn’t soften. “Functional takes time we don’t have. So we compress. We push. We break you down and rebuild you into something that can protect her.”
Silence stretched between them.
Then Zyxel nodded, something like respect flickering in those chartreuse eyes.
“One hour.”
Forty-six hours now.
Forty-six hours to forge three disparate males into a weapon worthy of protecting the Beacon.
He would make them ready.
Or he would die trying.
13
Zyxel
Wrong.
Everything about this body was wrong.
Zyxel shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and the grassy training yard tilted beneath him. His center of gravity had vanished along with his coils—that anchor of muscled serpentine mass that had kept him balanced through decades of survival. Now he had two legs. Two impossibly thin supports holding up a frame that felt stretched, exposed, defenseless.
The late afternoon sun pressed against his back, and even that simple sensation registered differently in this skin. Heat didn’t pool along the length of him like it should. Didn’t warm his core in the familiar way his Ezzaska form absorbed energy. Instead, it landed sharp and localized—shoulders, spine, the back of his neck and the exposed planes of muscle that had replaced the armor of his scales.
He flexed his fingers. Watched the talons—smaller now, but still present, not the dull nails that pure humans have—curl into his palm. At least those remained familiar. At least the musclesin his wrists still pulsed with readiness, that lethal inheritance unchanged by the transformation. They would help him to be precise during hard surgeries, making it easier to care for Selena and their clan.
But his tail was gone.
The absence echoed through his nervous system like a phantom limb, his body constantly searching for something that no longer existed. He’d only ever worn this demi-human form when hiding became necessary. When the fear in others’ eyes grew too heavy to bear. When blending in meant survival.
Only bad memories lived in this skin.
He remembered the early days on the asteroid base, before the Verya found them. Remembered slithering through human settlements in his Ezzaska form—the serpent shape that felt like home—and watching faces twist with revulsion. Something aboutanacondasmated with humans. Something about the fear of being eaten whole.
The demi-humans had been only slightly less afraid. But fear was fear, and Zyxel had learned early that being useful mattered more than being accepted. So he’d become a healer. A collector of genetic material. A scholar who stayed in the background and hoped the universe would forget he existed.
The universe hadn’t forgotten.
It had sent him Selena instead.
The tropical forest surrounding the villa’s private grounds rustled in the ocean breeze, and beyond the cliff’s edge, lavender waves crashed against rock in a rhythm that should have been soothing. The scent of salt and green growing things filled his lungs—familiar from his time on Liskta, familiar from mornings wrapped around hisenaxin their shared tent before everything came crashing down.
Selena.
Through their bond—that crimson thread still so new it thrummed with constant awareness—Zyxel felt her presence in the villa below. Safe. Grounded. Wrapped in layers of sound and calm.
She was in the central lobby—the sanctuary—listening to Odelm’s music while the cubs clustered nearby playing and her ambassadors sat nearby. Xylo was there too, his attention focused on her body, scanning her with careful precision even though Euouae had already confirmed it: Selena and the child were fine. She only needed rest. Shade. Distance from the sun.
The princes were elsewhere, in council with Zirene, trading strategy and updates as the war shifted by the hour.
And Selena—his Selena—was exactly where she needed to be, holding the heart of the clan steady while Zyxel learned how to exist on two legs without falling apart.
