Page 121 of The Alien's Vicious Starflash Manor

The hunters’ footsteps grow closer, their boots crunching on the ice-covered ground. The sound sends fresh rage coursing through my veins like liquid nitrogen, super-cooling my blood until even my tears freeze solid before they can fall.

I will not let them have her. I will not let anyone hurt her.

The thoughts pulse through me with each beat of my transforming heart, driving the change faster, harder, remaking me into something powerful enough to keep her safe.

Even if it means becoming the very monster I’ve always known lurked beneath my careful mask of Ice Court control.

My blood sings with a strength I’ve never known, demanding release. The maze trembles around us as my power builds, and for the first time I understand why the firelords guard the secret of their first Change so carefully. This isn’t just transformation—it’s rebirth in its most primal form.

The Caix part of me wants to scream at the overwhelming sensation, but what emerges is a roar that shakes icicles from the walls.

In this moment, I finally understand why my magic has been so out of control. Realize not just how I’ve always been different from other Icecaix, but why. How my father’s heritage—Starcaix and firelord—mixed with my mother’s pure Icecaix.

I am Caix and I am firelord.

I am both, and I am neither, but in this form, I am finally, perfectly myself.

Three hunters round the corner and freeze, their faces draining of color as they stare up—so very far up—at what I’ve become.

My new form towers over them, and I feel a savage satisfaction at their terror. Every breath I take sends clouds offrozen mist into the air, the temperature plummeting until their own breath freezes solid before it can cloud. The cold radiates from me in waves that make the very air crystallize.

“But…” one whispers, voice trembling. “The duke was supposed to be here, too—not this.”

They didn’t just come for Lara—they thought I would be too weak to stop them. That I would be vulnerable, distracted, my powers failing like every other Icecaix.

Rage builds in my chest, colder than the deepest winter night, sharper than the icicles forming at my command.

They are about to learn what it means to wake a dragon of ice.

These men threaten what’s mine. They dare to enter my domain, to hunt what is mine.

Mine to protect. To cherish.

To save.

Even if that means saving her from myself and all my careful plans.

Even as the predator in me yearns to attack, a deeper truth crystallizes in my mind—all my careful plans, all my justifications about saving our world, have been nothing but lies I told myself to avoid one simple, devastating fact.

I love her.

The realization changes everything—my plans, my purpose, my very nature.

The ice in my veins sings with it, even as my heart contracts with the knowledge of what I must now choose to do. Or perhaps what I’ve already chosen, from the moment I first saw her in that market, though I didn’t know it then.

I am no longer simply the Duke of Starfrost, no longer merely a pawn in my own careful game, but something new. Something that terrifies even me.

My lips pull back from my teeth, and the sound that emerges is the crack of a frozen lake giving way. I throw back my head and roar, the sound like a thousand years of fury unleashed at once.

Power surges through me, raw and ancient and absolutely mine.

I am the heir to both ice and fire, formed into something new, into the very soul of ice, and I will destroy anyone who threatens what’s mine.

The certainty of it burns through me colder than any flame. My claws flex, scoring deep grooves in the frozen ground as I prepare to strike.

I am become winter itself.

The hunters turn and run.

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