Page 58 of Claimed By the Vykan
Selharyn laughed again, bitter. “That is not a concession, that is insanity.”
“It is inevitability,” Kyrax corrected. “I will see it through. When it stabilizes—when she stands in front of you unharmed—you will acknowledge the bond as lawful and revise the Edicts accordingly. You will recognize the viability of human attunement.”
“And if it does not stabilize?” Vaelor asked quietly. The old Vykan’s voice carried no mockery now, only heavy, tired knowledge. “If she fractures? If you do?”
Kyrax met the horned mask squarely.
“Then I will not resist,” he said. “If the bond collapses, you may execute me and reclaim the mask. Take the title. Give it to whichever of you believes himself fit to guard this world. Let my bones burn with the others in the Storm Vault. I will not fight.”
“Kyrax.” Drava’s voice lowered. “You offer your life on the certainty of a human’s resilience.”
“Not on certainty,” he answered. “On evidence. On instinct. On what I have seen and felt, and on the knowledge that doing nothing will kill me regardless.”
The words landed, and an older truth lay beneath them: a Vykan who never bonded would, in time, go mad. They all knew it. They had all seen it.
He had simply chosen a different path to risk.
“You ask much,” Orath said at last.
“I ask nothing,” Kyrax replied. “I state what will occur. I have already begun. You can either accept it and prepare, or you can waste your time imagining threats you will not be fast enough to deliver.”
The silence that followed bristled with offense and reluctant respect.
Vaelor broke it. “We will record the proposal,” he said slowly. “We will mark your terms. We will also mark your consent to execution in the event of failure.”
“You will not need to invoke it,” Kyrax said.
“We shall see,” Selharyn muttered.
Drava’s head dipped the slightest fraction. “Guard your bond carefully, Kyrax. If you are wrong, we will not hesitate.”
“I would not respect you if you did,” he said.
The council’s projections dissolved one by one, masks fading into mist and light until only Kyrax remained in the empty ring of thrones. The chamber reverted to the parameters of his own bastion, the air warming fractionally as external connections dropped away.
He stood alone again.
Except he wasn’t.
At the edge of his awareness, something flared—sharp, bright, unmistakably conscious.
Morgan was awake.
The bond answered before he consciously did, a warm pull across the distance between their chambers. Her emotions brushed against his—raw, still-shaken resolve layered over simmering unrest, a fragile steadiness she was trying very hard to hold on to.
She needed him.
Kyrax turned toward her presence immediately, the council chamber dissolving behind him like smoke shedding from his armor.
They had given him their ultimatum.
He had given them his.
Now only one path remained—one he had already stepped onto the moment he touched her, the moment she survived him, the moment she looked up at him without breaking.
And she—awake, waiting, calling through the bond—stood at the center of it all.
CHAPTER 27
