Page 64 of Claimed By the Vykan
By the time they led her to the mirrorless far wall, Morgan barely recognized her reflection in the polished metal panel. The green gown draped perfectly over her figure. Silver markings caught the light as she moved. Her hair, braided with thin silver cords, gleamed against her skin. She looked… not alien, exactly, but transformed. Prepared.
A soft breath escaped her. “I look like…”
“Like one standing at the edge of destiny,” Lethari murmured.
Morgan wasn’t sure destiny was real. But something monumental hovered around her all the same.
Raeska stepped toward her, holding out a hand. The others fell back, watching with quiet, expectant eyes.
“It is time,” she said gently.
Morgan’s pulse thudded once, heavy and slow. “Now?”
Raeska’s fingers closed around hers. Warm. Certain. “He is waiting.”
Something inside Morgan tightened at that—fear, anticipation, longing, disbelief—tangled together so completely she couldn’t separate one from the next. Kyrax was out there, somewhere close, holding himself still for her, preparing for something only the two of them could complete.
Morgan drew one breath.
Then another.
And she stepped forward as Raeska led her toward the open doorway… toward the ritual, toward the bond, toward the choice she had made and the world she had chosen it for.
Toward him.
CHAPTER 30
They led her deeper into the Bastion, along corridors she had never walked before—quiet places with walls of dark stone and soft glimmering veins of light that made the air feel sacred. Every step carried a sense of purpose she didn’t yet fully understand, but her body recognized it instinctively.
Raeska kept close, a half-step behind, her presence steady and gentle. The other attendants moved with her—Lethari’s near-ethereal grace, Siraen’s quiet authority, Vhalis’s swift precision, Orah’s serene steadiness. Morgan had grown used to them over the last days. She trusted them more than she had ever expected to trust strangers, or aliens, or anyone at all. They touched her without hesitation, and yet she never felt handled or directed. Their care held no possessiveness, no expectation. Only purpose.
At last, they reached a door that opened with a soft breath of displaced air. Morgan stepped inside—and the world changed.
The chamber was circular and perfect in its symmetry, the ceiling rising into a smooth dome etched with faint teal sigils that pulsed like slow-moving constellations. In the very center lay a pool of water so still it resembled polished glass. Itsglow—deep teal, almost star-bright beneath the surface—lit the chamber in gentle, wavering light. Mist drifted lazily over the water’s surface, carrying a scent both clean and sweet, threaded with something cool and metallic she couldn’t name.
Raeska guided her to the pool’s edge, then stepped back to stand with the others.
“Morgan,” Raeska murmured, her tone reverent. The translator stone softened the consonants, as though trying not to disturb the air. “When he enters, the ritual begins.”
Morgan nodded, though her throat had tightened. She was dressed in deep green silk trimmed with silvered markings across her skin—delicate strands painted along her cheekbones, across her collarbones, down her arms and ribs. The markings shimmered faintly whenever she moved, as though the ritual space itself recognized them.
One by one, the attendants withdrew. The chamber door sealed behind them with a quiet finality.
And she was alone.
The silence that followed was not empty. At first she thought it was the chamber itself. Then she realized it was him.
Kyrax.
His presence reached her through the bond, subtle at first, then stronger and deeper. The sensation expanded under her skin, a warm hum that rolled outward through her chest and belly, leaving her faintly breathless.
He was coming.
And she responded before she even saw him—her pulse quickening, her skin heating, her muscles softening in anticipation she couldn’t hide.
The air shifted. Shadows thickened.
And then he entered.
