Page 75 of Claimed By the Vykan
“Vykan,” Nuar said, inclining his head. “Perimeter patrols are complete. No breaches recorded in the last cycle.”
Kyrax nodded, stepping closer to the largest projection. It showed the region of Vyranth surrounding the Void Bastion—mountains folded in jagged tiers, forested canyons painted in muted green, mist density plotted in shifting bands of light.
“Maintain elevated scans,” Kyrax said. “Isshyr is quiet. That does not mean safe.”
Nuar’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “As you command.”
The council still played at composure, spoke of balance and tradition. But Kyrax had seen the flickers beneath their masks—the anger at his defiance, the unease at his survival, the fear at the idea that they might need to change. If any of them had prompted Isshyr’s earlier trespass, they would regret it in time.
But his instincts told him Isshyr did not need prompting.
The older Vykan had never accepted him. Kyrax, youngest of the seven. Born in the thinning years of the mist, when Vyranth’s veil no longer lay as dense and protective as it once had. The last Vykan to emerge. The one who had always been too vicious, too decisive, too willing to bend rules if it meant better protection for his people.
He had worn those accusations like armor. Broken fleets, shattered raider clans, dead pirate lords drifting in their ruptured hulls—those were his answers.
Yet beneath all of that, something had always churned inside him. A hollowness. A coiled instability. An instinct that something was missing from the equation of his existence.
A Vykan who did not bond would eventually go mad. Every one of them knew it. They pretended it was distant, theoretical, a problem for another century. But Kyrax had always felt its shadow near the edges of his mind.
So he had studied.
Records of their history. Fragments from the earliest Vykan. Accounts from the Majarin and other species who had witnessed what they were capable of. Once, long ago, there had been a human. A failed attunement, a disaster that had almost torn their world apart. The others took that story as proof that humans were too fragile for their venom, their presence.
Kyrax had seen it differently.
He had seen possibility.
Humans were an anomaly—resilient, adaptive, unpredictable. Every account he had scavenged from across the stars returned to the same pattern: faced with the abyss, humans did not simply break. They shifted, evolved, clawed out new paths where none had existed.
He had wanted that.
Not weakness.
Balance.
Something that might root his increasingly volatile instincts before they tipped into the madness his kind feared.
When the Majarin’s transgressions had come to light—when the Marak’s quiet message had reached him, speaking of a human who had voiced her desire to escape her world—Kyrax had understood with the certainty of instinct.
This one.
And now, feeling Morgan steady and alive at the edge of his awareness, he was vindicated.
He moved through status reports, fleet readiness checks, shield recalibrations—each task familiar, each decision easy in the aftermath of battles he had already won. Nuar and the other officers updated him in efficient detail. Saelori who chose service in his forces were not many, but those who did were fiercely loyal. They knew the risks—capture, experimentation, annihilation if enemy forces ever broke through his defense line—and still they volunteered.
Because Kyrax had never failed to intercept an attacker.
And once he boarded a hostile ship and vented even a fraction of his venom into their atmosphere, there was nothing their enemies could do.
His people trusted him because he did not falter.
Now he had another to protect.
As the thought settled, the air in the war chamber changed.
A faint tremor brushed the Bastion’s defenses—not physical, but energetic. The subtle distortion of space being disturbed at range. One of the sensor arrays chimed, lights along its edge brightening in warning.
Nuar’s head snapped toward the nearest console. Fingers flew over the controls.
