Page 12 of Bound to the Marak

It was the threat of motion.

His mask—forged from obsidian alloy, veined with flowing silver, smooth and featureless—concealed his face. It had never been removed in the presence of another since the day of his ascension. To show his face would be to offer something intimate. Something sacred.

No one alive had earned that right.

Not yet.

Around him, the Yerak moved with clockwork precision. Slender, graceful, endlessly obedient. Though Majarin in origin, they were cast apart from him by biology and ancient law—smaller, softer, incapable of the generative force that birthed the Marak line. They were his engineers, his warriors, his hands and voice.

But never his equal.

And never his pleasure.

Temian approached from the shadows, robed in dark-blue silks, his age marked by the silver threading at his temples and the slightly dulled edges of his gill lines. He bowed deeply, one hand touching the floor in deference.

“My Lord,” he said, voice quiet and measured, “the human has been cleansed, clothed, and delivered to her quarters. The nourishment you prescribed has been prepared according to genetic and enzymatic tolerances.”

Karian inclined his head.

“She has not spoken in any recognizable tongue,” Temian continued. “But… she is afraid.”

“She should be,” Karian said simply.

Temian did not flinch. He knew better than to mistake the Marak’s bluntness for cruelty. Karian did not rule through sadism. He ruled through precision, through clarity, and through power.

Fear was not an indulgence. It was a tool.

Karian’s tentacles shifted, flexing slightly, the tips curling and uncurling against the floor with the lazy menace of a predator not yet hungry. The movement alone caused the walls to dim slightly in deference.

The silence held.

And then, softly, Karian spoke again.

“She watched me at the auction.”

Temian blinked. “Yes, my Lord.”

“She did not beg.”

“No.”

“She did not avert her eyes.”

“No, my Lord.”

Karian leaned forward, just slightly, the weight of his attention shifting like a shifting tide.

“She intrigued me.”

It was not a confession. It was a declaration.

Temian bowed his head once more.

“Your judgment is absolute.”

Karian turned his thoughts inward. The human—Leonie—was from a planet so remote most maps considered it a myth. Earth. Crude. Fragile. Undeveloped. Yet teeming with a kind of emotional volatility that the Majarin had long since purged from their evolution. The Yerak revered order. Obedience. Perfection.

But perfection, he had begun to suspect, came at a cost.

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