Page 72 of Xara and the Xenobeast

With a powerful heave, he threw Dravak across the clearing. The commander crashed through the underbrush, tumbling down the steep slope toward the river canyon below. He caught himself on an outcropping, dangling precariously over the churning waters.

The Xenobeast stalked to the edge, looking down at his former commander. Dravak’s pristine uniform was torn and muddynow, his perfect composure shattered. For the first time, real fear showed in his eyes.

“Seven,” he gasped, his fingers slipping on the wet rock. “Help me. That’s an order.”

The Xenobeast crouched at the edge of the cliff, his silver eyes cold and unforgiving. “My name,” he said quietly, “is Ash.”

The name felt right on his tongue—a fragment of memory, of identity, reclaimed from the darkness of his past. Something Xara had awakened in him, piece by piece.

Dravak’s eyes widened in recognition. “Ash? That designation was erased. You were reset.”

“Not erased,” Ash corrected. “Just buried. Like me.” He watched dispassionately as Dravak’s fingers slipped further. “You exiled me to die. Left me here to rot.”

“I can fix this,” Dravak’s voice took on a desperate edge. “Return with me. Bring the female. You’ll be reinstated. Rewarded.”

Ash tilted his head, studying the commander like a curious specimen. “You still don’t understand. I’m not coming back.” He rose to his full height, looking down at the man who had once controlled his existence. “And neither are you.”

With deliberate precision, he stepped on Dravak’s fingers. The commander screamed, his grip failing. For a moment, he hung suspended in the air, his eyes locked with Ash’s in a final look of disbelief.

Then he fell, his scream echoing off the canyon walls until it was swallowed by the roar of the river below.

Ash watched until the churning waters closed over Dravak’s body, carrying it away like so much debris. The commander who had defined his existence for so long, who had stripped him of identity and purpose, was gone—broken, discarded, and finally irrelevant.

He stood at the cliff edge for a long moment, the jungle sounds gradually returning around him. The weight of his past seemed to fall away with Dravak, carried downstream and out of his life.

He had a new name now. A new purpose. A mate who saw him as more than a weapon. Pups who trusted him. A home to protect.

He turned away from the canyon and headed back through the jungle toward the cave. Toward Xara. His steps were lighter, his posture different—no longer the prowl of a predator, but the stride of someone returning home.

As he neared the cave, he caught Xara’s scent on the breeze. Warm, familiar, beloved. She was waiting for him, worry and relief mingling in her scent signature. The pups would be there too, chirping their excitement at his return.

For the first time since his creation, he felt something like peace settle in his chest. Dravak was gone. The threat was eliminated. And the future—once a meaningless concept for a weapon with no purpose beyond destruction—stretched before him, full of possibility.

He quickened his pace, eager to return to the ones who had given him back his name, his choice, his life.

He was no longer the Xenobeast.

He was Ash.

And he was going home.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Xara paced at the cave entrance, her heart hammering against her ribs. Every shadow in the jungle seemed to stretch toward her, every rustle of leaves made her flinch. The pups sensed her anxiety, their bioluminescent patches pulsing with agitated light as they huddled together on the bed.

“He’s coming back,” she whispered to them. “He has to.”

Hours had passed since he’d gone to confront Vask. The Zarkari commander’s threats still rang in her ears—cold, clinical words that reduced her to a specimen, a resource to be harvested. She’d seen the change in Ash’s eyes when Vask spoke of her that way, watched something ancient and terrible awaken in his silver gaze.

A flicker of movement at the jungle’s edge caught her attention. She grabbed the makeshift spear she’d fashioned, her knuckles white around its shaft.

Then she saw him—his massive silhouette emerging from the crimson foliage, moving with purpose despite the obvious painin his gait. Blood streaked his torso, some of it his own, some not.

“Ash,” she breathed.

He looked up at her voice, those silver eyes finding hers across the distance.

She dropped the spear and ran to him, ignoring the ache in her own bruised body from her earlier fight. When she reached him, her hands moved instinctively to the worst of his wounds—a deep gash across his shoulder, another along his ribs.

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