Page 82 of Claimed By the Vykan
He felt the bond vibrate softly with her humor before her lips even curved. A month by her world’s measure had passed since the full attunement ritual—since he had breathed freely over her and lived to see her eyes open clearer than before. In that time she had slipped into his world as though some part of her had always been moving toward it.
Her Saelori was fluid now, unaccented, the bond having done the careful work of knitting their languages together until she no longer needed the translator stone. She spoke to him in his own tongue more often than not, but tonight she used English, the words sitting on the air like a reminder of the world she had left behind.
“A troublemaker,” he echoed, mouth tilting. “My elders would saycorruptor of the old order.”
“They would not be wrong,” she said lightly. “You shook an entire planetary hierarchy because you decided you wanted one human.”
“One human,” he agreed, the words resonant in his chest. “The correct one.”
She huffed a quiet laugh and looked back out over the mist. The sky was a deep, saturated indigo, clouds moving across it in slow rivers. Somewhere far below, a cluster of lights brightened as night took fuller hold.
She had changed.
Not in form—her body remained small beside his, soft where he was hard, human where he was Saelori—but the rhythm of her was different, stronger, her heartbeat steadier, her scent richer, threaded now with subtle notes of his venom, their signatures intertwined. The bond hummed with constant, steady linkage, no longer flaring with instability. She grounded him as surely as the Bastion’s roots held the mountain.
And she grew more beautiful every day.
Not because of the minor physical shifts the attunement had wrought—slightly sharper eyes, skin that held a faint inner vitality—but because of the way she occupied space now, sure of her place at his side. She had stood in the council hall beside him without flinching, had faced six Vykan who could raze continents, and met them with clear eyes and level voice.
Captive. Survivor. Chosen.The arc of it was written in the way she held herself now.
There had been difficult days. Moments when the weight of what she had left crashed over her, when the reality of other stars, other species, other wars frayed her composure. On those days, her temper flared hot and sharp; she paced his chambers, snapped at him, cursed in words from both languages that made some of his attendants turn quietly away.
He had let her.
He had learned to enjoy the flash of her human fury, the way it sparked through the bond—bright, quick, alive. It washed through him like a minor storm, then burned itself out in his presence, leaving her clearer. They always found their way back to stillness together, sometimes with hands, sometimes with words, sometimes with simple proximity, their breathing gradually falling into the same pattern.
Now, on the balcony, that same steadiness thrummed between them.
“You enjoy this too much,” she murmured, as if plucking the thought from his mind.
“I enjoyyou,” he corrected. “Entirely.”
“Obviously,” she said, but the wryness in her tone softened at the edges.
She rested her forearms on the railing, fingers splayed against the cool stone, gaze sweeping the mist-veiled expanse. Light from the Bastion’s interior brushed her skin in a faintgolden wash; beyond, the forest breathed in dim blues and violets.
“You were right about them,” she said after a while. “The others. The Vykan.”
Kyrax angled his head, watching the delicate movement of muscles along her jaw as she spoke.
“They are old,” he said. “Older than your religions. Older than many of the scars on this planet. They clung to a balance that worked, once. Change threatens beings who have lived through too much loss.”
“And yet you changed anyway,” she said quietly. “Dragged them with you. Some of them kicking and screaming.”
He thought of Isshyr’s severed hand, of blue blood on alien metal, of the way the remaining six had bowed—not just out of fear, but because some part of them recognized the inevitability of the shift.
“They failed to see what was in front of them,” Kyrax said. “The necessity of adaptation. I merely refused to die for their stubbornness.”
Morgan’s mouth curved. “You say that like it’s a minor administrative decision.”
“In some ways, it was.” He let his hand settle at the small of her back, thumb moving slowly over the fabric in a lazy arc. Pleasure flickered through the bond at the contact, mirrored between them. “You removed their excuse. You exist, and you thrive.”
She fell quiet, leaning subtly into his touch. The warmth of her seeped into his palm, into his chest, into the spaces that had once held only cold focus.
After a while, she said, “As for me… I think I finally know what I want.”
He turned fully toward her now, giving her his whole attention. “Tell me.”
