Page 24 of Claimed By the Vykan
The armor itself was terrifying in its beauty: organic and brutal at once, a seamless skin of metallic scales. Broad plates shielded his chest in layered sweeps of gold, edged in darker metal that hinted at claws or teeth. His arms were monstrous, gauntlets segmented into heavy pieces with talon-like fingers.
Compared to the Majarin, all godlike, ethereal poise and ceremony, this creature looked forged in a world that had never learned gentleness. Everything about him had been designed to dominate, to intimidate, to conquer.
And then her gaze reached his helm.
The breath she dragged in caught halfway.
It was shaped like a predator’s skull—angular planes, ridged temples, the crown sweeping back in a sleek, aerodynamic arc. There was no mouth opening, no visible vents, only sculpted lines that suggested strength held firmly in check. The faceplate gave nothing away.
But the eyes did.
Two narrow, glowing slits burned through the mask, red as embers and precisely focused. The light inside them pulsed with a slow, steady heat, as though something dangerous watched from behind layers of ancient metal. When those eyes settled fully on her, the weight of that attention poured through her—heavy, consuming, impossible to shrug off.
He was the most frightening thing she had ever seen.
Her mind clawed for labels, for categories that would make him smaller, understandable, containable. There were none. The armor, the posture, the monstrous grace of him—all of it spoke of a species shaped by pressures Earth could never have produced.
Fear rolled through her in a sharp wave.
And with it, a realization as clear as a blade’s edge.
There would be no escape from this.
Something shifted inside her.
Heat climbed up her neck. A fine shiver moved across her chest and down her arms. Her knees loosened, not with the urge to collapse, but with something stranger—a pull tightening low in her abdomen, sharp and unwelcome.
No, not now!
Her body didn’t care.
His sheer presence—his size, the predatory stillness, the force that radiated from him like heat from a forge—hit her with a potency she’d never encountered before. Fear tangled with something far more treacherous, gliding down her spine in a slow, electric slide that left her off-balance.
It made no sense.
He was a monster. A conqueror. A being who could probably crush stone with his hands. Every rational part of her should have been edging away, terrified. Instead, her body betrayed herwith a trembling that carried not only fear, but a warmer, darker note drawn to the force he wore as easily as he wore that armor.
Her hand rose to her sternum as if she could press her heart back into place.
He simply watched her.
The steadiness of that gaze sent another wave of heat curling low, an unwelcome flicker of awareness that left her feeling exposed despite the layers of alien silk around her.
She tried to step back. Her muscles ignored her. She tried to steady her breathing. It stayed caught. She tried to smother the instinct inside her that responded to him at all, and found it already fully awake.
Terror rooted her where she stood, cold and sharp. Fascination threaded through it with equal strength. The contrast took her breath. Her mind begged her to look away; her gaze stayed fixed on him, held by a pull that felt almost gravitational. Every instinct screamed retreat, but something buried deeper—something stubborn and unyielding—refused.
Raeska’s warning surfaced.
Do not meet his eyes.
The memory hit like ice.
Too late.
Her heart kicked hard as awareness crashed through her. She had been staring straight into those burning slits, inviting a reaction she did not understand and was nowhere near ready to handle.
Heat swept up her throat, part fear, part humiliation. She tore her gaze down, wrenching it away from those glowing eyes. Her chin dipped. Her shoulders tightened.
