Chapter 13
Zyxel
Wrong.
Everything about this body was wrong.
Zyxel shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and the grassy training yard tilted beneath him.
His center of gravity had vanished along with his coils—that anchor of muscled serpentine mass that had kept him balanced through decades of survival.
Now he had two legs. Two impossibly thin supports holding up a frame that felt stretched, exposed, defenseless.
The late afternoon sun pressed against his back, and even that simple sensation registered differently in this skin.
Heat didn’t pool along the length of him like it should.
Didn’t warm his core in the familiar way his Ezzaska form absorbed energy.
Instead, it landed sharp and localized—shoulders, spine, the back of his neck and the exposed planes of muscle that had replaced the armor of his scales.
He flexed his fingers. Watched the talons—smaller now, but still present, not the dull nails that pure humans have—curl into his palm.
At least those remained familiar. At least the muscles in his wrists still pulsed with readiness, that lethal inheritance unchanged by the transformation.
They would help him to be precise during hard surgeries, making it easier to care for Selena and their clan.
But his tail was gone.
The absence echoed through his nervous system like a phantom limb, his body constantly searching for something that no longer existed. He’d only ever worn this demi-human form when hiding became necessary. When the fear in others’ eyes grew too heavy to bear. When blending in meant survival.
Only bad memories lived in this skin.
He remembered the early days on the asteroid base, before the Verya found them.
Remembered slithering through human settlements in his Ezzaska form—the serpent shape that felt like home—and watching faces twist with revulsion.
Something about anacondas mated with humans.
Something about the fear of being eaten whole.
The demi-humans had been only slightly less afraid. But fear was fear, and Zyxel had learned early that being useful mattered more than being accepted. So he’d become a healer. A collector of genetic material. A scholar who stayed in the background and hoped the universe would forget he existed.
The universe hadn’t forgotten.
It had sent him Selena instead.
The tropical forest surrounding the villa’s private grounds rustled in the ocean breeze, and beyond the cliff’s edge, lavender waves crashed against rock in a rhythm that should have been soothing.
The scent of salt and green growing things filled his lungs—familiar from his time on Liskta, familiar from mornings wrapped around his enax in their shared tent before everything came crashing down.
Selena.
Through their bond—that crimson thread still so new it thrummed with constant awareness—Zyxel felt her presence in the villa below. Safe. Grounded. Wrapped in layers of sound and calm.
She was in the central lobby—the sanctuary—listening to Odelm’s music while the cubs clustered nearby playing and her ambassadors sat nearby.
Xylo was there too, his attention focused on her body, scanning her with careful precision even though Euouae had already confirmed it: Selena and the child were fine.
She only needed rest. Shade. Distance from the sun.
The princes were elsewhere, in council with Zirene, trading strategy and updates as the war shifted by the hour.
And Selena—his Selena—was exactly where she needed to be, holding the heart of the clan steady while Zyxel learned how to exist on two legs without falling apart.
She hadn’t seen this form yet.
He’d transformed in Kaede’s war room—just for the assassin to evaluate, to critique, to declare him passable with the kind of dismissive efficiency that made Zyxel want to hiss.
But Selena hadn’t been there. Hadn’t seen her newest mate stripped of the serpentine form she’d accepted. Hadn’t witnessed him standing upright like a pale imitation of the demi-humans she already knew.
He wondered if she would be disappointed. She was used to Kaede’s demi-human silhouette—the Ezzaska hybrid who had claimed her first, who moved through the world like violence given form. But Kaede had grown into his skin. Had spent years honing this body into a lethal instrument.
Zyxel felt like a newborn learning to walk.
He would do this for her.
Kaede’s logic wasn’t flawed. If Zyxel was supposed to protect Selena on the CEG Space Station, he needed to blend in.
His Ezzaska form—the naga silhouette that had become his identity—would draw attention, for there were no others within this galaxy.
Questions. Fear. And on neutral territory crawling with representatives from species who had fled Verya conquest, the last thing their Beacon needed was a bodyguard who looked like something different.
So he would learn to fight in this unfamiliar skin. He would learn to move, to strike, to defend without the weapons his body was born with—he was used to.
A weapon she can wield.
That was what he’d promised Kaede. That was what he intended to become.
Across the grassy field, Kaede waited.
Kaede stood with perfect stillness, a pair of practice stun daggers resting loose in his hands—not humming, not flashing, just waiting.
Their matte surfaces caught the golden light without reflecting it, deliberately unremarkable.
His visor was up, slitted neon-green eyes locked on Zyxel with cold precision.
Measuring. Assessing. Cataloging every imbalance, every hesitation Zyxel hadn’t yet learned to conceal.
To the side, Ryzen stood with arms crossed, his spirit daggers orbiting in lazy patterns around his shoulders.
Eight blades of emerald-edged light traced slow arcs through the air, their movement almost meditative.
The Verya’s long golden hair caught the breeze, emerald streaks glinting like the runes mapped across his golden pale skin.
Ryzen’s grief hung heavy in the air around him—that constant ache of the severed twin bond that colored everything he did.
Zyxel had known the brothers before. Had patched their wounds after countless battles, listened to their banter, watched the way they moved in perfect synchronization like two halves of one whole.
Similar to V’dim and Z’fir, and how close Xylo and Odelm were trying to become.
Now Xenak was a prisoner of the Verya, and Ryzen was here. Training. Fighting. Channeling his devastation into purpose because the alternative was drowning in it.
Neither looked impressed with Zyxel’s current state.
Zyxel tasted the air—an instinct that survived the transformation—and caught the mineral tang of approaching combat.
The strong, sweet and salty scent of spiked adrenaline sweat.
His venom glands responded automatically, pulsing warmth through his fangs as his body prepared itself to defend what was his.
Only they weren’t his enemies. And yet, his new instincts didn’t know this.
“Ready?” Kaede’s voice carried no inflection. No mockery. Just a question that allowed only one answer.
Before Zyxel could respond, Kaede flicked his wrist and sent one of the stun daggers spinning through the air. Zyxel’s reflexes kicked in on instinct—his hand snapped up and closed around the hilt a heartbeat before it could hit the floor.
He adjusted his grip, settling into the closest approximation of a fighting stance his unfamiliar legs would allow. “Ready.”
Kaede moved.
No warning. No signal. One heartbeat he was standing still, and the next his stun dagger was singing toward Zyxel’s throat—a blur that his eyes barely tracked before impact.
Zyxel’s arms came up too slow. His weight shifted wrong. His legs tangled against each other like they belonged to someone else.
Grass slammed into his back as the sky wheeled overhead. The air rushed out of his lungs in a grunt that sounded nothing like the warning hiss his true form would have produced. His spine hit the ground hard enough to rattle his teeth.
Kaede stood over him, psydagger hovering at his throat, not even breathing hard. “Your weight is wrong.”
Not mockery. Correction.
Zyxel processed the observation as he would any clinical data, cataloging the failure for analysis.
His center of gravity had been too high.
His knees hadn’t bent far enough. He’d tried to move like a serpent instead of a biped—coiling where he should have stepped, swaying where he should have pivoted.
Decades of muscle memory working against him.
“Again.” He pushed himself upright, ignoring the ache already blooming across his shoulders. Grass clung to his obsidian-dark skin, and he brushed it away with a gesture that felt clumsy without the precision of his tail.
Kaede’s eyes narrowed. Something like approval flickered there—gone before it could take root.
This time, Zyxel bent his knees. Lowered his center. Tried to imagine roots growing from his feet into the earth the way his coils would have anchored him.
Kaede struck again.
Zyxel managed to deflect the first blow—barely.
The impact rang up his forearm, jarring enough to rattle his teeth as the stun dagger’s hilt struck flesh no longer reinforced by true scales.
The living suit absorbed the worst of the damage, dispersing the force in a dull thrum across his arm—but it couldn’t soften the impact itself.
Demi-human skin was fragile in a way his true form had never been.
Where scales once drank in force and spread it wide, this body took the hit directly.
Smaller, smoother plates surfaced beneath the suit’s adaptive layer—more akin to Kaede’s hybrid armor than the ridged protection of his Rkekh form—but even they weren’t enough to keep the shock from biting deep.
Pain flared. Sharp. Immediate.
Kaede hadn’t pulled the strike.
Good.
The assassin flowed around his guard like water, and a second strike caught him behind the knee.
Down again.