Chapter 6 #2
A pair of Marak guards met them without ceremony. They wore masks too, smooth and expressionless, with armour that looked grown rather than forged. Their eyes, visible through narrow apertures, held no curiosity. Only assessment.
No words were exchanged. A gesture. A turn. They were led.
Makrath took inventory with each step. Exit points. Pressure doors. Lines of sight. The station did not feel like a place that could be taken by force, not easily. It was designed to absorb violence and remain intact.
A sensible precaution when one hosted apex predators.
They entered a large chamber.
It was not a throne room. It was not meant to impress with ornament.
The space was tall and spare, its surfaces a pale stone that caught light and returned it with a muted sheen.
A single raised platform sat at one end, not elevated enough to be theatrical, merely enough to create a clear focal point.
Karian stood there, masked, still.
Power radiated from him in a way Makrath recognised immediately—not loud, not performative, but absolute. The kind of presence that did not need to move to threaten. The air around him felt fractionally denser, as if the station itself were aware of his authority and adjusted accordingly.
Makrath’s skin prickled beneath the armour. His instincts flared.
Not fear.
Competition.
The sudden, sharp urge to test the boundary. To drive his claws into that calm and see what bled out.
His tail tightened behind him. He forced it still. He forced his armour not to rise.
Yearning, he told himself. Not strategy. Not reason. A symptom.
Zhoren stepped forward first. He lowered his head in a formal gesture of respect, the High Arbiter robes shifting like water around his legs.
“Karian,” Zhoren said. His voice carried the weight of Drenn without apology. “High Arbiter Zhoren of Khar. Sael caste.”
Karian’s mask did not move. “I know who you are.”
Zhoren did not bristle. He had not survived his role by taking offence where none was offered. He gestured, minimal and precise, toward Makrath.
“This is Makrath of the Kha’Ruun,” Zhoren said. “Apex enforcer of Drenn. Designated blade of Khar. Veteran of the western river campaigns. Instrumental in the suppression of the Rethan incursion at the rim stations.”
He paused just long enough for the words to land.
“And,” Zhoren added, “he acted to protect Majarin trade assets during the Ythran convoy disruptions two cycles ago.”
That last detail was not a compliment. It was leverage. A reminder of debt, spoken politely.
Karian inclined his head a fraction. “Noted.”
Then his attention shifted, direct and unfiltered, onto Makrath.
“So this is he,” Karian said.
The words were simple. The tone was not.
“The untethered one.”
Mild irritation flickered through Makrath. The label was administrative, and it was accurate, and he hated that both could be true at once.
He did not speak. He did not bow. He let his silence stand as his only concession to diplomacy.
Karian regarded him for a long moment, as if measuring more than muscle and armour.
Makrath measured back.
Predator to predator, yes—but not equals. Not because Makrath lacked strength. Because Karian’s danger was layered behind control. Because the Marak was not fighting his own nature in the same visible way.
Makrath’s fingers flexed once. The armour over his knuckles tightened in response. He locked it down again.
Karian’s voice did not change when he spoke next.
“So you wish to have a human.”
Makrath’s gaze sharpened. He almost laughed, the sound trapped behind his mask.
“I doubt one could Hunt me,” he said.
It was not arrogance. It was fact. Humans were soft.
Built for fragile environments. Their bones were small.
Their skin tore easily. On the trading station he had seen them move through corridors like prey animals unaware of how loud their bodies were.
They were beautiful in a way that made no sense—hair in shades from pale to near-black, skin ranging from milk-pale to deep earth-dark, eyes glistening with water and light.
They looked too delicate to survive the first impact of Ythra’s jungle.
Alluring, yes.
Capable of the Hunt?
Surely not.
Karian’s head tilted, a small motion that conveyed something close to amusement. “I know of your mating custom,” he said. “And I know humans.”
Makrath’s tail twitched despite his control.
“I know what they are capable of,” Karian continued. “One who can Hunt will be found.”
Something stirred in Makrath’s chest, unwanted and undeniable. Not tenderness. Not hope.
Anticipation.
It felt like standing on the edge of a fight he had been denied for too long.
He hated the feeling. He wanted more of it.
Zhoren remained still, but Makrath could sense his attention sharpen. The Sael measured everything, including the way Makrath’s body reacted.
Karian’s voice remained calm. “If one is found, she will be at least partially willing.”
The words were meant to reassure, perhaps. To make the arrangement palatable to whichever part of Makrath still understood law.
Instead, it made the anticipation spike harder.
Willing. Not compliant. Not surrendered. Willing enough to enter the ritual.
The Hunt required resistance. It was not a performance. It was a crucible.
Why did that concept excite him more than it should?
Makrath forced himself to speak with care. “If you can find one that is capable of the Hunt,” he said, “I will agree.”
He did not say what the agreement would cost him. He did not say what it would do to the last shreds of control he still held. He did not say how close the violence sat beneath his skin.
He did not need to. Zhoren knew. Karian likely knew too.
Karian held his gaze. Behind the smooth mask there was nothing to read, no mouth to curl in triumph, no eyes to soften. And yet the Marak’s certainty filled the chamber like gravity.
“Then you will have a human,” Karian said.
Makrath’s irritation flared again, hot and immediate. The confidence was almost insulting, as if procurement were a simple transaction and not a destabilising act with consequences across species and law.
Karian continued, unbothered. “I will begin the process.”
A pause—fractional, but deliberate.
“There are humans involved,” Karian added. “Those already bound. Those with understanding of both systems.”
Makrath’s attention sharpened further. He did not like unknown variables, and “humans involved” was a variable he could not map.
Zhoren spoke into the silence, voice smooth and formal. “We will return to Ythra,” he said. “And await your instructions.”
Karian inclined his head again, a signal that the audience was concluded. There would be no negotiation. No back and forth. No appeals.
The decision had been made before Makrath entered the chamber. Makrath had simply been brought to hear it.
They were escorted out the way they had come.
As the corridor curved and the lighting shifted, Makrath felt the tether inside him tug in a new direction. Not toward violence as release, but toward something else—an unknown pressure, a hunger sharpened by the promise of a ritual he had been denied.
His tail moved, restrained but restless.
He imagined a human in the jungle canopy of Ythra, running with desperate intelligence. He imagined the scent of fear and determination. He imagined his own armour rising, his body responding, the Hunt pulling him into motion the way combat used to.
It would stabilise him, they claimed.
It would save the city from what he might become.
It would save him from himself.
Or it would tear the last remaining restraint from his bones and leave only the predator.
Makrath swallowed against the dryness at the back of his throat. The armour along his chest tightened, as if it sensed his tension and wanted to brace.
He did not look at Zhoren as they boarded their diplomatic craft again. He did not offer comment, not approval, not rejection. Silence was safer. Silence was control.
But inside him, the yearning pressed harder than it had on the way in, sharpened now by certainty and humiliation and the knowledge that his future had been moved into the hands of a foreign powerbroker.
He had agreed.
He had given a stranger permission to procure a solution to his unravelling.
Makrath settled into the rear compartment again as the hatch sealed. He closed his eyes, not to sleep, but to contain the images that kept forming uninvited—soft human skin against jungle shadow, a voice he had never heard calling out in fear or anger, the snap of his own restraint.
The craft pulled away from the station, engine note rising.
The crew remained quiet.
No one spoke of what had been decided.
Makrath listened to the silence and discovered it no longer felt empty.
It felt like the moment before a Hunt began.