5. The Watcher in the Jungle
THE WATCHER IN THE JUNGLE
RYTHAR - XYTHEOS
I crouch behind a curtain of jungle roots. The crash beacon's pulse paints my forearms in red stripes. I flex my hands, watching the flash hit the light scarring that covers my knuckles. The roots are still slick from last night’s rain and from the sweat soaking my skin.
The humans are just meters away, clustered close, resting.
I retreat from the light, not wanting to alert any of the women to my presence.
They huddle together, wrapping each other in thin thermal blankets.
One of them—a pale, shivering thing with slicked hair and wet shoes—keeps checking the sky, hoping for rescue, not knowing that any New Terran vessel would be obliterated on sight. Unless it carried females.
Do they know our Concord Council scanned them while they were still in space?
I shift my weight silently, toes digging into the loam.
The other males and I established a safety perimeter around the women.
I should stay wary, eyes on the tree line, mind on the predators.
I miss a movement in the perimeter. I shouldn’t miss anything in my biome, but something else keeps catching my attention tonight.
It’s her. The one they call Elena.
I find her again instantly. Elena’s voice threads through the clearing like a signal meant for me alone. My hearing is sharper than a human's, but even without it I’d feel her frequency. She has the will to survive, cut down to its edge, hungry and bright.
She's tucked at the edge of the group, trying not to be named the leader. Her hair is dark, loose, and heavy with the jungle's moisture. Her face is cut, but that does nothing to diminish the pull. When she speaks, the others listen.
I count the distance—thirty-three paces, if I wanted to close it without frightening her too badly. Less if I forgot discipline and just moved, the way we did things before we became civilized.
I exhale, slow enough that even the watching males won’t hear it. I count again. My body wants to go to her, every instinct pushing me toward Elena, but I lock myself down. It’s not time yet.
On the eve of the Claiming, a single slip could start a war between biomes. Males would kill for less.
The Council keeps the law of Xytheos. Lords enforce it, each inside his own borders. Outside my borders, they negotiate. Inside the Green Reach, no one rules but me.
And still I stand here, hosting rivals in my own jungle, because the Stone summoned us, and no biome lord refuses the Stone.
The Stone holds the flow between biomes.
The rain. The air my jungle breathes. It feeds all twenty biomes from the substrate that runs beneath Xytheos, and they say it can starve any one of us it chooses.
The Concord Council calls that peace. I call it a hand at every throat.
The hand is slipping. I feel it in my Reach.
My own power extending and growing. I feel it outside my Reach—the High Lord’s spying, storms crossing borders they never crossed, small clashes on borders.
Is the Stone’s answer this Claiming? Every unmated lord, summoned?
Is it finally time for us to take wives?
My gaze is on Elena as a breeze curls through the clearing, carrying Elena’s signature.
Some people drown their natural scent in chemicals, but underneath, every cell tells the truth.
Hers is warmth and iron, a sting that settles low in my chest. Woven through it, fear.
And beneath that, sharper, the unmistakable taste of stubbornness.
I know that taste. It’s the same one that rises in me before a fight. Someone who would rather bleed standing than live on their knees. I like it too much. More than I should.
I analyze her as a resource in my mind—female, one of twenty. A statistic. It should work. It has always worked before to calm an obsessive thought.
It does not work this time.
I close my eyes and breathe shallowly, as if I can starve the impulse.
But my body knows what it wants. My ancestors were bred to take.
I am engineered to take only what is mine.
If the Concord Stone gives her to me, my body will obey.
I will claim. I will mate. I will bury my face in her scent, drink it in.
I will fill her with my seed and hope our offspring survive Xytheos.
I have long had special places prepared for my future mate.
I roll the thought across my mind, testing for cracks.
Human females are fragile. I’ve seen what happens when a match goes wrong, and that was only with warriors.
I am Warlord of the Green Reach because I know how to balance force, not indulge it.
Still, there are many threats here. If the Stone pairs me to this one, danger will come for her before the next dawn.
My jaw clenches, muscles bunching in my neck as I fight the urge to crush something.
My vision narrows, and the world sharpens, the smells and sounds of the jungle intensifying as my senses lock on Elena's survival.
She isn't even mine yet. Maybe not ever. That should steady me. Instead, my pulse spikes like I’ve been wounded.
The others will want her—for mating, for advantage, for spite.
Centuries of Xytheos law have built a world where strength must be restrained behind ritual and pretense.
It is not always successful. I have watched Vorak break matches just to provoke war.
Watched the High Lord arrange ceremonies like a butcher selecting cuts.
A biome ruler has not been called to a Claiming in hundreds of years. We are engineered to rule. To mate only with one worthy of us. The Stone does not choose for love or desire. It chooses to keep the peace, to distribute resources, and to prevent wars that would consume entire biomes.
My hand curls into a fist. I study the ridges and old marks across my knuckles, a tactile reminder of what these hands can do, of what they must not do here.
I let myself look at her again, just for the information I need.
She’s not tall, not armored, but her pain is tucked away neatly.
She moves with a smooth, tight economy. Her commands—“Stay close to the hull. Keep the wounded near the heat. No one wanders,”—land with the authority of someone who expects to be obeyed.
The urge hits me again—not only physical.
A flush creeps up my neck, prickling my skin with gooseflesh.
I want to know what she does when cornered.
What she sounds like when her defenses crack.
What she'd feel like if she ever stopped fighting me.
What she'd look like if I could bring her the pleasures a male can give.
To take her to my mating chamber, where she'll cry out for me.
I jerk back from the thought. Not now. In mere hours, the women will stand before the Concord Stone. Until then, the males hold vigil. No touching. Violation of this law will bring only blood, war, and chaos.
I adjust my stance as I eye the other rulers who stand guard with me.
Kadrian’s gold shimmer marks the Desert King.
A flicker of blue to the right—Wyller, impatient as lightning.
Others. I permitted them all into my biome, and they dared enter here, where they know I cannot be defeated.
But I would have done the same—risked everything to go into their biomes if I were called to the Claiming ceremony.
I check my implanted translator, still dead. Sabotage, I suspect. I can follow their words well enough. It's mine they won't understand. Someone doesn't want me speaking to the Starfallen women. Or someone wants to see what happens when the Stone matches a pair with no shared language.
I don’t like either option. It would have been done by a rival with access to remote interference technology.
The males shift around the clearing, wanting to view certain females even though they shouldn’t. Not yet. We are all, for the first time in centuries, eager for something.
A shuffle of leaves announces Liron’s arrival.
The noise is intentional. He moves like a shadow, with quick grace and a crooked smile.
He knows better than to sneak up on me. His lean form barely disturbs the undergrowth.
He twirls a metal ring, flipping it over and over across the tips of his fingers.
“She’s got fire in her,” Liron murmurs, nodding toward Elena. “The Stone will notice. Probably pair her with an absolute beast.” His voice is a soft jibe, pitched only for me.
“The Stone notices everything,” I mutter. It notices need too—the kind I shouldn’t be feeling. I don’t care that Liron has caught me staring at Elena. So long as I don’t catch any of them staring at her.
Before Liron can answer, Akran ghosts in, armor muted to a matte black that swallows the light.
Wings half-furled, he stands an extra head taller than the rest of us, and his presence pushes the air inwards, like the moment before a lightning strike.
His wings and size are a disadvantage here in my jungle.
“The Stone always knows,” Akran says, voice cold as mountain river water. "But it doesn't tell us what it knows. These Starfallen carry secrets."
Liron grins. “I like discovering secrets.”
My jaw tightens. I look past Liron, past Akran, and catalog the rest. Lucan Browne prowls the edge in slow sweeps, lines on his arms glowing softly.
Every few steps he pauses to sniff the air, mapping the women by scent more than sight.
Not that the rest of us can't smell them too.
Their scent is delicious torture. The males around me go still.
Our bodies react first, but we swallow the responses down, brutal and silent.
Adrenaline hits us as the females move. Heartbeats jump, breath sharpens, muscles coil. A few jaws flex, a subtle tic of effort as each male reins himself in. None of us will give in to the urges. Discipline is part of what made us rulers of our own biomes.