They entered through the side corridor, Kyrax short-circuiting the alarm with a single brush of his gauntlet. He seemed unimpressed by the security system—“fragile,” he murmured, the way someone might describe a child’s sandcastle.
Morgan made her way to the main hallway, passing portraits she’d always despised: her father, stern and polished; her siblings, stiff and perfect beside him. She wondered how she’d ever believed she belonged here.
Then footsteps.
Soft, unsteady.
Her father appeared at the end of the hall, dressed in an immaculate nightshirt, grey hair tousled, eyes half-lidded with sleep.
“Morgan?” he muttered, blinking slowly. “What on earth…?”
His gaze shifted—and froze.
Kyrax stepped from the shadows, towering, masked, armor shifting with quiet menace. The glow of his red eyes sliced through the dim hallway.
Richard Halden went rigid.
His face turned a shade paler Morgan had never seen before. He stared at Kyrax with dawning horror, confusion, andsomething else: fear. Real fear. The kind he had never shown another human being.
“What is this?” he rasped. “Morgan, what have you brought into this house? Are you in danger? Has this creature…”
“No.” Morgan straightened, lifting her chin. “I’m here because I chose to be.”
He shook his head sharply, as though the words didn’t compute. “You’ve been missing for months—everyone thought you’d been abducted! And now you appear with this…thing?—”
Kyrax’s eyes narrowed.
Richard stumbled backward, reaching into the drawer of the console table near the wall. Morgan’s stomach dropped the moment she recognized the movement.
“Don’t,” she warned.
He didn’t listen.
He pulled out a gun.
“Morgan, step aside,” he ordered. “This creature is dangerous?—”
“Dad, listen to me?—”
He fired.
The shot cracked through the hall, impossibly loud.
Kyrax moved faster than her eyes could track. His hand rose—not in defense, but in effortless, unhurried certainty—and he caught the bullet. Snatched it cleanly from the air between two fingers. The metal gleamed in the low light as he turned it over, examining it like a curiosity.
Richard Halden swayed, disbelief hollowing his expression. “No… that’s not possible.”
Kyrax’s voice dropped, a low, lethal growl vibrating the walls.
“You will not touch her.”
Richard flinched.
“You will never threaten her again,” Kyrax said as he stepped forward, pressure rolling from him like a stormfront. His eyesburned through the mask, pinning her father in place. “She will take whatever she wants from this place. You will not stop her. You will not follow. You will not even breathe in her direction without my permission. And if you ever raise a weapon toward her again,” Kyrax finished softly, “I will peel open your mind layer by layer, until there is nothing left inside it but silence.”
“He doesn’t exaggerate,” Morgan said softly. “Ever.”
Richard swayed, terror lodging so deeply that it rooted him to the floor. “Morgan,” he whispered, voice cracking. “What… what have you become?”
