Page 50 of Thexan

So now he had a name.

Kaer’vas tilted his head slightly, the movement too controlled to be curiosity. “You fled with classified knowledge, compromised operational structure, and allowed yourself to be tracked into civilian territory. I came because you made correction necessary.”

“Correction,” I repeated before I could stop myself.

His gaze returned to me, and the lack of emotion in it was worse than hatred would have been.

“Removal,” he clarified.

Thexan’s arm shifted almost imperceptibly. “Do not address her.”

That should have frightened me more than it did. It did frighten me, but underneath it was something else, something steady and hot that moved through me because I understood exactly what he had just done. He hadn’t hidden me. He hadn’t denied what I was to him.

He had drawn the boundary in front of an enemy who would kill me for crossing it.

Kaer’vas saw it too.

“The human has initiated the bond,” he said.

“Completed,” Thexan corrected.

For the first time, something changed in the hunter’s expression. It wasn’t surprise. It was a calculation becoming a certainty.

“Then you are no longer recoverable.”

“No.”

“And she is no longer irrelevant.”

Thexan’s energy blade formed so quickly I barely saw the motion that triggered it.

“She was never irrelevant.”

The words moved through me with more force than I expected. Not dramatic. Not soft. Just fact, delivered in that controlled Mesaarkan way that somehow made it heavier.

Kaer’vas looked from him to me and back again. “You have allowed biological distortion to override command structure.”

“I am no longer under your command.”

“You were never released.”

“I released myself.”

The quiet between them tightened.

I understood then that this was not only about hunting a deserter. This was about what Thexan had become the moment he stopped obeying and what he had taken. What others might become if the example survived.

Kaer’vas lifted his hand.

The weapon was invisible until it activated.

A narrow pulse discharged toward the ridge—not at Thexan, but at the stone shelf below us.

Thexan moved before I understood the target. His arm came around me, pulling me down and sideways as the rock shattered beneath the impact. The ridge buckled under my feet, loose stone sliding out from under us in a grinding rush.

For one terrifying second, there was no ground.

Then Thexan’s body absorbed the fall.