Be mine, Hunter.

The voice echoed inside his head, speaking an old, forgotten dialect of Vradhu.

The voice was endless, as if thousands of souls were speaking in perfect unison.

The voice belonged to Ares, too. He was part of the whole, a tiny fragment swept up in the slipstream.

Wait… What? He was surely going mad. The Hythra hadn’t spoken to him like this since he’d first boarded her, back when he hadn’t recognized the monster for what she was.

Perhaps he was hallucinating.

You were made for this. Why fight it? They tried to poison you, you know. Invisible gas, lethal to your kind. They are patient creatures, our Naaga. They synthesized it in the sci-labs right under your very nose and waited until you were too distracted to notice. The arrival of these humans was the perfect diversion. Don’t you want to take your revenge?

Oh, he would love to take revenge. He would kill every last one of them.

But he would not allow the Hythra to possess him.

Get out! He raged against the bond, trying to force the ilverium—that filthy, cursed magrel—out of his body once and for all. It engulfed him completely, trapping him in a swirling hell.

No! This was not supposed to be his fate. He was a thrice-blooded warrior. He was the lone hunter, the kratok-slayer, a fucking khefe of the Ardu-Sai.

He didn’t belong on this obsolete Drakhin monstrosity. He was a son of Khira, and he longed to feel her soft, rain-drenched soils beneath his bare feet.

He was a simple warrior, nothing more.

Join me. We will be unstoppable. I can give you power beyond your wildest dreams. We have been inside you long enough that you have almost completed the Change. All you have to do is tap into her vir. She is ripe for the taking.

Ares hardened his heart. How could he surrender to something that wanted to consume him?

Enough! It was time to break free or die trying.

Release me! His mindspeech crescendoed into a defiant roar. He would never yield. Did the Hythra truly understand what he was? Ha! He lived to destroy monsters.

He became dimly aware of what was happening around him in the real world. The Human fought. For one who had never held a kratok-tooth weapon, she wielded the krivera well enough, dancing around the Naaga as they tried to overwhelm her with sheer numbers.

With devastating efficiency, she incapacitated the bastard who held that cursed device to his forehead. The Naaga dropped to his knees in front of Ares as blood spilled from his severed arm, pooling around them. Tendrils of vivid green swirled amongst silver ilverium, forming a grotesque pattern of abstract lines and blotches.

The Naaga drew the Human away, pushing her to the other side of the room.

Leading her back toward the sci-labs.

Some dim, primitive part of his brain registered her appearance. The way she moved, graceful and yet purposeful. The way she glared at her enemies, her blue eyes crystal clear, her gaze as straight as an arrow.

The way she looked back at him from time-to-time.

That look. He’d never been on the receiving end of a look like that. Total commitment. Warmth blossomed in his chest like an unfurling flower. Nobody protected Ares but himself. Nobody.

Why? He’d done nothing to gain her trust or earn her loyalty.

Green Naaga blood splattered across his face as she danced across the room, absorbed in combat. For a moment he lost her, but then his second eyelids—which seemed to be the only part of him that could still fucking move—flicked, clearing his vision. When he caught sight of her again, an aura surrounded her. Skeins of golden energy flowed around her like tiny currents.

What is that? He blinked, wondering if he were hallucinating. Ares had never seen anything more beautiful in his life.

Such glorious energy! He desperately wanted to reach out and touch her.

Join us, Hunter. The Hythra’s seething, unending presence gnawed at the back of his mind, threatening to suck him into her vortex. The moment he surrendered to her, he would be finished.

One of the Naaga snuck up behind the human with a strange triangle-shaped device in his hand. Ares tried to shout a warning, but his vocal cords were locked. The white-eyed devil held the machine against her neck, catching her by surprise.

Bastards!

His throat unlocked, and Ares roared as she went down. She’d protected him, but he could do nothing as the Naaga hurt her. This infuriating helplessness was his definition of hell.

He couldn’t see her anymore. Frantically, furiously, he fought against his bond. Release me!

He didn’t need the Hythra and her cursed living metal to take down these Naaga. He would do it himself, with nothing but the body the Divine Mother had given him. He would tear them apart with his bare hands.

Is that your final decision, Hunter?

What do you think? His malevolent hatred of the Hythra and her bond burned white-hot as he built a protective wall around his soul. The Naaga thought they could paralyze him sickly-sweet poison-air. They thought they could weaken him long enough for the sentient ship to take control?

They did not understand a thing. In a battle of wills, Ares would always come out on top.

But he didn’t really think the Hythra would ever let him go. It didn’t matter. He would never yield.

You detest me that much? Have it your way, then. Her hollow, metallic laughter echoed through his mind. You are perfect for me. I yield to you, Hunter.

Was she being sarcastic? Ares didn’t have a chance to dwell on it, because his mind exploded.

His consciousness expanded a thousand-fold as the Hythra’s fading laughter rang through his mind.

Ares reeled as the enormity of the her dark presence invaded his soul. No longer did they engage in a brutal tug-of-war—all her resistance was gone. She opened up and embraced him, laying herself bare.

His for the taking.

He gasped.

The level of control and insight he’d possessed when seated on the sekkhoi throne was nothing compared to this… this awareness. For a brief moment, the Hythra became Ares and Ares became the Hythra.

He knew everything. He saw everything.

Madness!

Thousands of Naaga were escaping from the upper decks. As he’d fallen to his knees, the ilverium barriers he’d so painstakingly created had deactivated.

His clan-brothers stood guard in the hold, watching Calexa’s people.

And here, right before his very eyes, the sci-people surrounded the human, stealing the life from her. She stubbornly clung to life, to awareness, swaying on her feet as they took her vir.

Vir. That’s what it was called. The Hythra told him so. It left her body as a stream of golden energy.

Beautiful.

Something inside him was changing. All of a sudden, he could see this vir, and he hungered for it.

He extended his will, trying to resurrect the barriers on the upper decks, but his mind was in chaos, and without the command chair, he couldn’t focus. The ship was just too huge.

His expanded awareness disappeared, leaving him face-to-face with the human.

Calexa’s lips were blue. Her teeth chattered. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and stroke her reassuringly with his tail until the warmth returned to her body. She didn’t deserve this. Not for his sake.

His anger flared. The floor shook. The triangular energy-harvesting device fell from the Naaga’s hand and slid across the floor. The Hythra tipped sideways, a deep metallic groan reverberating through the chamber.

As the energy-filled device skidded to a halt at his knees, a flash of blinding golden light flooded the room, and pure bliss shot through him. The invisible force holding him down burned away like a tinder-stack, and suddenly he was free.

He could move.

Like a parched man falling upon a cold mountain stream, he drew on every remaining ounce of golden energy contained within that horrid device.

Her energy.

Aethra help me!

The ilverium went nuts. Power and metal surged through his veins, invading muscle and bone and skin.

His body was changing. Into what exactly, he wasn’t so sure. Pain became pleasure as the living metal invaded every fiber of his being. Disgust swirled in the pit of his stomach, mingling with exultation. Now he was completely magrel, an abomination of the highest order. His clan-brothers would never accept him again.

The Hythra retreated from his mind, leaving him to grapple with this new, unexplained reality.

He cursed the Drakhin and their long-dead civilization. If only those cursed monsters had left something in the way of fucking… instructions.

The ilverium no longer restrained him. Instead, it slid across his body in a warm caress, entirely subservient to his will.

Control. He accepted it gratefully, with a mixture of self-loathing and relief.

The human whimpered, her voice soft and racked with pain.

The sound tore at every fiber of his being. His protector was being tortured, and he was just standing here like some fucking unblooded novice warrior.

Ares lost it. He released the power contained within his cursed body—her power.

The walls shook. The ground beneath his feet became soft and malleable. The body of the ship warped and twisted in response to his anger. As his rage flared, the entire Hythra listed sideways.

The shocked cries of thousands reverberated through his expanding consciousness. Somewhere below, his clan-brothers scrambled to regain their footing as the floor tilted underneath them.

Terror pervaded every floor, every corridor, and every cavity of the ship. Ares absorbed it all with a savage kind of glee. It was both horrifying and strangely seductive.

If he’d been a monster before, now he was beyond monstrous, especially by Vradhu standards.

What in Aethra’s curses had this demonic thing done to him?

No time to worry. The human needed him. He silenced the tempest within and reached out to her with his mind, wrapping his ilverium limbs around her. As the floor tipped sideways, toppling the Naaga, Calexa remained upright, cradled by the living metal—his living metal.

She was so cold. He felt the slow rhythm of her heartbeat. Now and then, there was a pause; a missed beat. Frantic urgency coursed through him. Her pulse was too slow! He’d become intimately acquainted with the signs of coldfrost poisoning during his treks through the Esskar in the deep of winter, and now he saw the same things in this human.

She was on the verge of slipping into a deep coldspell.

Ares strode toward her, the air around him crackling with static. Although he moved down a steep incline, the floor shifted to accommodate him, anticipating his footsteps.

The ship prostrated herself before him.

One of the Naaga had managed to claw his way up the precipitous floor, his long, slender arm outstretched. The creature reached for the human as if she were a glittering prize.

Calexa’s appearance sent a bolt of alarm through him. Her glacial blue eyes were half-lidded and devoid of their usual clarity.

She was slipping away.

“Don’t touch her,” Ares snarled. He uncoiled his tail, reaching for the human. At least that part of him still felt normal. The rest of his body was still… changing. His skin tingled all over, and something heavy dug into his shoulder blades. His face burned, and his teeth…

They fucking hurt.

Bones snapped and elongated and re-formed. Muscle and sinew stretched and grew. Pain ripped through his body. It was excruciating, even for one such as he, who had known pain worse than death.

Still, he moved.

He had to reach her at all costs.

Finally.

He grabbed the human in a proper mating hold—he didn’t care; he would never use the hold for its true purpose anyway, especially now—and drew her toward him.

His tail wrapped around her curves and he caressed her gently, reverently, ignoring the Naaga as the damned creatures sank into the melting floor.

What he felt between the coils of his tail terrified him. She was a living glacier. How she managed to stay upright, he didn’t know. She was hanging onto consciousness by a thread, through sheer willpower alone.

Admiration unfurled in his chest, and his black heart swelled with pride. His protector was tough.

But she was slipping.

Heat. He needed heat.

Ares did the only thing he could. He drew on the unholy power contained within him. He drew on the world around them and pulled it toward him.

The floor beneath their feet turned to liquid. They started to sink, moving through the layers of the ship. Ares wrapped his arms around his human and pressed his warm lips against her frigid cheek. “I’ve got you, my makivari,” he whispered in Vradhu, but his voice was drowned out by the roar of the ilverium sea.