The certainty settled into his bones.
The alarm came at dusk.
A pulse through the grid network—sharp, localized, wrong. Node 47 flickered and began to fail.
Sylas was moving before the technicians finished their reports, his stride eating distance through volcanic corridors. Guards scattered from his path. The fury radiating off him was palpable—a physical pressure that made lesser males flinch.
The location registered in his tactical mind: mid-level sector, close to the infirmary wing, dangerously near—
Nearher.
His heartbeat spiked. Through the bond, he felt Elsa’s confusion as alarms wailed through the fortress. Her pulse quickened with fear and the sharp edge of adrenaline. Her instincts screamed at her to run, to hide—but she didn’t know where safety was in a place like this.
“Get Yarx to the infirmary wing.” He barked the order at the Saber beside him. “Move the human females to a secure location. Now.”
He pushed faster. His claws scraped stone with every stride, leaving gouges in floors that had stood for centuries. The beast within him snarled against its chains—not the Moon Tear madness, but something older. More primal.
Mine. Threatened. MINE.
The damaged sector was bathed in emergency lighting—harsh red strobes that painted everything in blood colors. Moon Tear crystals pulsed erratically, their usual steady blue flickering like dying stars.
But the damage itself was surgical.
Not a cascade failure. Not Fallen corruption. Someone hadtargetedthis node specifically, severed its connections with precision that spoke of intimate knowledge and careful planning.
“The human?” Sylas demanded of the guards at the junction.
“Secured, my king. She’s in the Alpha quarters with—”
He was past them before they finished speaking.
The sabotage was clean—almost elegant in its execution. No trace of the perpetrator. No obvious signature. Just proof that someone had access they shouldn’t have, knowledge they couldn’t have obtained legitimately, and the patience to wait for exactly the right moment.
“My king.” Commander Thane’s voice came from behind him. “The node is isolated. No lasting damage to the grid.”
“That’s not the point.” Sylas rose from where he’d been examining the conduit. “This wasn’t an attack on our infrastructure.”
“Then what—”
“This was a test.”
The realization settled into his bones.
The proximity to the infirmary wing. The timing—just as Elsa had begun to build connections outside his control. The surgical precision that proved someone understood exactly where to strike for maximum impact.
They weren’t trying to damage the grid.
They were watching.
Watching how fast he responded. How desperately he moved when something threatened the sector where his human might be. How completely his priorities had shifted since he’d claimed her.
Elsa is leverage, and Sylas is compromised.
“Triple the guard on the Alpha quarters.” Sylas’s voice came out cold. “I want the surveillance footage from every corridor in this sector for the past twelve hours. And I want Ryxin in my chambers within the hour.”
He stood in the damaged corridor, surrounded by the evidence of his enemies’ patience, and felt something crystallize in his chest.
They weren’t just watching her anymore.