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Now, her vitals climbed steadily, color returning to her skin. That steadiness gave him the only calm he could afford.

She was healing, and he let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

Seconds later, his neural link flared.

I might need you now, boss,Miral’s voice filtered through his head.I’ve destabilized Eugene’s upper firewall. He’s off-balance. I suggest you exploit that before he recovers.

Xander’s inhale hitched.

His eyes snapped to the forward screen, and he jolted, his blood turning to ice.

Miral was spiraling, one leg limp, her armor shredded and sparking.

Eugene’s malformed synth-frame loomed over her, his crat-integrated appendages extended, claws flickering with corrupt energy.

The bastard was reaching for her like a spider to its prey.

‘Eyes on her, Kaal,’ Xander growled to his fellow pack member in the room.

With that, he moved, racing toward the nearest airlock, which he keyed open.

The hatch flared open, the vacuum howling outside, but he was already airborne, launching from theÚltima Xlike a missile of wrath.

The moment he breached the void, his body adapted.

He needed no air. His blood ran thick with aether-laced nanites, rendering his muscles impervious to pressure, heat, and cold.

Light shivered off his skin, his coat trailing like a war banner as he crossed the space between them.

‘Nada, you don’t,’ he growled, and slammed into Eugene as the crat droid reached for Miral.

Xander’s momentum carried them both away from her.

Miral tumbled free, drifting. He caught a glimpse of her damaged meta-shield flickering, her head lolling, but her body remained intact.

Xander and Eugene collided like two meteors.

The crat synth released a metallic snarl, drawing back an arm and lashing a blow meant to cleave Xander in half.

Xander deflected, grabbing hold of it mid-swing.

The impact detonated shockwaves through Eugene’s frame.

Xander’s grip crushed the appendage. Lights across Eugene’s corrupted limbs flared in overload.

‘Your tech’s impressive,’ Xander growled, eyes flaming with violet and gold embers. ‘But I am born for war.’

He began to glow, slow at first. An aureate tempest shimmered from his chest to his fingertips and legs, then pulsing outward like a storm forming.

Light exploded from within him, shattering the space around him in refracted halos of gold and violet.

His physique lengthened and expanded.

Bones realigned, muscle thickening under a coat of ethereal fur.

Amethyst fire burned along his spine, and bands of radiant amber coiled like living armor across his limbs.

The transformation culminated with a soundless, snarling roar, his face elongating into a majestic wolf’s maw, fangs like obsidian blades, breath steaming despite the void. His eyes flared, twin galaxies of molten amethyst rage.