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CHAPTER THIRTY

T he Xenobeast moved through the jungle like a shadow, every sense heightened, every muscle primed. The captive trooper had revealed nothing useful under questioning, but it didn’t matter. He knew who was coming.

Dravak.

The name alone ignited a cold fury in his chest. Commander Vask Dravak—the architect of his exile, the man who had labeled him defective for refusing to slaughter innocents. The man who had stripped away his name and identity, leaving only the beast.

His tendrils twitched, sensing a change in the air currents. Something was moving through his territory—something that didn’t belong. He melted deeper into the foliage, becoming one with the shadows as he tracked the intruder.

The scent hit him first. Antiseptic. Synthetic fabric. The unmistakable tang of Zarkari tech. Memories flooded back—sterile labs, white-walled training facilities, the burn of neural implants being activated.

Then he saw him.

Dravak moved through the jungle like he owned it, flanked by two remaining elite guards.

The commander looked exactly as he remembered—tall and lean, with angular features and cold, calculating eyes.

His uniform was pristine despite the hostile environment, not a speck of dirt marring its sleek lines.

His silver hair was cropped short in military precision, and his posture was ramrod straight.

The Xenobeast’s lip curled. Even here, surrounded by death and danger, Dravak maintained his facade of perfect control.

He circled silently, tracking their movements. They were heading directly toward the cave—toward Xara and the pups. His tendrils flared with protective rage, but he forced himself to remain hidden. Patience. Strategy. These were weapons too.

The guards moved with practiced efficiency, scanning the perimeter with high-tech sensors. But they were looking for heat signatures, motion patterns—not for a predator who had spent years learning to become one with this deadly world.

Dravak paused, holding up a hand to halt his escort. “He’s close,” he said, his voice as cold and precise as the Xenobeast remembered. “I can feel it.”

The commander turned in a slow circle, his gaze sweeping the jungle. For a moment, his eyes seemed to lock directly on the Xenobeast’s hiding place.

“Project K-7,” Dravak called out, his voice carrying through the trees. “I know you’re watching. Show yourself.”

The Xenobeast remained perfectly still. He would not dance to Dravak’s commands. Not anymore.

“Very well,” Dravak continued after a moment. “Perhaps you need motivation.” He nodded to one of the guards, who produced a small device from his belt. “We’ve located your cave. Your... pets. One signal from me, and my team converges on that position.”

Ice flooded the Xenobeast’s veins. Xara. The pups.

“That’s right,” Dravak smiled thinly. “You’ve become predictable, Seven. Forming attachments. It’s disappointing, really. You were designed for greater things.”

The Xenobeast weighed his options. Dravak was lying—the cave was too well hidden, protected by Tal’shai illusions and his own careful concealment. But he couldn’t take the risk. Not with Xara.

He dropped silently from the trees, landing in a crouch twenty feet from Dravak and his guards. The guards immediately raised their weapons, but Dravak waved them down with a casual flick of his wrist.

“There you are.” Dravak’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Still impressive, I see. The years haven’t dulled your edge.”

The Xenobeast straightened to his full height, towering over the Zarkari commander. He said nothing, but his silver eyes blazed with cold fury.

“Silent as ever,” Dravak noted. “Some things don’t change.” He clasped his hands behind his back, adopting the stance of a superior addressing a subordinate. “You’ve caused quite a problem for us, Seven. We thought you dead—hoped you were, actually. It would have been cleaner.”

The Xenobeast remained motionless, assessing. The guards were nervous—he could smell their fear, hear the elevated rate of their hearts. But Dravak was calm. Too calm.

“Then a research vessel goes missing,” Dravak continued. “A valuable cargo disappears. And the tracking beacon leads us here—to a quarantined death world. To you.” He tilted his head. “Quite the coincidence.”

The Xenobeast’s tendrils twitched. Research vessel? Cargo? Xara.

“She wasn’t meant for you,” Dravak said softly, reading his reaction. “The female. She’s a resource, nothing more. Valuable genetic material. We’ve been studying her species for some time now.”

The beast within him snarled, straining against its leash.

“You’ve been playing house,” Dravak continued, his tone mocking. “Playing at being something you’re not. You were engineered for war, Seven. Not domesticity.”

“My name,” the Xenobeast growled, his voice rusty from disuse, “is not Seven.”

Surprise flickered across Dravak’s face—quickly masked. “It speaks. How novel.” He took a step closer. “You don’t have a name. You have a designation. A purpose. One you failed to fulfill.”

“I chose differently.”

“You malfunctioned,” Dravak corrected sharply. “And now you’ve taken something that doesn’t belong to you.”

The Xenobeast’s claws extended, his tendrils flaring with bioluminescence. “She is not yours.”

“No?” Dravak raised an eyebrow. “She’s a specimen, Seven. A test subject. Valuable, certainly, but ultimately replaceable. We’ll do better controlling her genetic potential than letting a failed weapon breed with her.”

Something snapped inside him. The careful control, the strategic patience—all of it vanished in a red haze of fury. With a roar that shook the trees, the Xenobeast lunged.

The guards fired, but he was already moving—a blur of lethal speed.

He caught the first guard across the throat, ripping through armor and flesh in one savage swipe.

The second managed to get off another shot before the Xenobeast seized him by the neck and slammed him into a tree with enough force to snap his spine.

Dravak had retreated, drawing his own weapon—a neural disruptor designed specifically to incapacitate Zarkari bioweapons. The blast hit the Xenobeast square in the chest, sending lightning pain through his nervous system.

He staggered, dropped to one knee. The pain was familiar—training exercises, punishment protocols. His body remembered, even as his mind rejected it.

“Still responding to basic commands, I see,” Dravak noted clinically, adjusting the settings on his weapon. “Some programming runs too deep to override.”

The Xenobeast fought through the pain, forcing himself back to his feet. His tendrils whipped forward, knocking the weapon from Dravak’s hand.

Surprise registered on the commander’s face, followed by a flicker of fear. “Impossible. The neural override?—”

“Doesn’t work anymore.” The Xenobeast advanced, his silver eyes glowing with cold rage. “I am not your weapon.”

Dravak backed away, reaching for a secondary weapon at his belt. “You are exactly what we made you to be. Nothing more.”

“You’re wrong.” The Xenobeast lunged again, faster than Dravak could track.

The commander fired wildly, the shots going wide as the Xenobeast seized him by the throat and lifted him off the ground. Dravak kicked, struggling against the iron grip, his face contorting with effort.

“You can’t kill me,” he gasped. “The Dominion will send others. They’ll find her. Take her. Study her.”

The Xenobeast tightened his grip. “No one will find us.”

“She doesn’t belong here,” Dravak wheezed, his face purpling. “With you. You’re an aberration. A mistake.”

“The only mistake,” the Xenobeast growled, “was thinking you could control me.”

With a powerful heave, he threw Dravak across the clearing. The commander crashed through the underbrush, tumbling down the steep slope toward the river canyon below. He caught himself on an outcropping, dangling precariously over the churning waters.

The Xenobeast stalked to the edge, looking down at his former commander. Dravak’s pristine uniform was torn and muddy now, his perfect composure shattered. For the first time, real fear showed in his eyes.

“Seven,” he gasped, his fingers slipping on the wet rock. “Help me. That’s an order.”

The Xenobeast crouched at the edge of the cliff, his silver eyes cold and unforgiving. “My name,” he said quietly, “is Ash.”

The name felt right on his tongue—a fragment of memory, of identity, reclaimed from the darkness of his past. Something Xara had awakened in him, piece by piece.

Dravak’s eyes widened in recognition. “Ash? That designation was erased. You were reset.”

“Not erased,” Ash corrected. “Just buried. Like me.” He watched dispassionately as Dravak’s fingers slipped further. “You exiled me to die. Left me here to rot.”

“I can fix this,” Dravak’s voice took on a desperate edge. “Return with me. Bring the female. You’ll be reinstated. Rewarded.”

Ash tilted his head, studying the commander like a curious specimen. “You still don’t understand. I’m not coming back.” He rose to his full height, looking down at the man who had once controlled his existence. “And neither are you.”

With deliberate precision, he stepped on Dravak’s fingers. The commander screamed, his grip failing. For a moment, he hung suspended in the air, his eyes locked with Ash’s in a final look of disbelief.

Then he fell, his scream echoing off the canyon walls until it was swallowed by the roar of the river below.

Ash watched until the churning waters closed over Dravak’s body, carrying it away like so much debris. The commander who had defined his existence for so long, who had stripped him of identity and purpose, was gone—broken, discarded, and finally irrelevant.

He stood at the cliff edge for a long moment, the jungle sounds gradually returning around him. The weight of his past seemed to fall away with Dravak, carried downstream and out of his life.

He had a new name now. A new purpose. A mate who saw him as more than a weapon. Pups who trusted him. A home to protect.

He turned away from the canyon and headed back through the jungle toward the cave. Toward Xara. His steps were lighter, his posture different—no longer the prowl of a predator, but the stride of someone returning home.

As he neared the cave, he caught Xara’s scent on the breeze. Warm, familiar, beloved. She was waiting for him, worry and relief mingling in her scent signature. The pups would be there too, chirping their excitement at his return.

For the first time since his creation, he felt something like peace settle in his chest. Dravak was gone. The threat was eliminated. And the future—once a meaningless concept for a weapon with no purpose beyond destruction—stretched before him, full of possibility.

He quickened his pace, eager to return to the ones who had given him back his name, his choice, his life.

He was no longer the Xenobeast.

He was Ash.

And he was going home.