Ryken had just celebrated his twenty-fourth birthday when the first major dissonance appeared. The planetary song, once a seamless symphony, began fracturing at the edges of the expanding frontier. New nexuses on the polar ice shelves and deep volcanic rifts were growing too quickly, their Code strains clashing with the core harmony. The old Beast hunger stirred in unstable pockets raw, demanding, threatening to pull minds toward domination rather than dance.
As the eldest of Elara and Kael’s children, Ryken carried the densest concentration of ancestral essence. Tall and powerfully built like his great-great-grandfather, his body was a living map of glowing fractals that pulsed across his broad chest, chiseled abdomen, and the thick length of his c**k when arousal rose. He felt the disso
