The transmission wasn't a message. It was an invasion.
It punched through every firewall and lit the war table in a cold, surgical flare. A woman stood in the heart of the projection, uniform knife-sharp, posture carved from contempt. Maitre Elara, High Protocol Master of the Vahn Dynasty, looked around the tactical room as if she already owned it.
"General Aethel." Her voice cut the air like monofilament wire. "By direct order of Lord Zyrus Vahn, the Enigma, I am here to terminate your military command and initiate the terms of your contracted union."
Kairen felt his Primarch stability spike hot, metallic, furious then wrestled it back down behind years of iron discipline. Around the table his officers froze, waiting for the explosion that never came.
"This is absurd," he said, voice low enough to scrape bone. "I'm holding an active sector together. You don't get to override a live command."
Elara didn't blink. "The constitution has been superseded. Lord Vahn controls your supply lines. Fuel, payroll, Primarch-grade munitions—everything runs on Vahn credit. Refuse, and the Northern Sector starves within one solar cycle."
She might as well have pressed a blade to the throats of every soldier under his command.
Kairen's fingers curled against the edge of the table. He tasted copper.
Elara produced a black polymer dossier. The wards etched across its surface crawled like living things. She opened it with deliberate care.
"The Matrimonial and Genetic Contingency Contract," she said. "You will sign. Then you will report to the Obsidian University Assimilation Course."
He took the file. The clauses glowed in the air, clinical and merciless.
Conception within eighteen months.
All offspring designated exclusive property of the Enigma.
Primarch parent retains biological recognition only.
He wasn't being married.
He was being requisitioned.
Elara turned the page. The first clause enlarged.
Designated Spouse — Lord Zyrus Vahn (Enigma, age 29).
Unregistered. Unbonded. Volatile.
Beside the text, a security still resolved: pale skin, black hair, eyes the color of burnt gold staring straight into the lens like he already hated whoever dared look back.
Kairen's breath caught hard enough to hurt.
He knew that face.
Three years ago, on a ridge choked with smoke and bodies, that same man had put three rounds through Kairen's shoulder and smiled while the blood soaked the dirt.
Zyrus Vahn wasn't just the last Enigma.
He was the enemy who had once tried to kill him.
Kairen signed anyway. Refusal meant thousands of his people dead. The stylus felt like swallowing glass.
Elara stepped forward and slid a plain metal band over his ring finger. The sigil of the Vahn serpent glinted once, then the ring tightened—subtle, living, possessive—reading his pulse, his temperature, the chemical storm under his skin.
"Vahn Sigil Tracking Device," she said. "Location, biometrics, Primarch stability. You will wear it for the duration of the Course."
She never called it a wedding ring.
Behind her, Captain Rhen started a salute, faltered, and simply walked out. The rest followed in silence, boots echoing like retreating gunfire.
When the door sealed, the quiet pressed down like deep water.
Kairen stared at the band—at the mark of the man who had shot him, who now legally owned him—and felt something inside his chest go very still.
He opened an encrypted line that hadn't existed on any official registry for six years.
"Colonel Vex," he said when Lyra answered. "Effective immediately, you have the Northern Sector."
Her shock crackled across the void. "Sir what the hell happened?"
"My mission parameters changed." His voice was stripped of warmth, filed down to a blade. "I'm being transferred to Obsidian University. Officially, I'm a compliant participant in the Assimilation Course."
A beat. "And unofficially?"
"Unofficially, I'm going to tear the Vahn Dynasty apart from the inside. Find me everything—funding trails, Primarch Project black ledgers, anything that can kill this contract."
He killed the channel before she could say she was sorry.
Kairen turned the ring once, watching the serpent catch the light.
They thought they'd buried him in humiliation and civilian clothing.
They were wrong.
He had a new name ready.
Kai Stryker.
Forgettable. Harmless. Invisible.
And for the first time in his life, Kairen Aethel was walking straight into enemy territory with no army at his back.
He wasn't unarmed.
He never had been.