The forest groaned around them—no longer a wilderness, but a crucible.
Roots pulsed with glowing veins of mutagen. The sky was no longer entirely sky—it bent and flickered, touched by Mathew’s presence. Insects sang in tones beyond human hearing. Birds flew in spirals, entranced by the clutch’s psychic field.
Mathew stood at the center of it all, his power unmatched, his body ever-expanding—a god in the flesh.
And just outside his radiant pulse, his first convert watched.
Burning.
Jealousy coiled in his chest like fire beneath his ribs.
He had been first. The first to kneel, the first to change, the first to taste the ecstasy of mutation. And yet now—he was eclipsed. Outgrown. Even the others, who came later, looked to Mathew as the center of the clutch, not to him.
It wasn’t hatred. It was something worse.
Craving.
He wanted to be seen again. Touched again. Not just included—chosen.
And more than anything, he wanted to match the god who had made him.
So he stepped forward.
His voice crackled with lust and defiance. “Mathew. I gave myself to you first. I changed first. And yet I’ve been left behind.”
Mathew turned to him—massive, serene, radiant.
The air stilled.
“I see you,” Mathew said, voice soft but unignorable. “And I feel you.”
The convert stepped closer, muscles flexing with stored potential. “Then make me more. Make me yours again. I want to carry your mark beyond what they have. I want to burn for you.”
Mathew studied him for a long moment.
Then smiled.
“You want to be punished?” he asked. “Or rewarded?”
The convert trembled. “Yes.”
Mathew reached forward and placed a hand against the convert’s chest. There was no ceremony—no slow seduction. Only release.
A bolt of mutagen tore through the convert like lightning.
He screamed—not in pain, but in rapture.
Bones cracked. Muscles exploded outward. Feathers spread in a massive, golden fan behind him as his back arched in orgasmic violence. His cock surged longer, thicker, now permanently erect, veins glowing like magma.
And the changes didn’t stop.
Mathew grabbed him by the jaw, leaned in, and kissed him—not tenderly, but dominantly. The mutagen flooded through their joined mouths, a psychic payload carried on taste and breath.
The convert’s mind broke open—then rebuilt around a new structure.
Loyalty.
Submission.
Power.
He collapsed to his knees, gasping, wings twitching, legs spread, body radiating dominance—Mathew’s dominance. But he was not diminished. He was honed.
A weapon. A second.
A chosen heir.
Mathew’s voice filled the clearing and their minds:
You were first. You are mine. And now, you are more.
The others watched in awe as the convert rose again—taller now, almost matching Mathew in height, his frame broader, crowned in bone and gold. His aura sparked with tendrils of psychic flame. He was no longer just a member of the clutch.
He was its Warden.
He fell to one knee and pressed his forehead to Mathew’s thigh. “Command me.”
And Mathew, smiling, lifted his hand high and declared, “Then rise, and help me bring this world to its knees.”