The Almighty Dominance (by Sunshine) novel Chapter 715

A hundred shelters. Fencing that wouldn't hurt anything that leaned on it. A vet station solid enough that even Petrie would have to believe it. And a two-story house — he still hadn't found the sentence that walked that back.

Alex studied the map of the Regent branch land. Forest. Governor land, technically unclaimed. His, if he did this right.

He waited until the shop went dark. Monica and Yolanda had gone home.

He shut the door. Closed his hand around the ring on his finger — plain, forgettable, the kind of thing nobody looked at twice — and reached into the space folded behind it.

The drone came first. Palm-sized, matte black, curled shut like a fist that hadn't opened in years. Then the housing unit, wardrobe-sized, hit the floorboards with a thud too heavy for something that had just come out of nowhere. Last, a strip of something thin and skin-soft, weightless, which he pressed to the back of his neck. It settled in like it had never left.

Core reconnected. Systems synchronizing.

The voice arrived behind his thoughts. No sound at all.

"Gaia."

I am here. It has been a considerable interval, my king.

"Don't call me that here."

Acknowledged, sir. Any request?

"Take the drone out. Map the forest behind the building. Show me everything before I decide."

"Yes, sir." The drone shot off his palm and out the gap in the window, gone before the curtain finished moving.

A three-dimensional map bloomed on the glass in front of him — rivers, tree lines, elevation, all of it turning slow.

Alex set down twenty crawlers, each one small enough to sit in his palm. "Read every book I've got in here. Pull everything on beasts. Shelters. What they need to survive."

"Yes, sir." Gaia walked the crawlers to the shelves, and they climbed, opening pages one at a time, scanning as they went.

He'd bought most of those books without knowing which ones would matter. Now all of it would matter — every page feeding straight into the mind that would build this thing for him.

An hour later, the crawlers went still.

Your command?

"Full sanctuary. This whole lot, everything past the tree line." He watched Gaia lay the shape of it out the way he used to feed her a battlefield — the river along the east edge, the stand of old growth that had probably stood here before Willowmere had a name. "Shelter first. A hundred units. Fencing that holds without hurting anything that leans on it. A clinic that actually works. And nothing gets touched that's already growing — not the river, not those trees. Not for a support beam. Not for a foundation line."

Scanning. Terrain preservation parameters received. One hundred and four structural sites identified. Zero root or waterway disruption. Compiling.

The buildings rose in the air in front of him, floor by floor, made of light.

All of it can hold any beast eventually, sire. But long-term, we'll need separate builds — flyers, water beasts, land beasts. For now, land first. A few water and sky units, kept ready. One each. Emergency only.

"One more thing." The words cost him something to say, and he said them anyway. "A residence. Two floors. Timber."

Added to the build order.

"How many drones does that take?"

Three hundred units, if you want it finished in a day — assuming the raw material's already staged. Or I can pull it from the forest itself.

"No." He said it fast, before the thought could finish landing. "I'll buy it. Just give me the list. We start when the material's here."

Yes, sir.

Monica's face when she saw the list the next morning was worth remembering.

"What are we building that needs this much material?" She scanned the pages twice, like the numbers might shrink the second time. "How many days do you think this takes to gather?"

Alex set a five-kilogram gold bar on the counter.

Monica went quiet. She opened her bag, dropped the bar in without a word, and walked straight to Yolanda.

"Niece. I have somewhere to be." Her voice didn't shake. "Even if it will kill me, I'm getting every last piece of this material today."

Then she was gone.

By afternoon, trucks lined the road behind the Regent building, unloading straight onto the lot. By nightfall, the material had piled into a mountain taller than the building itself.

“You told me you’re rich. Why stop at five years? Make it a hundred. I’ll take care of every permission—just pay the city deposit and it’s yours.”

Alex looked at the young woman in front of him. Something about her felt off. She genuinely wanted the house for a hundred years.

Still… money wasn’t the problem. “Deal.”

She wrote something unrelated on her clipboard.

“I have a daughter,” she said. “My husband’s been gone a long time.”

Alex didn’t know what to make of that. Petrie couldn’t be more than twenty-five. People in this place married fast, mated fast—almost the same way the beasts they built shelters for did.

“And?”

"Nothing." She caught herself, shook her head. "Me and my daughter — we'd use this as a holiday house. Maybe more than that."

Two days later, Alex walked back from the café toward the clinic, coffee still warm in his hand.

Then he saw it.

Every window shattered. Glass across the ground like frost. Grim, the hound, lay in the doorway, bleeding into the floorboards. Monica was on her knees beside him, crying too hard to talk straight.

"Monica. What happened."

"The wolf gang." Her hands wouldn't stop shaking. "They said the forest behind this place was theirs. Said you stole it. So they tore through everything." A breath, ragged. "Yolanda got hit. She's in the hospital right now."

Something in Alex's chest went cold and very still. "Where are they."

“They said—” Monica’s voice cracked, almost breaking. “If you’re not gone from this place by noon, they’re coming back to kill you… and burn everything here to the ground. Please, you have to run away. They’re the worst gang in this place. They don’t leave survivors.”

"Good. Me too."

Alex knelt and gathered Grim into his arms, careful of the wound, already moving toward the light.

"Let them come."