Page 21

‘You’re welcome,’ Miral replied with a sweet smile. ‘Fashion and function are not mutually exclusive.’

‘Signet protocol requires uniform adherence.’

‘A cabal of clueless former inmates wrote Signet’s outdated and irrelevant archaic conventions,’ she cut in, flashing a smirk, ‘You’re lucky I follow any of it.’

Santi choked on a laugh behind Xander, enjoying their banter too much.

The Signet CO sighed and turned back toward the screen, though his attention was now split. ‘You’ve got Bianchi intel?’

‘Every data fragment they’ve ever sent across subspace since entering the Wildlight Expanse,’ she said, stepping closer. ‘Intercepts. Trade deals. Internal traffic. Each power play made by Eugene, his assistant, his shadow broker mistress, and the ones they think no one knows about.’

The Wildlight Expanse.

A void-churned corridor that stretched past Jupiter all the way to Pegasi may as well have been its own cursed universe.

Untamed, volatile, far-flung, and roamed by wild space creatures, it threw up conundrums daily.

This was why Xander, his crew, and the armada they guarded were focused on cruising through it as fast as possible and getting to Pegasi safe and sound.

The long journey was tedious asfokk, and Signet was the only reason the Syndicate flotilla had yet to implode into itself.

Signet Co.’s brotherhood was born of fury and flames, formed within the bones of an old prison.

All members of the Star Wolves met while imprisoned in a fierce and storied enclave.

The eastern edge of Cape Three Forks, between Morocco and the Mediterranean, was where Xander and his brother’s lycan blood got bound by a mysterious explosion under the correctional facility.

Using their smarts and powers, they clawed out of their iron shackles and chain gangs and reinvented themselves into a feared security and private mercenary group.

From contracts to recovery ops, and high-risk extractions, if it paid, Signet took it to survive, and they were winning because of Miral.

He remembered the day she arrived, stepping off a scout-class drop cutter like a goddess of war wrapped in data and starlight. He’d been furious.

A few months earlier, under attack from the rogue mafia fleets and tired of the endless cartel dominance plays, he dispatched a message as soon as he came within hailing reach of Pegasi.

In it, he asked Kainan Sable, his cousin, formerly an elite Kubai warrior but now a power broker on Eden II, for a strike team, reinforcements, and ammunition.

He’d put forward a price, a hefty fee, he was willing to pay.

Instead, Kainan sent Miral.

For free.

At first, Xander thought it was an insult, a joke.

Then Miral rerouted the failing core energy grid.

She also rebuilt their artillery using nothing but scrap and nano forges.

She outmaneuvered three pirate fleets, fire-walling their navigation against two dozen ransomware viruses in one week.

She didn’t sleep. She didn’t miss. She saved their asses too many times to count.

Yet he never forgot what started Earth’s last artificial intelligence war.

He’d seen its ravages and remained wary of sentient tech.

Still, he chose to trust Kainan, because despite their differences, the Sable Rider was blood and no double-crossingfokker.