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He rarely shared matters of the heart with ease and preferred to keep most thoughts private.

However, beneath his manufactured calm,herimage seared into him.

Her spark, the surge that passed between them like a solar flare and scraped through bone, still scorched him, his blood heating every time he thought of her.

‘Fokk, you’ve got it bad,’ Santi drawled, head tilted and shaking in disbelief.

Xander jolted, then raised his middle finger to his XO with a glare.

Unfazed, Santi chuckled under his breath and walked away.

Xander turned to the viewport, arms crossed over his massive chest.

Fighting the pull, the overwhelming urge to mate, claim, and fuse his soul with hers.

He didn’t believe in fate.

Butfokk, he trusted in consequence. Inwhateverthefokkkarmic, cosmic arithmetic carved reason out of chaos and bled meaning into the wreckage of a life like his.

Eyes canting back to the battle outside, following the grace of the pilot’s dancing and weaving between light and void, he pursed his lips as his soul pulsed.

An indomitable aspect of his spectral lycan essence was awakening, one he couldn’t control or ignore, and sooner or later, he’d need to give in to its instinctual pull.

5

Wolves Without Fangs

SAVVINE

The stars fell away as Savvine banked theAsh Talonhard to port, the inertial dampeners struggling to keep up with her sudden vector shift.

Outside in the black, a trio of Lombardi defenders peeled from shadow, their hulls sleek and jagged like blade-fish.

Savvine’s larger Corvette-class fighter followed close behind and on the hunt. It bristled with linked auto cannons, defense cannons, keel-mounted rail guns, and jammer fins.

‘Contact. Three fighters. Intercept vector initiated,’ Dia, on comms, confirmed from her console, already rerouting power to shield modulation.

‘About time they showed up,’ Yani, Savvine’s choice head gunner, muttered, locking in targets and spooling up the rail guns. ‘Permission to light ‘em up, Cap?’

‘Freakin’ scorch ‘em,’ Savvine ordered, her voice as calm as steel.

The void erupted in a flurry of tracer rounds and ion fire.

TheAsh Talonsurged ahead, rolling between scout fire as Savvine weaved them through engine eruptions and flak.

Her hands moved with a dancer’s precision on the dual-stick helm, fingers flying as she re-balanced power between forward shields and aft thrusters.

‘Cut power to dorsal shielding,’ she murmured. ‘Bleed it into port-side ion cannons. They’re trying to flank!’

‘Got it!’ Calyx, second gunner called, rerouting.

One of the Lombardi fighters slashed across their nose, peppering them with plasma bursts.

Savvine swung theAsh Taloninto a spiral, then flipped the bird into a half-roll and burned upward, right into the belly of the attacking fighter.

‘Yani, now.’

The rail guns thundered.