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The few single ones mainly were obsessed with their looks, their gym training, their freakin protein diets and eye liner.

She wanted a rugged, down-to-earth man who didn’t need to rehearse his charm or check his reflection every ten minutes.

Someone who spoke less and meant more. Who carried silence like a weapon and his touch like a promise.

A man who’d been through fire, not just a turf war, but an inferno that burned clean and left only grit and truth behind.

She didn’t want perfection. She craved real.

‘I’m telling you,’ she muttered, typing a report on the battle for the general into her commtab. ‘Each time I turn a corner, someone’s trying to flirt like it’s a sport.’

Yani gave a snort-laugh. ‘That’s because it’s all athletics. On theVenantia, where the women are either locked into family alliances by age eighteen or too busy flicking their hair and pushing out their tits to carry a conversation, you’re a standout.’

Savvine shook her head. ‘Most of the malecaposare the same, and I don’t want a preened peacock with tribal abs and nothing upstairs in my bed.’

‘You require a man,’ Yani said, earnest now. ‘One who beholds you in battle mode and still craves your softness. One who understands how to hold your back and your secrets.’

Savvine’s grin faded to something thoughtful. ‘Naam. Someone who doesn’t flinch when I raise my weapon. Who sees the blood on my palms and still reaches for them.’

Dia bumped her shoulder. ‘Maybe the universe discerned your need.’

She raised a brow. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘We all witnessed the footage from your racer cam.’

‘You mean thekinaifrom this morning?’

Dia waggled her brows. ‘Yup, the one who caught a missile with his bare hands and threw it back like a javelin in the Underworld Games? Yeah. That one. We saw the stills.’

Savvine had only released photos of the man, no holos, and not of him in his wolf form, to her team to help them ID him.

However, thinking of him heated her. A scorching need coiled deep in Savvine’s stomach again, uninvited and unwelcome.

Fokk, she’d spent years building walls, soul armor, and cool control.

Yet one man cracked it all in less than thirty seconds.

Her mind reverted to how he crouched on her hood, the glint in his eye, the smirk, the two-finger salute. The way her blood surged, like her body already knew what her intellect didn’t dare to admit.

‘I didn’t even get his name,’ she whispered.

Dia smirked, eyes twinkling. ‘Maybe you will, very soon. The universe has a way of delivering what you need.’

Savvine returned to her report, forcing a smile, but the hum in her skin remained.

Soon huh?

As theAsh Talonlimped home, battered but not beaten, she mulled overhim.

She also thought about their recent skirmishes with the Lombardis, the needless destruction of a frigate gone, friends lost, and fighters who wouldn’t return home.

It wasn’t enough to keep surviving, not like this.

She had to find a way out of this hellish spiral and needed it fast.

First, though, she required proof of the banned weapons and intel on the source of the illegal ordnance that the Lombardis were fielding like they owned the stars.

She leaned back in her seat, eyes on the black stretch of space outside her canopy, contemplating, calculating, and planning.