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Slapped the airlock panel to open it, she stepped through it muttering, ‘Cocky, smug, abyss-eyed son of a gun.’

She launched back into the vacuum, her magnetic boots giving the final push as she rocketed toward her pinnace.

Her entire being buzzed as she returned to her cockpit and fired the ignition.

The engines blazed with a white-blue bloom.

She didn’t hesitate, taking off at full speed.

She arced over his Corvette, sweeping its gleaming hull in a deliberate pass, wings tilted, thrusters roaring like a declaration of war.

‘Next time,’ she growled, gripping the controls tight, ‘I’ll bring the bite and fangs.’

XANDER

His heated eyes followed the fleeing craft as it tore from the debris field.

Boots back on the footstool, hand cradling his wine glass, eyes far off, letting the wild shuddering he’d suppressed so far, reverberate through him.

His entire being was mired in her essence.

His spirit had locked onto her aura and soul since he first saw her behind the pilot’s chair.

Now, her scent inundated him, its amber, vanilla, crushed violet, and her female musk undoing him.

The spectral lycan spirit in him roiled, and his knotting urge thrummed through him in waves of amethyst flame.

He shook, holding tight onto the armrests of his chair as need coiled through his bloodstream like wildfire.

His entire body was laced with scorched yearning as it struck the primal core of his wolf with a hunger that nearly unseated him.

He stiffened, jaw locking as his spectral form snarled beneath the surface.

It took a few more minutes before he slumped, chest heaving into the chair.

Giving him time to gather his thoughts, away from his savage lycan soul.

What surprised him the most about her was that she wasn’t scared by his spectral form; she appeared fascinated.

Fokk, she was incredible.

He smirked, intrigued, provoked, more alive than he had been in years.

She was the most interesting woman he had ever met, no doubt.

He’d always been clued in about the fact his dating history was a shit show.

Not because he was cruel or careless, but because he hadn’t met one woman who lit him up with enough power to awaken his lycan heart. Until now.

Worse was the blatant prejudice he and his fellow lycans faced from the humans.

They were the forbidden, the unnatural, the untouchables,

As a result, he’d avoided humans so far, shutting his heart down into an impenetrable, cold, surface-level, and safe citadel.

Still, women came and went, attracted to the edge, the silence, the shadowed reputation of the Signet strongman.

They mistook his mystery for magnetism, his brooding for sensuality.