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‘How thefokkis this my life?’ she muttered.

8

Running With The Wolves

XANDER

The training hut had no walls, just a synth-steel-bone roof draped in netted shadows, open to the scent of pine and flowers from the glade beyond.

It crouched on the edge of the man-made lake on Deck 27, where birdsong and rustling leaves muffled theÚltima Sombra’ssteady, ever-present engine hum.

The simulated breeze brushed against damp skin.

It wasn’t a place built to protect from the elements; it was a temple to behold them.

The only biospheres in space were the ones you chose to resurrect, and the Signet Company had done so, constructing a sacred, safe zone onboard.

The entire level, the size of a small town, had been transformed into a nature reserve, a quiet miracle nestled inside the ribs of a super dreadnought that chewed through stars and spat out ash.

Towering trees swayed in the breeze generated by internal fans.

A plasma-mirrored ceiling refracted layered sky patterns, clouds moved in rhythm, and blue gradients changed with ship-cycle time to mimic the 24-hour clock.

Atmospheric diffusers recycled heat and moisture into an approximation of summer, a season almost forgotten on the dying Earth they left behind.

It was one of Signet’s most beautiful lies, designed to the utmost precision.

It mimicked the remarkable parklands on the terra firma, long wiped out by nuclear war.

It was a lie Xander allowed because it gave his people somewhere to breathe.

However, the lake was real.

Cold, deep, it was fed by purified vapor streams.

Black pebbled paths wound through moss beds and bio-regenerated greenery.

Engineered amphibians clicked in the underbrush.

Glass-eyed birds chirped like they remembered the sky.

Dotting the shoreline were the cabins, luxurious yet also sturdy and straightforward.

The most influential individuals on board owned a nature-fenced cluster of those units.

Xander’s three-bedroom cabin sat under a thicket of trees with a line of sight on the lagoon and the southern rise.

Hishermanoseach owned one, scattered along the beach.

They weren’t just homes but safe spaces for his pack. The Signetstrong guard. His fellow star wolves, the men he went toe to toe with day after freakin’ day.

To keep their physical fitness up to scratch at least two days a week, they trained together,mano a mano.

The session’s rules mandated no shifting or transforming, a pure test of their natural strength.

Under the hut’s roof, Xander stepped onto the centre of the open sand ringed by a halo of scorched carbon, shirtless and breathing hard.

Sweat glistened on his chest. His right knuckle bled, and a bruise bloomed beneath his left eye.