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Fury hit, not at him but at what he represented.

‘Your company is destabilizing the entire armada. We believe you’re supplying the Lombardi faction families with black-market ordnance.

You’re propping up thugs and calling it balance.

But it’s blood money. You’re not peacekeepers, you’re warlords in nicer boots.

We might not all get along, but to get to Pegasi all in one piece, we must coexist, but you’re making the Syndicate flotilla a living nightmare. ’

Still no reaction.

Who did the kinai think he was?

She charged on. ‘Tell your CEO, Alexandr, whatever-the-fokk-his-name-is , I know what Signet’s doing. I’m not turning a blind eye. I’ll bring it to the Commission. Or the holo-nets. I’ll scream it through the vacuum to Pegasi if I have to.’

He shot her a maddening smile.

‘I’ll be sure to pass that on,’ he said, tone laced with that infuriating blend of irony and brooding insolence.

His voice was unhurried, a gravel-rich drawl with a timbre curling around the edges of every word like smoke from a fire not quite under control.

She jolted, stepping back when he rose, and strolled to a drinks cabinet against one wall.

His movements were sleek and economical. He poured a small glass of wine and turned, raising it to her.

‘ Blanco ? Perhaps even some cicchetti , an age-old Venetian breakfast tradition I’ve come to adore?’

She narrowed her eyes on the delectable platter of tapas behind him, then shot him a glare penetrating enough to cut through the hull. ‘I’d rather gargle xentium engine extract.’

He arched a brow. ‘You’re onto a great idea, mama . I know kinais who’d pay top schills to try a vintage of that shit, if you offered it, given how fetching you are.’

She bit her lip. ‘ Fokk off.’

‘Woah. She barks.’

He chuckled, a rumble in his chest, and prowled back toward her, passing so close, she was suffused with his scent.

He trailed leather and a sensual musk steeped in bergamot, grapefruit, lime, and artemisia.

Enticing.

Her body betrayed her. Every nerve lit. The hairs on her arms stood up.

She hated it. She also wanted to moan it, part aroused, part horrified; she was reacting this way to a mostro , though she kept the latter thought to herself.

‘Oh, I bite. Hard,’ she muttered, backing away.

His lips curl. ‘Do you now?’

His eyes gleamed with an unholy light.

She caught on to the meaning he took from her words and sighed. ‘I need to get out of here.’

He raised the drink to his lips and sipped, silent and brooding.

Then, with an amused glance laced with a sardonic twist, he drawled, ‘So find your way out.’

She raised her chin, defiant. ‘Fine. I’m leaving.’

He tilted his head and jerked his chin, saying nothing.

Nada , not even a farewell grunt.

She turned on her heel and strode out into the hallway.

Gone were the pulsing lights. So too, the guide path.

The ship was quiet.

Ominously so.

‘Son of a -.’

She veered left and hit a dead end.

She swerved right into another curved pathway that looped into a gallery. The place was a labyrinth.

‘ Fokk me,’ she muttered, retracing her steps. ‘And fokk you.’

She made several more twists and turns before she gave in.

She cupped her hands around her mouth. ‘Which airlock gets me off this floating cage?’

The speaker above her crackled.

An amused chuckle filled the corridor. ‘You sure you don’t want a drink first? A bit of food to stave off the hangriness?’

‘I’d rather eat stars and die.’

The hallway lights flared once, then pulsed as his chuckle serenaded her furious escape.

She followed the indicators, swearing every few steps.

By the time she reached the outer portal, she was seething.

She tapped her suit lapel, and her helmet slid over her head.

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.

If he sensed any anti-shifter sentiment, he pulled away and shut down.

It never was a conscious decision.

It was instinct. Protection. A habit so ingrained it appeared like a reflex.

He’d see the hurt in their eyes when he wouldn’t discuss the future, when he wouldn’t say how he felt.

On the other hand, brotherhood gave him what he didn’t realize he craved. Safety.

But it was not enough.

He wanted more. Needed more.

He yearned for a woman who could stand at his side.

He craved to be seen for who he truly was, enhanced, yes, but loyal as fokk .

Guarded, but not incapable of love, just out of practice.

Savvine was a challenge, no doubt. A beautiful, blade-edged riddle that his lycan soul was insisting was his fated mate.

She wasn’t the kind of woman to roll over at the hint of a claim; she was hella feisty, but his spectral wolf soul was also relentless.

Savvine Bianchi was coming close to the kind of woman he craved.

So he remained, waiting, wanting, and wondering what it would be like if the forbidden didn’t matter. If the bloodlines, the past, the rules, all of it, burned.

Imagining what it would feel like to one day call her his.

Mierda.