Page 14

Running With The Wolves

XANDER

T he 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.

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.

His hermanos each owned one, scattered along the beach.

They weren’t just homes but safe spaces for his pack. The Signet strong 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.

It’d been a ruthless training session so far. Just how he liked it.

He flexed his fingers.

Santiago came at him again, grinning, teeth bared in a snarl, bare feet kicking up dust.

A slick grin sat on the XO’s lips, yet Xander was well aware his friend’s nonchalance masked a deep ache.

Santiago, the pack’s Omega , was a former cartel enforcer turned ghost op.

Quick with a joke and quicker with a blade, he sported a carved physique and charm for days. But the women he flirted with never made it past sunrise.

Santi once loved a woman in the frenzy of a youthful, passionate whirlwind affair.

She disappeared in the riots on Earth following the Great Apocalypse, and what was left of her was found months later, to his utmost despair.

He buried her, and afterward never said her name, but Xander sensed her shadow every time Santiago cracked a grin.

The pair locked arms around each other in a wrestling hold and pivoted in the ring.

Xander’s forearm slammed into Santi’s shoulder.

He twisted, using Santiago’s momentum to drive him to the pit, knee pressed just short of his throat.

Xander stood up, muscles taut, chest heaving.

‘ Fokk , boss,’ Santi groaned from the mat, rubbing his neck. ‘You got heavier or more bitter since last week?’

Xander didn’t reply. He just offered a hand. Santi grinned and slapped it.

The buzzer went off.

Switch.

Mak, the Delta of the pack, sauntered onto the sand with the same shark-like energy he gave in court and board rooms.

He was tall, with honey-skinned arms covered in steel glyph tattoos that seemed to shift with each breath.

He was their counsel, sure, but in the ring, he fought like a philosopher proving his arguments with pain.

Mak was also a scion and former consigliere for the Sauvage cartel, one of Earth’s wealthiest and oldest mob families.

After a private dispute, he parted ways with his kin, joined the rebellion, and has not been in contact with his father since.

He chose to join the Signet pack instead.

Even though the Sauvage capital ship was part of the convoy, he wanted no part of his former life.

Cold, cutting, and brilliant, Mak had few soft spots.

In love and life, he was a loner with baggage who kept a velvet box with a shattered diamond band in the safe behind his cabin wall.

Apart from his brother Kaal, he trusted few.

Not even Xander, at least not in entirety, but the pair shared a mutual respect, and Xander leaned on the man for his cunning mind and strategic thinking.

They were Mak’s weapons; he’d once cross-examined a warlord during a live tribunal feed, with a shiv pressed to his neck just to buy a second more for a sniper to line the shot.

Xander struck without warning. Mak ducked, rolled, and came back up swinging.

Xander growled, catching his arm and using it to throw him across the circle.

‘ Fokk ,’ Mak muttered, shaking his head with a wry grin at his captain’s ferocity.

Buzzer .

Rigo, the Zeta , came next.

Built like a blast door, clean-shaven, every inch of his forearms covered in inked banking formulas and bounty kill tallies.

As a financier, he was precision incarnate.

A former redeemed cartel money man, he was all about numbers, strategy, and ledgers, and saw the game five moves ahead.

His hands were like steel presses, his arms inked with equations and old-world bank codes.

He enjoyed the company of women and had a litany of broken hearts scattered throughout the fleet.

Yet he had moments of moroseness, as if the loneliness was too much to bear.

He was also astute, with a keen eye that meant he missed little.

‘Something’s going on with you, jefe ,’ he rasped dryly.

Xander hit him like a freight train. Rigo absorbed it and grinned.

‘You’ve been brooding these past few days,’ Rigo grunted between strikes. ‘Bad for morale.’

‘I am peachy and shitting sparkles if you must know,’ Xander grated, sweeping his leg out and catching Rigo behind the knee.

Buzzer .

Zev entered like a shadow, sleeves rolled up, amethyst locks flowing down his shoulders, shimmers flickering beneath his glowing dark skin.

The Sombra’s fixer was a lightning bolt on the mat, quick as hell.

With a superb dress sense and a keen eye, Zev, also the Psi of the pack, was witty and wild at heart, a storm in lean muscle and mischief.

He claimed he’d never settle.

But Xander knew better.

Zev was looking. Hard.

‘ Nada talking this round,’ Zev warned, already ducking Xander’s first punch.

‘No freakin’ shifting either, brother,’ Xander shot back, for Zev liked playing dirty and unleashing his lycan powers mid-play.

Xander missed. Zev kicked his shin and danced out of reach.

‘You’re not fighting clean.’

Xander cracked his neck. ‘Neither’s the galaxy.’

Zev laughed and then leaped into the air, hands up in surrender. Above him, his spectral wolf form shimmered in the air, snarling.

Buzzer .

Boaz didn’t say a word.

He just thundered into the circle.

The pack’s Theta was barefoot.

No shirt, scarred like an old war god, chest rising and falling, arms easy at his side.

His body was massive, sun-bronzed, sinewed, with no spare inch between skin and muscle. Lethal as fokk .

He was the engineer and the builder, the reason the última Sombra kept moving.

However, the man was hard to read.

Quiet as deep water, he was a shipwright who built death machines and cultivated gardens in equal measure.

Boaz never spoke of his past, never sought out women, but he always raised his mug to whatever sky, ceiling, or roof he was in, toasting a hidden soul, like he was waiting for his first love to rejoin him, one who never came.

Xander met him with force.

Boaz didn’t budge.

He caught Xander’s punch and twisted his wrist with mechanical precision. It was not cruel; it was measured.

Xander grunted, pivoted, and used the pain to drop down and knee Boaz in the gut.

They both remained locked together, neither willing to give in. It was a silent battle of two enormous forces, chests heaving, breath steaming.

Buzzer .

Xander surrendered, raising a hand. Boaz yielded.

They gave each other chin nods as they pulled apart, matched in mass.

Then came Kaal: the warrior and the Gamma .

He was also Mak’s younger brother and a Sauvage scion.

A force of nature, Kaal was composed of myth, muscle, and aureate ink carved into his skin like war prayers.

He didn’t speak of women, though Xander knew he had lovers throughout the flotilla.

Still, Xander was sure he wanted more than just fleeting one-night stands.

Kaal often lingered on the observation deck most nights after chow.

Eyes canted towards Pegasi, perhaps waiting for his salvation and a chance at love on the other side of this long journey.

He stepped onto the ring like death on two legs, tall, golden-tattooed, eyes unreadable.

Rumor said he once killed a mafia prince with his bare hands.

Xander believed it.

He didn’t waste time with tough talk. Instead, he charged and collided with Kaal’s fists, blunt instruments of agony.

Xander moved faster, ducked, elbowed, and grabbed.

Kaal reversed the hold and tried to slam his capitán to the mat. Xander twisted and hooked his leg.

They both went down in a cloud of dust and blood and breath.

The final buzzer sounded.

The session ended.

Kaal released him, and Xander rolled onto his back, staring at the sky.

Above him, the simulated blue shimmered, and clouds drifted east.

He exhaled, slow, ragged.

Thinking of the one member of the pack missing in action.

Bone.