Page 36

Wolves Among The Stars

SAVVINE

X ander and Savvine strode through the halls of the Santo Venado, lit by flickering, failing lights .

They headed to the rear docking bay, where the Signet crew held Salvadore and his lackeys.

A shimmer of gold-mauve light rippled before them as Miral materialized mid-stride.

Her teetering platform boots hit the deck with feline grace. Her eyes were already scanning, and her irises flashed with streaming data.

Xander clocked her, raising his chin to her. ‘Tell me you’re in.’

‘They tried to wipe their core,’ Miral replied, kneeling by a wall panel.

Her gloves morphed into slim hacking tendrils that slipped beneath the console. ‘Sloppy, childish even, and oh so adorable.’

Savvine slowed to stop beside the synth AI, her body half-turned to keep watch.

‘Can you recover anything?’

‘Is my name Miral?’

Xander huffed at the soft retort. ‘I amend my question to ask how much you’ve retrieved?’

‘I’ve got it all, all terminals and servers,’ Miral continued, voice smug. ‘I’ve downloaded and mirrored all data to our mainframes on the Sombra . Their scrambled code is already reassembled. I’m so buried up the Lombardi’s nose, I’m swishing around in their brain and core.’

Xander grimaced. ‘Sounds savage.’

Miral gave a wicked chuckle.

Just then, their node alerts sounded, and Boaz’s deep baritone filled their ears, laced with awe. ‘ Jefe , Savvine, you two might want to see this. I’ve found a secret armory in the aft of the ship.’

He sent a location ping, which Xander and Savvine followed. They paced through the narrow corridor toward the artillery hold.

As soon as they entered, they exchanged glances.

Xander let out a whistle.

Racks and arrays of alien tech lined the room.

Glossy weapons with runes that flashed with unknown codes.

Plasma launchers shaped like serpent heads. Black-bladed disruptor pikes with cores pulsing red. Oedipus , Hades , and even more tech that was unrecognizable.

Cannons surging with light pulses in weird and wonderful gamma waves, as if from an extraterrestrial dimension.

Boaz stood beside one nasty-looking cannon with a twist to his lip, chewing on a toothpick. ‘These aren’t from Pegasi. Or Accord space. They’re built for erasure.’

Zev ran a scanner over them. ‘I can’t find one traceable signature. This stuff’s cloaked. Obscured in frequency bands we don’t even use.’

Miral glimmered at Savvine’s side, her eyes blinking in wonder for once. ‘I’ve never seen this kind of ordinance in the wild. Only hidden deep in the locked-down sub-archives of Mirage Sable’s servers. Tis the stuff of myths.’

‘Can you trace it?’ Savvine asked.

‘I’ve taken images and facsimiles of it,’ Miral murmured.

‘Schematics, pulse patterns, the lot. I’ve also got inside the Lombardi’s server network, mirrored, and purged it from their system.

I’ll reach out to Mirage and cross-reference them with her database.

I’m not sure we’re going to like what we find. ’

‘Better we know than remain in the black,’ Xander said. ‘For now, let’s strip this fokkin ’ ship. Everything from an intel perspective that isn’t bolted down comes with us. Leave them naked, but leave the furniture. It’s atrocious.’

So they did.

Two hours later, the Santo Venado was a shell of its former self, gutted, every shard of alien tech offloaded and encrypted.

Miral secured the last of the files, and the craft left dark and hollow like a carcass torn bare by wolves.

Xander glanced once over his shoulder before tapping the neural node behind his ear. ‘Infil team, back to La última Sombra . Let’s freakin’ go home.’

Savvine fell in beside him, her gaze still lingering on the pikes, the weapons, the terrifying beauty of it all.

‘Who gave them this?’ she whispered.

Xander’s jaw tightened. ‘Whoever it was, they didn’t come in peace.’

XANDER

On their way back to the Sombra, the Signet team and Savvine debriefed over shared communications, discussing the battle’s aftermath.

From his pilot’s seat on his Corvette, Xander observed his woman handle her aspects of the reporting process with poise, presence, and command.

She held her own and bantered with his pack, like she’d always belonged. Fokk .

She appeared luminous in the violet and amber lighting of his bridge, even though her face was tinged with laser soot, her suit had battle pockmarks, and her cheeks flushed with exertion and victory.

Still, she stood taller than most men dared. Not because she tried, but because she was magnificent.

He couldn’t keep his eyes off her.

Not since she pulled that insane maneuver and clipped the Lombardi gunship’s teeth, peeling through the void like it bowed to her will.

He fought the urge to surge to his feet, bury his face in her neck, and breathe her in before making incandescent love to her.

The feeling and rampant desire to claim never left him, not when they landed on the Sombra, not even while they unloaded and got into the elevators.

Xander reached for her hand when they stepped off the lift on the executive level. ‘With me.’

She blinked but followed, eyes glinting, as he led her through a side corridor into his command office.

As soon as the door hissed shut, she was on him, or he was on her, he couldn’t tell which.

Her back hit a wall, and her thighs locked around his waist.

His mouth lowered to hers, their lips melding in a desperate tasting of fire and space and her.

She gasped against his lips, breath still ragged from battle. ‘Xander.’

‘Tell me you want me,’ he growled, his voice rough. ‘Say it.’

‘Xander, fokk me please.’

The husky, sensual plea wrecked him.

His hands swept down her sides, finding the button on her stealth suit, and tapped it.

The suit’s noids peeled away at once, groaning as he stroked her skin.

She arched into him, her fingers already tugging at his collar.

He released his smart suit clasp, and his gear also melded away, leaving them both in underwear.

It became a race to kiss, nuzzle, lick, and own, in a heady, adrenaline-soaked, and breathy conquest.

One sweep of his arm cleared his desk.

Her breath hitched as he lifted her onto it, the cool surface meeting her thighs while his hands gripped her hips.

She pulled him close, wild eyes locking with his.

‘I need you,’ she whispered.

‘You have me,’ he growled, crashing his mouth to hers again.

In moments, he stripped the rest of of their clothes and slid his cock into her. ‘ Foookkkk .’

She mewled, arching her spine into him as they thrust against each other.

It was fast. Intense. Almost brutal in its honesty, with no time for tenderness.

Only the candor and lust of need, of two warriors still buzzing with the rawness of battle, hearts hammering like war drums.

He buried his face in her neck as they trembled together and came hard, her fingers tight in his hair, her thighs wrapped around him.

After, he held her in the quiet.

He nuzzled her nape, overwhelmed by his visceral reaction to her.

She shuddered under him even as he growled into her ear.

‘ Fokk , that was hot.’

She lay beneath him, body sensual, skin soft, her breathing slowing as the wild, untamed savagery of their shared adrenaline bled away.

That Savvine Bianchi was becoming his orbit was no question; she was everything he never knew he needed.

In time, he carried her to his office couch, where, still naked and rooted in her, he half lay and sat with her draped over him.

He held her close, running a lazy finger down her arm.

The muted golden lights of the room cast a halo around her dark hair.

Outside the porthole, the stars shimmered over the gentle curve of the Sombra’s hull.

He gazed into her eyes and caught the question lingering in her gaze. ‘Ask it, woman, you know you want to.’

‘Tell me about your life. How did you grow up?’

‘He huffed, his eyes shadowed with memory. She caught a flit of sadness across his face and regretted the question.

She was just about to stop him, tell him he didn’t have to say anything, when he spoke anyway.

‘I had it rough. My mum was eighteen when she had me. By the time she was twenty-three, she had four of us: me, my sister, and two brothers, all with different dads. None of them stayed. She did what she could, but the drugs got to her in the end. I was thirteen when she died. After that, we were split up in the system, shuffled into different foster homes. I haven’t seen my siblings since. I tried searching for them, but nada .’

He paused, his jaw tightening.

‘I ran away. Ended up joining the Eden Guards at seventeen. Kainan Sable vouched for me. But the military and I never saw eye to eye. Too rigid. Too clean. So I left and found my way. I became a rebel, and the rest you already know.’

She reached a hand and stroked his arm.

Their eyes met as her compassion leaked from her, and he raised a china cup, acknowledging her care.

‘What about your powers? How did you get them? How do you all shift so fast?’

He exhaled. ‘You’re sure you want the whole story?’

‘I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.’

He dragged a hand down his face, the burden of memory oozing from his soul like a slow freeze.

She stayed silent.

He stared past her shoulder, into the dark, clearing his throat before speaking. ‘We were prisoners. On Earth. Maximum security, deep beneath the soil, in a place no one was ever meant to crawl out of.’

His voice dropped a register. ‘The official charge was sedition. Unofficially? We were rebels who pissed off a swathe of United Earth officials and Eden Army command. They all conspired to bury us in concrete and forget we existed.’

Savvine’s lips parted in concern, but she said nothing.

‘It was hell,’ he rasped. ‘Every day, they tried to break us. The guards. The beatings. We’ve all got scars on our backs?’

He didn’t wait for her to answer. ‘Those weren’t from battle. That was routine punishment. I lost the feeling in three of my fingers for a year from the electric cuffs they used when I mouthed off. Mak? They locked him in an ice box for ten straight days.’