Page 7

He took a deep breath. ‘No matter how much the Lombardis’ jaundiced betas hate it, they can’t escape the fact that we and the Sauvages are the pack leaders in the Wildlight.

Still, they fight the order and secretly rile up any hatred they can, in an attempt to gain dominance before we get to Pegasi. We can’t allow it.’

Santi leaned forward, elbows on knees. ‘When you put it that way, capitán , it’s urgent as fokk . So what’s the play, Alexandr-Alexandr Levine Roman?’

Xander smiled then, slow and cold, his glimmering ink flexing across his chest like blooming fire.

‘We enforce the order. We buddy up to the smaller clans, maybe even twist some Carvajal and Diaz-Granados arms, so the Bianchis have fewer allies. Make them believe the Houses have abandoned them, so they’ll have to lean on us.

Then together we finish the Lombardis and their little revolution once and for fokkin ’ all,’ he growled.

Santi’s lips curled, then he grinned, teeth flashing. ‘ Cabrón .’

‘First, I need all intel on the Bianchis,’ Xander seethed.

Before Santi could respond, a new voice, husky, potent, and impossible to ignore, cut through the air like a blade dipped in silk.

‘I have it ready for you, capitán .’

Xander’s head snapped toward the vocalization.

A shimmer glitched to his left, then she appeared.

‘Miral.’

She stepped into complete visibility, her frame coalescing from a cascade of radiance.

Ebony-skinned, impossibly poised, Miral was a vision of synthesized power and encoded elegance.

Glyphs glowed and spiraled over her body like circuitry inked by a god. Raw data flowed across her chest, arms, and hips in soft turquoise and silver pulses.

Her outfit was as subtle as a solar flare: a crystalline suit that caught every scrap of luminosity in the cockpit and refracted it with painful precision.

Xander winced and lifted a hand to block the worst of it.

‘I told you that your glitter sense hurts my eyes,’ he muttered.

‘You’re welcome,’ Miral replied with a sweet smile. ‘Fashion and function are not mutually exclusive.’

‘Signet protocol requires uniform adherence.’

‘A cabal of clueless former inmates wrote Signet’s outdated and irrelevant archaic conventions,’ she cut in, flashing a smirk, ‘You’re lucky I follow any of it.’

Santi choked on a laugh behind Xander, enjoying their banter too much.

The Signet CO sighed and turned back toward the screen, though his attention was now split. ‘You’ve got Bianchi intel?’

‘Every data fragment they’ve ever sent across subspace since entering the Wildlight Expanse,’ she said, stepping closer. ‘Intercepts. Trade deals. Internal traffic. Each power play made by Eugene, his assistant, his shadow broker mistress, and the ones they think no one knows about.’

The Wildlight Expanse.

A void-churned corridor that stretched past Jupiter all the way to Pegasi may as well have been its own cursed universe.

Untamed, volatile, far-flung, and roamed by wild space creatures, it threw up conundrums daily.

This was why Xander, his crew, and the armada they guarded were focused on cruising through it as fast as possible and getting to Pegasi safe and sound.

The long journey was tedious as fokk , and Signet was the only reason the Syndicate flotilla had yet to implode into itself.

Signet Co.’s brotherhood was born of fury and flames, formed within the bones of an old prison.

All members of the Star Wolves met while imprisoned in a fierce and storied enclave.

The eastern edge of Cape Three Forks, between Morocco and the Mediterranean, was where Xander and his brother’s lycan blood got bound by a mysterious explosion under the correctional facility.

Using their smarts and powers, they clawed out of their iron shackles and chain gangs and reinvented themselves into a feared security and private mercenary group.

From contracts to recovery ops, and high-risk extractions, if it paid, Signet took it to survive, and they were winning because of Miral.

He remembered the day she arrived, stepping off a scout-class drop cutter like a goddess of war wrapped in data and starlight. He’d been furious.

A few months earlier, under attack from the rogue mafia fleets and tired of the endless cartel dominance plays, he dispatched a message as soon as he came within hailing reach of Pegasi.

In it, he asked Kainan Sable, his cousin, formerly an elite Kubai warrior but now a power broker on Eden II, for a strike team, reinforcements, and ammunition.

He’d put forward a price, a hefty fee, he was willing to pay.

Instead, Kainan sent Miral.

For free.

At first, Xander thought it was an insult, a joke.

Then Miral rerouted the failing core energy grid.

She also rebuilt their artillery using nothing but scrap and nano forges.

She outmaneuvered three pirate fleets, fire-walling their navigation against two dozen ransomware viruses in one week.

She didn’t sleep. She didn’t miss. She saved their asses too many times to count.

Yet he never forgot what started Earth’s last artificial intelligence war.

He’d seen its ravages and remained wary of sentient tech.

Still, he chose to trust Kainan, because despite their differences, the Sable Rider was blood and no double-crossing fokker .

That didn’t mean he didn’t monitor her with keen intent.

However, his gaze was now narrowed on a sleek Bianchi Corvette onscreen.

Its transponder announced it as the Ash Talon.

He observed it as it danced with death, plasma bursts streaking past its flanks as it rolled through the black in a desperate attempt to stay alive.

Xander studied every move, calculating the gunner’s stunning war play with grudging respect.

‘Who the hell is that?’ Santi asked beside him, half-whistling, semi-admiring its piloting like whoever was at the helm was born in the cockpit.

Miral stepped closer. ‘I can show you,’ she purred.

Xander jerked his chin at her. ‘Let’s see it.’

Miral flicked a holo display into the air with a flick of her wrist.

It expanded into digital overlays, schematics, heat maps, encryption logs, and a dossier.

Santi leaned forward as lines of text began to scroll. ‘Pilot’s name is Savvine Bianchi.’

Xander’s jaw ticked.

‘Head of Security on the Venantia Eterna ,’ Santi continued.

‘She’s led twelve successful intercepts and neutralized five Lombardi sabotage cells in the past year.

Survived two assassination attempts, one bio-drone infiltration, and, damn, hand-cuffed a Castigliano enforcer to an external rail cannon and fired it to take out a tailing frigate. All confirmed.’

Xander’s XO let out a whistle. ‘She’s badass.’

The Commander’s eyes narrowed.

The data rotated.

Images snapped into view: her security file, and her combat profile, with her identikit photo.

It showed her with her helmet off, expression hard, eyes lit with fire and calculation.

It also displayed her beauty: dark-haired, jade emerald eyes, a mouth like sin, high cheekbones.

Xander jolted as his heart lurched.

Her .

His rescue.

Fokk .

His entire being shuddered.

‘She’s exceptional,’ Miral said, echoing his thoughts, folding her arms, her voice silk and static. ‘Hell, she’s got freakin’ balls.’

Xander didn’t answer because he was prowling towards the gunship’s ready room.

‘Commander?’ Miral called, concerned.

‘A moment,’ he grated.

He launched into the room, his entire being thrumming.

As the door closed on him, he shook with pure, unadulterated fever, which battered him hard.

Tracking to his desk, he gripped his office chair from behind with such force that its spine twisted as a spectral wolf-like apparition rose above him.

It tore from his sinew and bones in a vivid gold, violet, and black flamed spectacle. Coalescing into the form of a giant ethereal wolf, howling without sound at the roof.

Mind churning and roiling, transfixed with one image: her .

His spectral core stirred like a sleeping wolf waking, nostrils flaring not for blood, but for her. For the woman called Savvine Bianchi.

The one woman it seemed his lycan spirit wanted him to claim.

Fokk!

He clenched his jaw as the urge roiled over him.

Hell, the want . It wasn’t just desire, it was the primal call of claiming.

His instincts licked at his control like wildfire catching on dry bone.

It was in his marrow. Taking over his mind and soul.

Claim her. Knot her. Mark her. Make her yours.

He had no control. His freaking body, soul and spectral spirit was dictating his savage response.

He gripped the leather inlay, knuckles whitening, and locked his gaze forward, but the logical part of his brain reeled with questions, each sending lurches through him.

Could a woman like her ever want a wolf? A spectral lycan? One forbidden by her family’s decree?

He knew what the Bianchi legacy meant.

It ran on duty, heritage, and old-world codes too ancient for the stars.

They didn’t mate across species, across genetic divides, across the fractures of the post-Collapse era. Especially not with shifters like him.

It was too soon to wonder if she’d ever feel the same, given he’d never spoken to the woman, so he tamped his wild lust down and slammed a wall over the raw desire rising inside.

His wraith-like wolf spirit writhed and snarled above.

Xander growled, commanding it to cease its savage keening.

He reined in the heat that coiled low in his spine, quieting the howl of instinct screaming for her.

He shuddered as his spectral wolf energy snapped back into him.

Still, his heart pounded and body thrummed.

Xander inhaled, forcing the air down, steadying the chaotic pace of his thoughts.

He’d mastered worse storms.

He wouldn’t let himself lose control. Not here. Not now. Not when he couldn’t be sure she wanted it, or him.

Deep in his soul, he sensed that their paths would cross. That much was inevitable, for his lycan anima had never led him astray.

When they did cross paths, and if she ever gave him a sign, he’d move stars to meet it.

Until then, he’d keep his distance, while the beast inside him watched and waited.

He shook away the feral, savage urge and, with a deep inhale, tracked back to the bridge.

Santiago glanced at him with a raised brow. ‘You OK, brother?’

‘I’m fine,’ Xander growled. ‘Miral, please order me a new office when you can.’

‘The fokk ?’ Santi murmured, his lips curving until his jefe shot him a warning glare.

The CO’s gaze sliced to the screen, where the Corvette, banked in a complex arc, rolled under fire, venting heat, but still pulled a flawless kill loop.

If Savvine was in the pilot’s chair, she was steady, hella tactical, and a quick thinker.

He grunted, his entire frame charged and thrumming, his hands scarred and inked, tightening over the edge of the command rail.

He remembered the missile.

The impossible velocity, the warhead screaming with death.

And her, locked in its path, eyes expanded behind the plexiglass, bracing for the end.

He’d not put any thought into his rescue.

His move to come to her aid had been pure instinct.

He’d just moved as if drawn to her like she was some interstellar siren.

Through airless void, onto her racer, the scream of kinetic fire flooding his bones.

He’d vaulted and plucked the warhead from its trajectory, hissing at its thrusters’ burn, then tossed the weapon back like a spear. For her.

Even now, her fierce, beautiful face haunted him, those sensual, lash-ringed eyes etched in his mind.

‘Let’s maintain a close watch on her,’ he rasped, rough and grating.

Santi arched a brow, sensing the shift. ‘You volunteering?’

Xander’s jaw flexed.

‘Perhaps. She’s too good to ignore,’ he grated.

‘Hella effective. She could be the Bianchi ally we work with to counter the Lombardis’ little revolution.

Also a freakin’ lethal enemy if we get on her wrong side, so I need to know every fokkin ’ thing about her.

I want to be across the nodes she’s touched, all corridors she patrols, each crew member in her circle.

I want to know if she’s making enemies before they do. ’

He glanced toward Miral. ‘Feed me everything. Upload the Bianchi files to my private node. Strip any shadow tags. I don’t want Eugene catching wind that we’re sniffing around his perimeter.’

Miral tilted her head, the glyphs on her face rearranging to form a smile. ‘Already done. You’re ten minutes behind, Captain.’

Xander rolled his eyes. ‘Of course I am. Still, I need all the intel I can get. I predict we will rendezvous with the Venantia Eterna soon, in some manner or the other.’

‘To kiss Eugene’s ring?’ she asked, arching one delicate brow.

‘ Nada ,’ Xander said, stepping toward the interface with grim intent. ‘To break it.’

Santi leaned in, raising his cup to her. ‘You want some kahawa , beautiful code queen?’

Miral sniffed. ‘Caffeine dulls my processing.’

Xander smirked and stood.

Miral gave a wry smile, glyphs glimmering like starlight. ‘Already decrypting their command logs.’

As the holo collapsed and Miral disappeared, Santi reclined against the console with a lopsided grin. ‘So saving that pilot beforehand, what was that? Reflex?’

‘ Fokk off,’ he growled, unable to explain the indecipherable.

He rarely shared matters of the heart with ease and preferred to keep most thoughts private.

However, beneath his manufactured calm, her image seared into him.

Her spark, the surge that passed between them like a solar flare and scraped through bone, still scorched him, his blood heating every time he thought of her.

‘ Fokk , you’ve got it bad,’ Santi drawled, head tilted and shaking in disbelief.

Xander jolted, then raised his middle finger to his XO with a glare.

Unfazed, Santi chuckled under his breath and walked away.

Xander turned to the viewport, arms crossed over his massive chest.

Fighting the pull, the overwhelming urge to mate, claim, and fuse his soul with hers.

He didn’t believe in fate.

But fokk , he trusted in consequence. In whateverthefokk karmic, cosmic arithmetic carved reason out of chaos and bled meaning into the wreckage of a life like his.

Eyes canting back to the battle outside, following the grace of the pilot’s dancing and weaving between light and void, he pursed his lips as his soul pulsed.

An indomitable aspect of his spectral lycan essence was awakening, one he couldn’t control or ignore, and sooner or later, he’d need to give in to its instinctual pull.