‘Enough,’ Xander growled, his voice the crack of thunder in a storm.
His alpha wolf power surged in flames behind his eyes. ‘Omega, stand down. He’s bleeding. Don’t poke the wound.’
Santi held his hands up in surrender. ‘Sorry,cabrón, my bad.’
Mak stood down, dragging in a breath through his teeth. The fire in his chest wouldn’t dim, but he forced himself back.
He pulled up a chair and fell into it, shoulders bowed, soul despondent.
‘I’m raw,’ he rasped, more honest than he’d been in a long time. ‘I got a replacement bride, a spare part swapped in because the real one ran away.’
His bitterness was evident in the hoarse reverb of his timbre.
Silence fell, heavy with the unspoken empathy from hishermanos.
Xander let it sit for a beat, then raised a chin while crossing his hands over his chest.
‘Brother, we hope you and your wife resolve this rift and find every happiness, whether together or otherwise. We are disappointed in how shit played out, but also, we protect our own and give each other the privacy to work out their path within the pack.’
He sliced his eyes at Santi. ‘What’s intimate stays personal. No jokes. No digs. Respect the man’s war before the fight finds us all.’
The alpha leader’s gaze swept the room, steady, absolute. ‘But now we move on. TheSombrawas breached. Where from, how, and why in hell didn’t we see thatsachemcoming till it nearly tore the dome apart?’
Miral shifted in her chair, shadows under her dark eyes. ‘I was off the ball,capitán. Too mired in wedding planning chaos. I let security drift. That’s on me.’
She tapped her wrist console, casting a schematic over the table. ‘I did some digging and found that the creature musthave latched onto the undercarriage of a visitor’s ship, masked by their shields. Slipped past our scans and detached in Hangar Three. From there, it crawled the ventilation shafts and climbed into the cabling hoists above the dome before it attacked.’
Xander’s jaw ticked. ‘Whose ship?’
‘The Lisade skiff.’
Kaal frowned. ‘You think they knew?’
‘Unknown.’ Miral’s voice remained flat, clinical. ‘It could’ve snagged on during their jump into our secure perimeter. Or hitched a ride when they slowed for docking.’
‘Or someone let it on,’ Santi muttered.
Mak’s rasp cut through. ‘Why would the Lisades attack their own at a wedding?’
Xander shook his head once. ‘We could argue motive all night, but it won’t matter unless we catch the beast first.’
Miral nodded. ‘I backtracked its chem-trail to a dense asteroid field, about two hours away at half thrusters.’
Mak flexed his fingers, hunger for the hunt burning through his rage. ‘Let’s roll.’
Xander cracked a rare smile. ‘That’s the Mak I know.’
Kaal pulled his jacket on, Zev chambered a fresh clip, and Santi tossed his empty to-go mug into the recycler.
The pack was moving.
The void was shrouded as Mak’s gunship, theÚltima Lykos,approached the space rock belt.
Outside, a series of sleek Signet Corvettes sliced through the cosmos alongside his craft.
From within the vast, impenetrable sea of darkness emerged a web of shimmering rocks that drifted across the vastness of space, their edges jagged and sharp, like the teeth of some forgotten beast.
‘You good?’ Mak asked his brother from the helm.
