The idea unsettled him.
When she rose, bidding them goodnight, she did so with an unhurried, sensual sashay that commanded attention.
He found himself locking eyes on her backside, his fingers tightening around his tumbler as she disappeared from the dining hall.
The moment she was gone, Rigo let out a whistle.
‘Mak,’ he drawled, a wicked grin across his face. ‘You’re staring.’
Santi snorted. ‘More like memorizing.’
Kaal chuckled. ‘You’ve got it bad, brother.’
Mak scoffed, tilting his glass, though he still hadn’t taken a sip. ‘Fokkoff, don’t be ridiculous. I scarcely know the woman.’
Xander leaned forward, his sharp eyes glinting with amusement. ‘So you’re declaring you’re not intrigued?’
Mak exhaled through his nose. ‘I’m saying it doesn’t matter. Because how she came into my life makes me want to raze a bombast of sulliedsachemmonsters and flay them to the bone.’
That sobered them.
For a moment, silence settled around them.
Then Santi grinned. ‘Are we going hunting? The mission awaits.’
Kaal cracked his neck. ‘If Miral’s intel is correct, which it is most times, we’ll make a killing tonight.’
As one, they rose from the table and headed outside.
The two racing flyers sat waiting, sleek and armed with enough firepower to level a street block.
They climbed in, and with a roar of thrusters, they took off towards Sombra’s rear deck through the heart of the gigantic dreadnought.
Mak stalked across the glossy expanse of the Sombra’s massive aft hold, the heat coming off the revving engines bleeding through the metal grids beneath his boots.
The Signet corvettes waited in the launch bays, gleaming against the void.
Beside him, Kaal, Boaz, and Zev scanned the perimeter, taut with the same unease that churned in his chest.
Miral’s scans of the system showed asachemlair festering in the wastelands known as the Shattering, a no-man’s land of torn metals and ancient wreckage.
The ambush, however, came sooner than expected, at their doorstep.
Just as the pack boarded the rear airlocks of their crafts, a figure burst from the smoke beyond the cargo haulers, massive and monstrous, the ground shaking underneath his boots.
He wore a battle-worn, long coat that flared in the spewing steam vents on the deck floor.
Twin shotguns roared in his fists, muzzle flares splitting the haze, rounds slamming into the surface where Mak had stood a heartbeat before.
Mak dove sideways, rolled, and rose, already shifting, light shredding through him as his lycan venator form exploded outward.
Violet and obsidian fur gleamed beneath the searing sun, fangs bared, claws sparking over the steel decking.
As he did, Mak’s attacker snarled, then his body contorted as bones cracked and reshaped.
His extremities warped into grotesque proportions and twisted into asachem.
The hulking beast dripped with spectral ichor, its fanged mandibles where a muzzle should have been, and limbs too long for any natural creature.
