Chapter 31
SANTIAGO
Each morning, Santi waited for her at the far end of the corridor outside her suite.
He never interrupted her flow, never called her name.
He remained a still figure in a black tactical coat, hood up, arms crossed over his chest as station lights flickered above him.
He kept vigil like clockwork, his internal rhythm synced to hers now, not the station’s.
The first few days, she walked past him like he didn’t exist, back stiff, her spirit still wounded and hurting, resisting his doggedness.
Santi didn’t flinch.
He took it. Ate it.
Because he deserved worse.
Over time, however, he sensed a shift.
She didn’t address him, nor meet his gaze, but she ceased resisting his presence.
That somehow exacerbated his agony because even as she softened, Santi suffered.
Every second, so close yet so far from her was pure punishment.
Fokk, he missed her.
To see her and not touch her was agony; still, he bore it without complaint.
He hated that he’d had to stand by while she moved her shit to a new pad on the ground floor of the workers’ dormitory.
It had a door leading onto the concourse, and he didn’t like her so exposed.
Still, she hadn’t asked for a guardian, and she sure as hell hadn’t asked for a ghost trailing her from the shadows like some penitent beast, but that’s what he became.
Yet still, the ache lingered.
That yawning pit of pain in his chest wasn’t poetic; it was real.
He felt it in his limbs, in the way food lost its flavor and sleep never reached deep enough to matter.
His instincts screamed every time she walked away from him without a word.
He had no recourse to complain, because it was his own damn fault, not anyone else’s.
He took the karmic suffering with gritted teeth.
Let it burn, he told himself.
Each morning after shadowing her to the maglev, he showed up at her workplace.
He set down a single white orchid on the corner of her counter and left.
Then he returned to duty, patrolling station security, handling enforcement rotations, and mediating talks between Accord defectors, pirate warlords, and the resident black-market unions.
It all blurred. Everything did, except her.
At the end of her shift, he waited near the cafe at night to follow her home.
She never acknowledged him, but he sensed she stopped hating him for it.
So Santi, unyielding in his love for her and twice as haunted, remained her shadow.
Holding onto a sliver of hope because she never once asked him to stop.
Between the brutal hours of not seeing her, Santi threw himself into the only thing he could control, running a tight security operation.
He faced the undertaking with military precision.
He recruited fifteen new officers in three days.
Not just warm bodies, operators. Ex-martials, and former special ops.
All survivors with alert eyes and cleaner consciences than most.
Men like Joris Tanaka, a logistics captain who ran ten rescue missions off the sinking coastlines of Australia during the Great War.
Or Lesedi N’Komo, a sniper, with a gift for never missing. However, on Cybele, he struggled to find work, so he turned to running a small kiosk specializing in equipment repairs.
One morning, Santi leaned back in the pilot’s chair of his docked ship, surrounded by the soft glow of station data streaming across his wristband.
The ready room was dim and silent, except for the hum of his vessel’s quiet systems and the distant echo of cargo lifts beyond the port.
He scanned recruitment manifests, trying to fill slots with men who wouldn’t crack at the first sign of fire.
Then a name blinked up on the feed, making him freeze.
Davon Reitz.
Santi’s pulse kicked, and for a second, he wasn’t on Cybele.
He was back in the nuclear-ravaged streets of New York.
With sand in his teeth and smoke in his lungs, regardless of his safety suit, he dragged civilians out of crumbling buildings.
Alongside him was Davon, a paramilitary medic, who worked by his side, calm and focused, patching up the broken hour after hour.
Now Santi chuckled in disbelief as he’d thought the kinai lost in the churn of Earth’s chaos.
He suited up fast, threw on his hooded cloak, and made his way to the lower decks, where the light was always dying, and hope went to rot.
It took two hours and three sets of directions to track Davon down.
He found him in a loading bay corridor, wearing a half-worn badge, mediating a fight between two dockworkers twice his size.
His hair was now gray, his face lined deep, but Santi recognized the man at once. From the way he stood and the way he held back the disarray around him.
Santi waited until the scuffle calmed and stepped forward.
‘Davon Reitz,’ he rasped.
Davon turned, his tired gaze lifting.
It took him a second.
Then recognition hit him like a shot to the chest.
‘Santi Alvarro?’ he breathed. Fokk! Is that you, man?’
They clasped arms, pulled into a brief, rugged grip that said more than words.
‘You’re here,’ Davon murmured, his voice cracking with disbelief. ‘I caught news you lit out on The Sombra with the Signet crew. Lucky fokkin’ bugger. Your squad did well for itself.’
‘We did, with pure luck, brother, and a hella lot of elbow grease,’ Santi rasped, stepping back, really studying the man. ‘What the hell are you doing down here?’
Davon exhaled. ‘Trying to survive. They needed warm bodies for crowd patrol. I took it. Figured if I kept my head down, I could scrape together enough schills to get my wife and kids off this floating junkyard.’
He paused, eyes distant. ‘But truth is, I wasn’t even close. I can’t afford a single berth, let alone four.’
Santi’s chest pulled tight.
He spotted the lines in Davon’s face, the wear of a man carrying his whole world on his back with no promise of a future.
He shifted his offer for Davon on a whim.
‘Brother,’ he said, stepping closer. ‘How about this? I’m always recruiting for senior men like you, and you’re coming with me. We need your steadiness on the Sombra. That includes your family, your wife, and your kids. All room and board inclusive, plus schools and healthcare, the fokkin’ lot.’
Davon’s mouth fell open. ‘You for real?’
‘Deadly so.’
Davon blinked fast, but the tears came, glinting at the corners of his eyes.
‘I thought I had no chance,’ he whispered. ‘My little girl keeps asking me what stars look like. My boy doesn’t even remember sunlight. I didn’t know how to tell them we might never leave.’
Santi swallowed hard and coughed, masking the tightness in his throat. ‘You’re gonna show them stars, Davon, all the way to Pegasi.’
Davon nodded, speechless, for a moment until he found his manners. ‘Sante brother, I fokkin’ owe you.’
‘You don’t owe me anything. Just show up and do what you’ve always done. Be the rockstar you are in security, heavens knows we’ll need them because we’ve a hella lot more fights to come in the Wildlight.’
Santi pinged Miral through his comm.
.:: We have a new sec team recruit to onboard to The Sombra: Davon Reitz and his family. Send a Skiff, priority passage ::.
She responded.
.:: On it. I’ll have a runabout to pick them up in 72 hours ::.
Santi passed on the news to Davon, who was still shaken at the unexpected change to his fortunes.
With a side hug, Davon walked off to make the call that would transform his family’s life. ‘My woman will be over the moon,’ he muttered, his eyes shining.
Santi’s gaze tracked him, thinking how a man like him was wealthier than most, rich in love.
Davon had no clue how blessed he was.
Santi, for all his command and fire, would’ve traded a thousand skiffs to be the man his woman loved.
Over the following days, Santi got into the rhythm and flow of his two-fold purpose on Cybele.
Santi sent Kaal and Miral back to HQ, telling them, ‘I’ve got it from here. The Sombra needs you more than I do.’
Kaal, sensing his pack mate’s need for space, didn’t argue.
Neither did he nor Miral mention Soleil, aware they needed to give Santi time to work through his inner hell and a possible reconciliation with the woman he loved.
Miral cloned herself, leaving a node version of her mind behind on Cybele.
‘So you don’t wreck the station without adult supervision,’ she said with a wink.
The recruits worked hard, hungrier for more than just rations.
Santi noted how the jobs restored a measure of dignity they’d long been denied.
He doubled their pay, depositing half into accounts marked for their families’ passage to Pegasi.
He flitted in and out of El Lobo, eating and showering on it, but he never slept in the generous captain’s quarters.
Each night, he sat outside her door, in the corridor corner, away from foot traffic, back against the cold wall, hood drawn over his face.
Waiting for Soleil to decide if they were still an us.
The uncertainty tore through him, but he didn’t push.
He guarded from afar instead.
He kept his eyes on her when he traveled back and forth from work every day.
One time, when a koko high addict tried lunging at her in her maglev carriage, he appeared in seconds, silent and lethal, the air shifting around him like a warning.
The man backed off before a word was spoken.
Soleil hadn’t even glanced at him, but her breathing had hitched, then relaxed when he drew near.
She might have ended the threat in an instant with her own power. Instead, she chose restraint.
So he bore that liability for her.
He stood guard, fought the unseen fights, and protected her from the darkness, the pickpockets, the thieves, and the drunks who were almost always drawn to her beauty.
Even when she didn’t acknowledge him, he followed, prowling, silent and constant.
Because his love for her was now outworked in patience and in standing in the dark until she turned and said, Stay.
SOLEIL
The hallway outside Soleil’s tiny hovel always reeked of recycled food and sewer rot.
She ignored it, just as she disregarded the loose wall panel that buzzed when the lights blinked overhead, or the rattle of pipes when someone up the corridor flushed.
What she couldn’t disregard was him.
Santi.
He took to sleeping just beyond her door and across the corridor like her shadow.
Every night without fail, she found him curled up in a far corner, coat pulled over his shoulders, long legs stretched out, his back propped against the cold partition.
Silent, still, sentry-like, yet possessive and unrelenting.
Her fokkin’ stalker.
Still, each night she slept better than she had in years.
However, she recognized the toll it took on him, the hollowness in his cheeks, the tension in his spine, the thinning of his muscled leanness.
He’d left his creature comforts, his ship, his title, everything, to sleep outside her hovel like a wolf keeping vigil at a cave mouth.
One night, after a long, torturous day and a murderous maglev journey, she paused at her door and observed him settled into his spot.
Unbidden, tears welled up.
He sensed her at once, his flaming eyes snapping up to meet hers.
She jolted, took a hasty inhale, and pushed through her door.
She wasn’t ready for him, not quite; if anything, her suffering was even more raw now.
She dashed away the wetness on her cheeks, for Soleil rarely cried.
She’d refused to, for years.
Grief was a luxury she taught herself to live without, tight-lipped, back straight, teeth clenched through every loss and wound.
Yet somehow, Santi’s silent presence outside her door, night after night, pushed against her inner barriers.
His steadiness cracked open a truth that sank deep into her marrow; that, despite her resistance, she didn’t have to carry her burdens all alone.
Later that night, after a dinner of thin, tasteless noodle broth and a hurried rinse in the closet-sized shower, she slid into bed, soul frayed and brittle with exhaustion.
The hum of the station murmured around her like a tired lullaby, and for a moment, she thought sleep might come.
Then, without warning, the walls she spent years fortifying gave way.
The dam burst.
At first, it was silent, just breath hitching in her throat, tears sliding down the bridge of her nose into the pillow.
Then the surge of grief hit harder, rougher.
In moments, she was a mess, curled up in a ball as sobs tore loose from her, muffled into the pillow, dampening the fabric beneath her cheek.
Tremors racked her frame, shaking free the pain locked away in the deepest corners of herself.
Years of decay. Of compliant submission. Regret. Shame. Loneliness so thick it’d even hardened into armor.
Now it poured out of her in waves she couldn’t stop.
And for once, she didn’t try to stem it.
All of a sudden, she sensed a presence.
Not him.
His spirit, his ethereal wolf.
It appeared first as a flickering light across her wall, a violet-gold shimmer bending the edges of her room. Immense and majestic, its fur glowing with ethereal radiance.
She twisted in bed with a jagged gasp.
Her body recoiled with instinctive fear.
However, when she recognized his lycan spirit, looming over her, its spectral form incandescent, her terror faded.
She rolled to her side, turning away from it, ashamed, defensive.
Until her barriers cracked and shattered.
She turned again, this time not to flee but to reach out to it, desperate for connection, for freakin’ comfort.
Her hand was struck by an electric arc of sensation that traveled down her arm, sending shards of feeling through her.
She sat up, sobbing harder now, body trembling as her dam broke.
The wolf moved closer and leaned in, its form firming up enough for her to brace against.
She threw her arms around its neck as its limbs encircled her.
She cried into the shimmer of its chest until her breath hitched and her voice cracked, her hands fisted into its silken fur.
The room swirled with pulses of gold and violet energy.
It shifted and encircled her, letting her tuck herself beneath its chest, her head on its heart.
Its heat soaked through her bones, releasing her tight muscles and easing her tautness in places long numbed.
She fell asleep in time, surrounded by the heartbeat and the warmth of its spectral presence.
The next morning, she rose early, eyes puffy, body aching, yet her soul was somehow lighter.
Santi’s wolf had disappeared, but its imprint was in the sheets.
She reached for the space it had lain in and stroked the rough cotton, missing it, him, already.
Later, dressed and ready for work, she walked out of her small home.
As always, heading past Santi, who stood in silence, head bowed, arms crossed over his massive chest, eyes to the ground.
She slowed her roll as she got to him, needing to acknowledge what had happened between dusk and dawn.
Dipping her head, she took a breath. ‘Sante.’