Page 126 of Star Claimed Omega
Nothing, not even death, had prepared him for meeting the woman he thought was the love of his life, then having her twisted into a weapon against him.
While she reigned as queen of her own damnation.
He lifted his hands, so she would see he meant no harm.
‘Mi sol,’ he rasped, voice desperate, cracking with emotion. ‘It doesn’t have to be this way.’
Her eyes, thosefokkin’perfect eyes, glowed from behind the mask, awash in regret and power.
‘It’s the only way,’ she whispered.
‘Vern’s been in my head for years now, controlling, commanding, and monitoring me. There’s no freedom, Santi. There’s only obey, or die.’
Her voice cracked, but her fingers spasmed.
Santi caught it, the tremor, a flicker of hesitation, the twitch beneath her eye, the change in her breath pattern.
She wasn’t just talking to him.
She was receiving a command.
‘Nada,’ he grated, but it was too late.
Her spine arched.
With a pulse of scarlet light, her neural node lit up behind her ear.
The signal fired through her nervous system like lightning in blood. Her body convulsed, then steadied, straightening with a terrible grace.
Without warning, sheshifted.
Before his eyes, Soleil transformed into a creature of myth.
A lycan, but unlike any he’d ever seen.
Her bones shimmered and cracked, her limbs lengthening, her face stretching into a lupine mask of spectral power.
Glowing burgundy fur unfurled across her form like silk spun from firelight, each hair gleaming like molten rubies under pressure.
Her paws struck the ground, heavy with ethereal resonance, as luminous claws with flickering crimson light extended from them.
A mane of aether blazed from her shoulders to her spine, and over her eyes,a mask.
It too was scarlet, armored, and laced with the twin sigils of theRed Skulls.
‘BeholdThe Red Queen,’ Vern jeered.
Soleil stood before him, massive and terrible in her beauty, spectral light bleeding from her fur like mist.
The vermilion radiance pulsed in time with her heartbeat, syncing with the flickering bomb in her hand and the prison’s electromagnetic locks.
Santi’s breath locked in his throat.
Every protective instinct in him detonated.
Her scent, gods, her musk, hit him like a solar flare.Amber, crushed starfruit, and jasmine.His woman. His fated. Hismate.
He ached to go to her. To pull her from that cursed form. To mark her in return.
