Page 142 of Star Claimed Omega
Toward the wolves and the father she betrayed Santi for, and whatever ruin came next.
Soleil stood at the edge of the celebration, her backbone rigid, her fists balled beneath the sleeves of her coat.
TheRedSkulls’ feast spilled across the grand galley deck of theCrimson Shrike.
The space was draped in blood-red banners, illuminated by plasma bulbs, and heavy with the stink of malted grog and sweat.
Laughter cracked the air like cannon fire.
Pirate capos with chromed teeth and laser-carved tattoos thumped goblets against one another, their whiskey and stim-ale sloshing to the floor.
A woman in a synth-chiffon bodice danced on a table as men roared and slapped their knives on the surface.
Whores, half-human and part-modded, wrapped their arms around any man with schills or clout.
In the far corner, indentured servers, some scarcely more than teens, moved under the lash of barked orders, their faces carved with fear.
Soleil swallowed bile.
Her father, Varnok, sat with his feet propped on a stool, bellowing a song off-key, an arm looped around a trembling girl he had forgotten he was holding.
Vern slouched alongside him, his face flushed, his eyes shining with the wildness of too much liquor high on his victory.
The sight of them made her stomach roil with a toxic blend of duty and profound disgust.
Soleil forced herself to step closer to the pair.
She kept her head bowed, her hands clasped at her waist, pushing her body into a posture of fragile submission.
Her fury, a hot, metallic poison, was shoved down, buried deep beneath her ribs so the monsters wouldn’t scent it.
‘Father,’ she murmured, barely a thread of sound, yet humble. ‘I apologize for the interruption, but where is Aunt Raissa?’
Her brave aunt, who’d gone after her sister, was the anchor Soleil believed she was fighting for, whose suffering face she’d been shown in a cell, waiting for her deliverance.
Vern locked eyes with his twin, a silent, sickening communication passing between them, and then they both erupted in maniacal, echoing laughter.
‘Raissa was long fed to the hungry maws of space,’ Vern sneered, leaning forward, enjoying the reveal. ‘After recording a few holos to use as your incentive, we spaced her. The bitch tried to kill Varnok for her sister, your mother, Alina. Did you think we’d let her live?’
So all the holos, the voice prints, the desperate messages to save her were all a lie?
Raissa was long gone?
Grief hit her so hard, Soleil had to bite back a sharp gasp.
Soleil paled, stumbling back a step, the shock a physical blow that staggered her balance. ‘So all this time you’ve been using her life as a carrot so I could do your bidding?’ she whispered, the realization fracturing her core.
‘But of course, daughter, you needed the motivation,’ theMad Wolf Kingchuckled, his utterance thick and slurring, a repulsive sound.
In that moment, a dark, primal switch flipped within her.
The bastards. The absolute, controlling, fokkin’ bastards.
She didn’t just want to escape them; she wanted to personally pull the trigger on both their worthless heads, to watch the life drain from their eyes, and finally cleanse the universe of their toxic legacy.
She kept her face expressionless, as her eyes flicked around.
Before the pair of men, on a small, velvet-lined plinth, rested a bomb.
