Page 154 of Star Claimed Omega
‘Soleil-.’
Her name left his lips as a broken whisper, his voice cracking in the comms, followed by a desperate refrain of‘Nada, nada, nada.’
Agony tore through his chest as he lunged forward, wild and reckless, as though his grief alone possessed the power to snatch back the fragments of her from the fire and oblivion that claimedTheClaw.
‘FOKKKKKKKK!’His roar ripped through the neural comms like a thunderclap, piercing the emptiness.
‘Santi! Get into theBruto, now!’
Kaal’s voice, raw, distant, and panicked, broke through the channel, but the XO didn’t hear him.
Nor did he sense the heat peeling past his skin, or the radiation gnawing at the edges of his aetheric bloom, nor the shrapnel slicing through him.
All that existed for him was the place she last stood, the flare of light that swallowed her whole.
His woman. Gone.
All because he chose to come after her.
All because he believed, just for one stupid, star-crossed moment, that they might still have a second chance.
A massive, spectral force slammed into him, dragging him away from the heart of the blast.
Kaal wrapped around him mid-flight like a protective comet, shifting them both in an explosive teleport toward theBruto.
The airlock clanged shut just as a sheet of shrapnel screeched across the hull, denting the steel and blackening the outer plating.
Miral, waiting on the med deck, scanned Santi and barked orders to Kaal: ‘Get him stabilized! Core vitals.’
Kaal waved a med kit over him. ‘Hermano, you’ve a death wish, every time you wade into a fray you go hard,fokk.’
Santi was already too far gone to register any activity or conversation.
He pushed his friends with great force and stumbled from the med bed, all the way back to the bridge.
He reached his arms out, his claws still extended, palms on the plexiglass.
His spectral form flickered between human and wolf, shuddering with the raw grief.
He didn’t speak, he didn’t blink, and he scarcely breathed.
His eyes were open but glazed over, and his mouth slack as he stared through the forward viewport.
Where the remains of theClawburned like the funeral pyre of a goddess.
Miral’s hand hovered over his shoulder, then she dropped it.
‘Stay by him, grieve with him,’ she murmured to Kaal. ‘He’s in soul-shock.’
So they did, keeping an eye on him, feeding and watering him, sitting beside him, lending them their strength as he keened into his silent grief.
For three days, theBrutomade its long trek back toTheSombra, slinking through broken asteroid belts and plasma storms.
In that time, Santi didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, and didn’t speak; he just stared out into the void of space, ghost-eyed, as if he had buried his heart in the ashes of the burningClaw.
26
Chapter 26
