Page 185 of Star Claimed Omega
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.
