Lysandra Varn didn't watch ships the way dockhands did.
Dockhands saw paint and tonnage and registry codes. They saw a Union-class DropShip and thought profit or trouble depending on the mood of the man holding the clipboard.
Lysandra watched posture.
Angle on approach. Time spent drifting. How long a vessel held a line before correcting. How it responded when a smaller craft slid too close, sniffing. Whether it flinched.
Moonjaw didn't flinch.
That was why her hands stayed steady as the screens floated in front of her chair like pale ghosts. A dozen feeds. Dock Arm Seven. Market ring. Service corridors. Contract board. Private hangars. Comms intercepts. Sensor echoes. The Nest's eyes, stitched into every surface like parasites.
The chamber itself was quiet in the way only power could afford. Old asteroid hollow, carved into tiers and plated in steel. Low amber lighting that softened nothing—it only made it easier to hide stains.
Lysandra wore black and red like it was a rule. Tight where she demanded control, structured where she wanted people to read her as sharp, and comfortable only in the places she allowed herself to be human. Her hair was pinned back. Her face was elegant in a way that made softness feel like a weapon. Whiskey-colored eyes. A mouth that smiled when someone else realized they'd already lost.
On the lowest tier, a man knelt with his hands tied behind him. Not pleading. Not anymore. A debt runner who'd skimmed her ledger and thought distance could protect him.
She didn't look at him.
He was already dead. He just hadn't received the message yet.
Her attention was on the feed showing Moonjaw's Union sliding away from the dock clamps.
A Dire Wolf on the manifest.
Ronan's machine.
Ronan's legacy.
Ronan's son.
A woman stood to Lysandra's right—one of her recruiters, clean jacket, clean hands, eyes that stayed calm because they'd seen worse than this chamber. She kept her voice respectful and her posture careful.
"You want the report polished," the recruiter asked, "or honest?"
Lysandra's gaze didn't move. "Honest."
"They killed two of ours in the service corridor," the recruiter said. "Fast. Minimal noise. No panic. Lyra Sato moved first. The blonde—Jinx—finished a wounded man without hesitation. Taila shot center mass and didn't freeze. The gothic captive kicked the latch puck before it could bite. The tech twins blocked the lane and retreated together. Their leader—Dack—didn't waste rounds."
Lysandra's lips curved slightly. "Good."
The recruiter hesitated, then tried to keep her voice neutral. "Good…?"
"If they were weak," Lysandra said, "it would be boring."
A second figure entered the chamber without ceremony: Kite, the broker with the bird-skull patch, walking like someone who understood value and never pretended to be ashamed of it.
"They took the contract," Kite said.
"Of course they did," Lysandra replied.
Kite's eyes narrowed. "You're pulling them too hard. That latch drone in lane traffic was sloppy."
Lysandra finally looked at her. The warmth in her eyes didn't comfort. It warned. "It was a test."
"Tests make prey bolt."
"Good," Lysandra said again, and this time her smile sharpened by a fraction. "I don't want prey. I want something that thinks."
Kite studied her for a beat, then asked the question she never asked unless she was certain she could survive the answer.
"Why him?"
The chamber felt colder.
Lysandra didn't answer immediately. She expanded one of the screens: a corridor camera angle catching Moonjaw mid-fight—Dack at the front, weapon steady, expression flat. Jinx dragging Taila into cover with a bright laugh that didn't match the blood on the deck. Lyra moving like a blade. Morrigan kicking the latch puck away like it was an insult. The twins—Rook and Rafe—blocking the lane shoulder-to-shoulder like separation was impossible.
Lysandra watched the twins longest.
Then she said softly, "Because he builds a pack."
Kite's jaw tightened. "That's not a reason."
"It's the only reason that matters," Lysandra said.
She leaned back in her chair with the slow ease of someone who had never had to apologize for taking space.
"You want the story?" she asked. "Fine."
She let her gaze drift off the screens—as if the past were another feed she could summon whenever she wanted.
---
Once, before the Nest, Lysandra had been a woman with a name and a plan.
She'd been clever. Ambitious. The kind of girl who learned early that kindness was only safe when you had leverage.
Her sister Selene was different. Selene had the kind of softness that made people underestimate her. Selene smiled and doors opened. Selene spoke and men listened like they wanted to believe they could be good.
Lysandra had always hated that.
Not Selene. Not at first.
She hated the way the universe rewarded softness like it was virtue.
Then Ronan Jarn came into their orbit.
He wasn't a prince or a noble, but he carried himself like war had taught him discipline. He moved through salvage yards and contract halls like he belonged there. And he had something with him that made the air feel heavier the first time you saw it:
A Dire Wolf.
Lysandra didn't fall for the machine.
She fell for what it meant.
Power. Skill. Independence. A pilot who could choose his own contracts and burn anyone who tried to chain him.
She courted him the way she did everything—direct, honest, hungry.
Not cheap flirting. Not helpless eyes. She gave him value. She helped him navigate lanes. She found him parts. She learned his machine's habits until she could tell what it needed by sound alone.
Ronan noticed.
Ronan liked being understood.
He touched her first in a hangar, greasy hands and quiet breath, like he was testing whether she was real. Lysandra took it and didn't pretend it was romantic. Romance was for fools.
But she let herself believe—just a little—that she'd won something.
Then Ronan got bored.
Not suddenly. Not dramatically. He just started looking for something easier to hold.
Selene didn't know Lysandra was with him. Selene never saw the late nights in the hangar, the whispered plans, the promises spoken when the Dire Wolf's engine noise covered the words. Selene saw Ronan the way everyone saw Ronan: confident, charming in a blunt way, a warrior who looked like he'd chosen her.
And Ronan—Ronan let her see that version.
He moved on to Selene like changing contracts.
Like Lysandra had been a phase.
Selene didn't betray her on purpose.
That was what made it worse.
Because it meant Lysandra couldn't even paint her sister as a villain without lying.
Selene became pregnant.
Lysandra found out the way you find out things when you're the person who reads ledgers and listens to whispers—too late to stop it, too early to pretend it didn't matter.
Then Selene had the child.
Dack.
Lysandra held him once. A small thing with lungs that didn't know fear yet. Eyes too sharp for an infant. Like Ronan's focus had been stamped into him before he even learned words.
Lysandra handed him back to Selene and smiled.
Then she went somewhere private and broke something that couldn't be repaired.
Ronan had chosen Selene.
Not because Selene was better.
Because Selene was easier.
Because Selene was warmth without teeth.
And Lysandra—Lysandra had teeth.
Ronan liked teeth in war.
He didn't like them at home.
So Lysandra planned.
If she couldn't take him back, she would take everything he'd built that mattered.
She built a trap out of contracts and timing. A fight that looked like raiders and bad luck. The kind of death people accepted because the galaxy was full of them.
Ronan died the way legends die when someone wants the legend gone: fast, violent, and blamed on "the lanes."
Selene mourned.
Dack grew up around grief like it was another family member.
And Lysandra—Lysandra took the pieces Ronan left behind that nobody noticed at first.
Contacts. Debts. salvage routes. desperate pilots who needed a place to be ugly and alive.
A Nest.
A place where she didn't have to be chosen, because she was the one who chose.
The title "Mother Lark" started as a joke whispered by dock rats.
Then it became respect.
Then it became fear.
She wore it like a crown and a blade.
For a while, it almost felt like enough.
Almost.
Because Dack survived.
Because the Dire Wolf survived.
Because Selene still existed somewhere in the galaxy with Ronan's child and Ronan's legacy, living proof that Lysandra had been discarded.
So Lysandra decided she wasn't done.
---
She returned her attention to the present.
"At first," Lysandra said, voice calm, "I wanted him dead."
Kite didn't speak. The recruiter didn't either.
"I wanted the Dire Wolf back," Lysandra continued. "And I wanted the boy erased. No martyrs. No clean revenge trail. Just… gone."
She flicked her fingers and brought up an old payment trail—dirty, layered, routed through shells.
"Kess," Kite said quietly.
Lysandra nodded. "Kess was greedy. Useful. Disposable."
She smiled faintly. "He learned mid-job who the Dire Wolf truly belonged to. He realized Dack was Ronan's son."
The recruiter's eyes narrowed. "And he tried to use that."
"He tried to break him with a trap," Lysandra said. "To lead him into a kill lane and take the machine."
Kess didn't just fail.
He gave Dack something.
"Taila," Kite muttered.
Lysandra's eyes hardened. "Yes."
A bondsman. A reason. A girl who made Dack stop being a lone blade and start becoming a shield.
"Kess died," Lysandra said, as if correcting the universe.
"And Sable," Kite said.
Lysandra's mouth tightened. "Sable was meant to bleed him quietly. Ruin his contracts. Poison his lanes. Keep him running until exhaustion did the killing."
Sable fled instead.
And Dack built a pack.
Jinx. Lyra. Morrigan. The twins. A DropShip crew that looked like it should've fractured under pressure—but instead tightened.
Lysandra watched Moonjaw's feed again and spoke softly, almost lovingly:
"They care."
Kite's voice was low. "So you want them too."
Lysandra's smile returned, pleasant and poisonous. "I want him to watch."
The recruiter swallowed.
Lysandra continued anyway, because she wanted the words in the air where they could be felt.
"I want Dack alive," she said. "Restrained. Unable to look away."
She tapped the screen showing the women moving through the Nest in tight black-and-red that had started to become a signature. "I want his crew captured. One by one."
Her eyes glittered. "And then I want him to see them die in front of him. So he learns what it costs to build a pack."
Kite's jaw clenched. "You're going to do it yourself."
"Eventually," Lysandra said.
That mattered. The timeline. The patience.
Because Lysandra knew how stories ended.
She knew—like a cold certainty—that she would meet Dack face-to-face again. Not through drones. Not through recruiters. Not through hired knives.
Later.
When she could hold the ending.
But for now, she stayed smart.
She stayed unseen.
She stayed in control.
"Current status," Lysandra said.
The recruiter straightened. "They took the ground escort contract. They're dropping planet-side. Limited comm towers. Slag badlands. Plenty of blind lanes."
"Good," Lysandra said.
Kite frowned. "If you hit them too hard, they'll bolt."
Lysandra's smile didn't waver. "Then we make bolting expensive."
She flicked to private hangar feeds.
Heavy machines standing in quiet rows like sleeping gods:
A Zeus with clean actuator servicing.
An Orion with fresh armor plates.
A Thunderbolt loaded and ready.
And deeper in shadow—her personal predator, kept for the moments when she wanted to feel power in her bones—a Warhawk, black plating and red seam marks like scars.
"No Nest markings," Lysandra ordered. "No bird patches. Dirty transponders. Make it look like raiders who got lucky."
Kite's eyes narrowed. "You want them confused."
"For ten minutes," Lysandra said.
The recruiter's voice was careful. "Alive is difficult."
Lysandra's eyes warmed like firelight behind glass. "Then don't shoot to kill."
A pause.
"Legs," Lysandra said, bored. "Overwhelm. Force shutdown. Smoke their comms. Make them stay in their cockpits until they surrender or cook."
Kite exhaled slowly. "And if they win."
Lysandra's smile turned real for a heartbeat. "Then they prove they're worth the trouble."
"And if they lose," the recruiter said.
Lysandra leaned forward slightly. "Then you bring them to me."
She stood, black and red sliding over steel.
On the screen, Moonjaw's Union fell toward the planet like a clean lie—paperwork tidy, engines controlled, pack tight and confident.
Lysandra watched it descend with the same expression she wore when she tightened a noose.
Ronan had cheated on her with Selene.
Selene hadn't known.
Dack was the living proof of that betrayal.
So Lysandra Varn—Mother Lark—was going to erase the proof in the only way that felt correct.
Not a quick death.
A lesson.
A slow ending.
A pack torn apart.
And Dack Jarn forced to understand who he belonged to—right before she killed him.
"Signal the ground team," she said.
The recruiter nodded once. "Yes, Mother."
Lysandra didn't look back at the kneeling man on the lower tier.
One of her shadows stepped forward and ended him with a small, efficient sound.
The Nest stayed quiet.
The screens kept watching.
And down on the planet, the badlands waited—ready to swallow a convoy, three mechs, and a pack that didn't realize how personal the hunt had become.