JESSA

The Ghost was not designed for two people.

There was one bunk. One narrow bunk, bolted to the cabin wall, with a thin mattress and a blanket that smelled faintly of Maris’s engine grease. The fold-down seat across from it was technically a second sleeping option, but Serak’s legs didn’t fit when it was deployed.

We figured this out thirty minutes into the transit.

“I’ll take the seat,” he said.

“You won’t fit in the seat.”

“I’ll fit.”

“You didn’t fit in the maintenance conduit either and you went through it anyway. That doesn’t mean it was comfortable.”

“I don’t need comfortable. I need functional.”

“You need sleep. If we’re doing this, you need to be sharp when we get there, not cramped and exhausted.”

He looked at the bunk. Looked at me. Looked at the bunk again.

“We’re not going to make this weird,” I said. “We’ve been sharing a mess hall table at the late watch for years.”

“A table is not a bunk.”

“The principle is the same. Two adults, one flat surface, nobody talks about it.”

He sat on the fold-down seat. His knees hit the opposite wall. He shifted. His knees hit the bunk frame.

“I told you.”

“Fine.” He moved to the bunk and sat on the edge, looking like he’d rather be back in the maintenance conduit.

I sat at the pilot’s console and ran the transit calculations. Fourteen hours to Meridian. The Ghost hummed differently from the Raptor. Higher, thinner. A smaller ship with a bigger engine, vibrating at a frequency that got into your teeth.

“Autopilot’s set,” I said. “Nothing to do until we hit the border checkpoint.”

He was studying the Meridian schematics on his datapad. Service corridors, junction points, maintenance access. He’d been at it since we left the Raptor.

“You’re memorizing the ventilation layout,” I said.

“I’m memorizing the entire layout.”

“Starting with ventilation.”

He didn’t look up. “Ventilation systems connect every level. If I need to move vertically without using the lifts, the main shafts are wide enough.”

“For a normal person, or for you?”

“For me.”

I pulled my legs up and turned my chair to face him. The cabin was so small my knees were a hand’s width from his. “What happened at the relay. With the soldiers. Walk me through it.”

He put the datapad down. “You already asked about this.”

“You gave me the short version. I want the real one.”

“The short version is the real one.”

“Serak.”

He took a breath. “It’s a Khavai ability. Rare. Most of my people can darken their skin for camouflage. A few can do what I do. Pull the shadows in, bend the light. It disrupts visual tracking, confuses targeting systems.” He paused. “My people consider it dangerous.”

“Dangerous to who?”

“To the user. The longer you hold it, the harder it is to let go. You start losing the edges of yourself. Where you end and the shadow begins.It gets harder to come back the longer it lasts. You start dissolving at the edges. Where you end and the shadow begins.”

“But you’ve used it before.”

“In combat. Short bursts. Enough to clear a corridor or break a position.”

“And the version you used at the relay? Was that a short burst?”

“Yes.”

“What’s a long burst?”

He looked at me. “Something I haven’t done in a long time. Something I don’t plan to do.”

“But you could.”

“I could.”

The way his hands went dark. The way the shadows bent toward him. The way he’d dropped through a ceiling into a room full of hostiles because I was on the other side of a door.

The Khavai bond comes once. One person, one chance. He’d told me that during a late watch months ago, half-asleep, the closest he’d ever come to unguarded. I hadn’t asked what happened to his bond.

Now I wondered if he’d been spending it all along. On mugs left in the dark. On a shoulder touched in passing. On a ceiling he shouldn’t have come through.

The transit clock showed twelve hours remaining.

“You should sleep,” I said. “I’ll take first watch.”

“There’s nothing to watch. We’re on autopilot.”

“Then there’s no reason not to sleep.”

He looked at the bunk. The single, narrow bunk.

“I’ll sleep when you sleep,” he said.

“That defeats the purpose of shifts.”

“I’m aware.”

I turned back to the console. He went back to his schematics. The Ghost hummed between us, carrying us both toward something neither of us was ready for.

Six hours in, I woke up in the copilot’s chair with a blanket over me that I hadn’t put there. Serak was at the console, running a systems check. The Meridian schematics were still on his datapad, but he’d switched to a different section. Security camera placements.

“You were supposed to wake me,” I said.

“You needed the sleep more than I needed the company.”

“That’s not how shifts work.”

“I changed the protocol.”

I pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders. It should have smelled like Maris’s engine grease, the way it had when we boarded. It didn’t. It smelled like him. Warm, something mineral and clean. He’d been sitting on the bunk for hours before he covered me with it, and the blanket had held onto him instead.

I’d been noticing that scent for years and never let myself think about it. I let myself think about it now.

“Four hours to the border checkpoint,” he said.

“I should change.”

The refresher was barely wide enough to stand in. I changed into the conference clothes I’d packed. Formal enough. Plain enough to move in. Comfortable shoes.

When I came out, Serak looked at me and then looked away. Fast. The kind of fast that said he’d seen something he didn’t want to keep seeing.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing. You look…” He stopped. “Ready. You look ready.”

“That’s not what you were going to say.”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

I didn’t sit back down. I crossed the cabin. Two steps, that’s all there was. I stood in front of him. His knees were against the bunk frame. There was nowhere for him to go.

“Say what you were going to say.”

“Jessa.”

“Say it.”

He looked up at me. Those black eyes, and for once I didn’t search for something to hold onto. I just looked.

“You look like someone I can’t afford to lose,” he said. “And you’re about to walk into a place where I can’t protect you.”

I put my hand on his face. The skin under my palm went warm. I felt it, the heat, the Khavai response, the thing he couldn’t control.

He went still. Not the controlled stillness of a captain in a briefing. The stillness of a man who’d stopped breathing.

“You came through the ceiling for me,” I said. “You crawled through a conduit. You put yourself between me and a breach. And you’re sitting on this bunk telling me I look ready.”

“Jessa.”

“Stop saying my name and do something about it.”

He pulled me down to him.

Not gentle. Not careful. His mouth found mine and the heat that had been in his hands and his jaw and his skin for weeks was suddenly everywhere, in his lips and his breath and the grip of his hands on my hips pulling me closer. I grabbed the front of his shirt and held on.

The kiss lasted long enough for me to forget the mission, the station, the conference, every reason this was a terrible idea. Long enough for me to feel his hands shake against my waist, which told me he wasn’t in control of this any more than I was.

We broke apart. Breathing hard. His forehead against mine. His hands still on my hips. I was still holding his shirt.

“That was a terrible idea,” he said.

“I know.”

“We can’t do this before the mission.”

“I know.”

“If I start this now, I won’t be able to stop.”

I let go of his shirt. Smoothed the wrinkled fabric. My hands were steadier than his.

“Then we finish the mission first,” I said. “And then you don’t stop.”

Something shifted in those black eyes. Not a crack. A decision.

“That’s a promise,” he said.

“Yes. It is.”

I made myself step back. Sat down. Took a breath.

“When we dock, I go to registration. You go to the service levels. Check-ins every four hours.”

“Two.”

“Four. Two is conspicuous. If I’m ducking out every two hours, someone will notice.”

“Three.”

“Three,” I agreed. “And if I miss a window?”

“I come find you.”

“Give me thirty minutes past the window before you move. Conference schedules shift. Meetings run long.”

“Fifteen.”

“Serak.”

“Twenty.”

We looked at each other across the narrow cabin. Two people who had spent years negotiating crew schedules and supply runs, and this was the hardest negotiation we’d ever had. Harder now, with my mouth still warm from his.

“Twenty,” I said. “And you don’t come to the conference levels.”

“Unless you miss the window.”

“Unless I miss the window.”

The border checkpoint was clean. Jessa Corren’s credentials passed without a flag. The Ghost registered as a civilian transport. We slid into Meridian Station’s commercial docking ring without a ripple.

I looked at him before I opened the hatch.

“Three-hour check-ins,” I said.

“I’ll be listening.”

I should have opened the hatch. Instead I leaned across the copilot’s seat and kissed him. Quick, hard, my hand on the back of his neck. I felt the heat surge under his skin, his whole body going taut.

“Come find me if I’m late,” I said against his mouth.

“Twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes.”

I opened the hatch and walked onto the station. I didn’t look back.