Page 18 of Claimed By the Wraiths

“I could.”

“And your hands going dark,” I said. “Around me. Is that the same thing?”

“Same biology.” He looked at his hands on the datapad. “Different trigger.”

He didn’t say what the trigger was. He didn’t need to.

The Khavai bond comes once and doesn’t come back. He’d told me that during a late watch months ago, half-asleep, the closest he’d ever come to unguarded.

I’d never asked whether he’d already met his.

Now I wondered if I already knew the answer.

Quietly. For years.

On mugs left in the dark. On a shoulder touched in passing.

The name from the mess hall came back to me.

“What does Mairuke mean?”

Serak kept his attention on the schematics. “Nothing relevant.”

“You used that answer already.”

“It remains accurate.”

“Destroyer?”

“No.”

“Blood Fang?”

He looked at me.

“Dread of Enemies?”

“Jessa.”

“Tiny Death.”

“Go to sleep.”

“I knew it was embarrassing.”

“It is not embarrassing.”

“Then translate it.”

“No.”

He went back to the station layout. I went back to watching him pretend the conversation was over.

An hour later I tried “Conqueror of Worlds.”

He didn’t even look up.

By the time the transit clock showed twelve hours remaining, I still didn’t have a translation, and Serak had stopped reacting to my guesses at all.