Page 24 of Claimed By the Wraiths

I’d spent the day crawling through the guts of a station while she worked a room full of diplomats the way she’d been trained to since thirteen. We were ten meters apart, separated by deck plating, operating in completely different worlds.

And hours ago, I’d had my mouth on hers in a cabin that smelled like lubricant and recycled air, and the feeling of her hands in my shirt was still in my body.

“Check in three,” I said. “Out.”

JESSA

Tal’s session was as dull as diplomatic panels had always been. Trade routes. Tariff structures. Three people saying the same thing in increasingly expensive words.

I knew this world. The real work happened after the panels, in corridors and side rooms, while everyone else was still congratulating themselves for attending.

Tal chaired the session the way I remembered: quiet, competent, giving every speaker exactly enough attention to make them feel important. His hair had gone fully gray. The lines around his mouth were deeper than they’d been when I was seventeen.

I watched from the fourth row.

When the session broke, his aide caught my eye and nodded toward the corridor.

Side room 14-B was small. Table, four chairs, sealed window onto an interior corridor. Private without looking important enough to be private.

I took the chair facing the door.

My father had taught me that.

Tal came in alone and stopped when he saw me.

“Jessa Corren.”

“You remember.”

“You look like your father.”

“I’ve heard that.”

“He still talks about you. Usually after the third drink.” Something moved across his face. “He says he made mistakes.”

I filed that for a different life.

“I need the routing access you’ve been using for the modified diplomatic channels.”

The color left his face.

Then came the recovery. Smooth. Professional.

“I manage hundreds of routing authorizations.”

“Not like these.”

“I don’t know what you think you found.”

“Diplomatic immunity tags on feeder vessels. Trade authorizations that stay clean until the cargo changes classification. Intake notices routed through private authentication after the ships reach deep void.”

His eyes sharpened.

Good.

I put my datapad on the table but didn’t turn it toward him.

“We have the traffic, Tal. Not guesses. Not fragments. Authenticated chains. Early authorizations that could pass for routine facilitation, then intake and status updates after there was no possible way to misunderstand what the cargo was.”