Page 30 of Claimed By the Wraiths

I grabbed the front of his jacket.

“Where?”

“Two took her.” His voice shook. “Military ring.”

“How long ago?”

“Three minutes. Maybe four.”

“Which direction?”

He pointed toward the station’s interior docking ring. Not the commercial level where the Ghost was berthed. The interior ring, where the military transport had docked forty minutes ago.

I moved. Full shadow-meld, burning through reserves I’d been saving.

The corridors bent around me. Security cameras tracked nothing. Staff members stepped aside without knowing why.

I reached the interior docking ring in ninety seconds. The transport’s loading ramp was cycling closed. Through the narrowing gap I saw her.

Jessa, unconscious, carried between two operatives. Her hair was loose. One of her shoes was missing.

She’d fought. She’d fought hard and they’d taken her anyway.

The gap narrowed. I ran.

Ten meters. Five.

The ramp sealed.

I hit the hull with my open palm. The metal rang and the sound echoed through the docking bay and nobody heard it because there was nobody there.

The transport’s engines came online. The docking clamps released. The ship pulled away from the station.

I stood in the docking bay and watched it go. The woman I’d kissed in the Ghost’s cabin, the woman I’d been refusing to need, the woman who made two mugs at the late watch.

On a transport heading for deep void.

The shadow-meld was still on me, thick and heavy.

I should have let it go. Locked it down. Pulled back.

Instead, I reached.

Not with my hands. With the connection my conscious mind had denied and my biology had mapped anyway. The proto-bond, wired into me one late watch at a time without my permission.

The transport was gone. But she was there, faint, moving, pulling away from me toward deep void.

I held onto that thread until I knew the direction. Then I let the shadow-meld drop.

My knees hit the deck. My hands were shaking. The corridor lights came back in a rush that hurt my eyes.

Solren’s medkit was still in my jacket pocket. Nothing in it for what was wrong with me.

Tal came through the main corridor less than a minute later, breathing hard. He’d taken the direct route instead of trying to follow me through the dark.

“Where are they taking her?” I asked.

“Nexus Station. It’s the only place they’d go.”