Page 69 of Claimed By the Wraiths

The crew had reconvened in Nexus’s main hangar between jobs, the way all of us seemed to be moving now: work, triage, sleep, repeat.

The Ghost was still where we’d left it.

Empty.

I looked at Maris.

She looked back. “No.”

“I haven’t asked yet.”

“You’re looking at my ship.”

“I need it for the night.”

Zevik made a strangled sound and converted it into a cough when Maris turned her head.

Maris studied the bandage at my ribs, then Jessa’s hand on my arm, then my face.

“Bring it back with all the hull plates attached.”

“I can do that.”

“And if Solren says you’re not cleared to leave the Raptor, I’m taking the keys back.”

Solren looked at me. “His temperature is normal, the neural readings are stable, and the burn seal is holding. He can leave. No pressure on the burn, no heroics, and if the slipping starts again, you come back immediately.”

Maris held out the access chip.

Jessa took it before I could.

“Safer with me,” she said.

“Obviously.”

The crew began to scatter toward the work that was still waiting.

Jessa walked me to the Ghost.

The docking berth was quiet now. Security had clearly swept the Ghost while we were gone: a storage latch stood open, and one service panel sat crooked where somebody had put it back. But the cabin beyond the hatch was almost as we’d left it: one bunk, one useless fold-down seat, the copilot’s chair she’d slept in, the blanket still on the bunk.

She closed the hatch behind us.

I looked at her.

She looked at me.

The promise I’d made in this cabin was the only unfinished thing that belonged only to us.

“You said you wouldn’t stop,” she said.

“I said that.”

“The mission is over.”

“It is.”

“The prisoners are free.”