Page 148 of Commander’s Mate

Zared stood beside me in the corridor, silent, massive, careful. He had brought me back himself, which I appreciated and resented in equal measure. Appreciated because the corridors still felt too strange, too metallic, too full of men who looked like warriors even when they were only carrying laundry bundles or ration crates. Resented because if he kept escorting me everywhere, everyone aboard would see me as something attached to him.

His solmatu.

The word still made my body warm in a way that annoyed me because my mind had not finished arguing with it.

I looked at the door. “Yes, I do.”

“They will ask questions.”

His jaw tightened, then he released the tension as if he had remembered a lesson from only an hour ago. “You do not owe them private answers.”

“No,” I said. “But they are my people here.”

“They are from Earth.”

His gaze moved over my face. Not possessive now. Not exactly. Concerned. Learning. That was the thing that kept undoing me. Zared Maktu had the kind of body and command presence that could make obedience feel natural, but he was trying to learn where my boundaries were instead of pretending they did not exist.

It made him dangerous in an entirely different way.

“I will be outside,” he said.

The word came out sharper than I meant it to. His eyes narrowed, but he did not step closer.

“I mean,” I said, lowering my voice, “do not stand guard at the door like I am something precious and breakable. Go do commander things. I know where your quarters are. I know how to call you. I know how doors work. Mostly.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “Mostly?”

“Do not get smug. I am still mad about the toilet that flushed itself before I was emotionally prepared.”

Instead, I turned toward the door.

“Harper.”

I paused.

“I will not stand guard,” he said. “But I will come if you call.”

His expression softened in a way that made my chest hurt. “Good.”

The door slid open before I could say anything else.

Every face in the room turned toward me.

The conference room had changed overnight. Not physically; it was still crowded, too bright, and too short on everything that made a person feel human. Women sat on folded blankets on the floor, leaned against walls, huddled around food trays, whispered in languages the translator chip turned into delayed echoes. But something in the room had shifted. There were no slavers. No straps. No auction handlers. No catfish-faced keeper.

Scarlet saw me first.

Her eyebrows went up. Her mouth curved like she was about to make the kind of comment that would have made me laugh two days ago. Then her gaze moved past me, saw that Zared had not followed me inside, and the teasing softened into something else.

“Hey,” she said.

Zoe stood from where she had been sitting cross-legged on a blanket. Nora stopped talking to a pale lavender woman with silver hair. The three of them crossed the room with that same hesitant hurry people used around someone who had come back from the hospital or a funeral.

Maybe I had.

Maybe all of us had.

“Well?” she whispered. “You okay?”