Page 15 of Claimed By the Wraiths

“You saying no, then finding a way to go yourself.” He pushed off the console. “Maris is prepping the Ghost. Thoryn’s running security protocols for the Raptor in your absence. Zevik’s already filed the nav coordinates.”

They’d planned for this.

Not for Jessa going alone. For both of us going.

The crew had read the situation, read their captain, and prepared for the outcome they knew was coming before I’d admitted it to myself.

“Who runs the ship?”

“Maris has command experience. Thoryn’s her second. Deyric handles tech. The Raptor will be fine for a week.”

“And if it’s not a week?”

“Then we come get you.” He straightened. “Same as always.”

I found Jessa in her quarters. She was packing.

Quick and spare, the way she did everything. One bag, nothing extra. Civilian clothes, conference wear, a compact tool kit, and the blaster she’d carried at the Haven.

She looked up when I came through the door. Didn’t seem surprised.

“I’m not going to let you go alone,” I said.

“I know.”

“You can’t know that. I said no an hour ago.”

“Maris told me you were studying Meridian schematics.” She folded a shirt and put it in the bag. “You didn’t say no to the mission, Serak. You said no to losing me.”

I didn’t have an answer that wouldn’t prove her right.

“Maris talks too much.”

“Maris is usually right.” She stopped packing. “What’s your plan?”

“The Ghost docks civilian. You go to the conference. I work the service levels. Map the station from underneath. Stay close enough to extract you if it goes wrong.”

“You can’t go to the conference floors.”

“I won’t need to. Service corridors run through every level. Maintenance access at every junction. I can be anywhere on that station in minutes without being seen.”

She looked at me for a long beat. I knew she had questions: about the relay, about what I’d done in that corridor, about the dark in my hands.

She’d ask them. But not now.

“We leave in four hours,” she said. “I want to arrive at Meridian with a full day before Tal’s session.”

That evening, the crew gathered in the hangar. No formal send-off. Nobody announced it.

Just people finding reasons to be there, the way this family always found reasons to be in the same room when something mattered.

Zevik checked the Ghost’s nav systems twice, then checked them again.

Deyric handed Jessa a data drive, small enough to palm, loaded with everything he’d built for the upload. “Don’t lose that,” he said. “It took me three weeks.”

Solren pressed a medkit into my hands. Compact, field-grade, stocked for species he’d never be able to treat remotely.

“Bring her back,” he said.