Page 21 of Claimed By the Wraiths

“Three,” I agreed. “And if I miss a window?”

“I come find you.”

“Give me thirty minutes past the window before you move. Conference schedules shift. Meetings run long.”

“Fifteen.”

“Serak.”

“Twenty.”

We looked at each other across the narrow cabin. Two people who had spent years negotiating crew schedules and supply runs, and this was the hardest negotiation we’d ever had. Harder now, with my mouth still warm from his.

“Twenty,” I said. “And you don’t come to the conference levels.”

“Unless you miss the window.”

“Unless I miss the window.”

The border checkpoint was clean. Jessa Corren’s credentials passed without a flag.

The Ghost registered as a civilian transport. We slid into Meridian Station’s commercial docking ring without a ripple.

I looked at him before I opened the hatch.

“Three-hour check-ins,” I said.

“I’ll be listening.”

I should have opened the hatch.

Instead, I leaned across the copilot’s seat and kissed him. Quick, hard, my hand on the back of his neck. I felt the heat surge under his skin, the muscles in his neck going rigid under my hand.

“Come find me if I’m late,” I said against his mouth.

“Twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes.”

I opened the hatch and walked onto the station.

I didn’t look back.

SERAK

Igave her ten minutes. Then I left the Ghost.

Meridian Station smelled like recycled air and floor cleaner. The commercial docking level was busy, staff and travelers moving between berths, cargo handlers loading and unloading, the controlled chaos of a station that existed to service the conference levels above.

Nobody looked at me twice. Civilian clothes, skin locked down, nothing remarkable. Just another body in transit.

The service access was behind a maintenance panel on the lower ring. Unlocked.

Stations like this assumed the threat was external. Their security was built to keep unauthorized people off the conference levels, not to monitor the plumbing.

The infrastructure was open because nobody with diplomatic credentials would be caught dead in a maintenance corridor.

Nobody except me.