“Zip has opinions about everything. It’s his most endearing quality.” I twist in the cage of his arms until I can see hisface. Starlight from the viewport spills over him: molten-gold eyes with no pupil, just endless liquid fire, scales at his temples shimmering like spilled starlight. He looks like sin made flesh, and he’s looking at me like I’m the only thing worth burning for.
“How do you feel?” I ask, voice softer than I mean it to be.
He cups my jaw, thumb stroking over the swollen bite mark with deliberate reverence. His eyes flare brighter, pupils blown wide even though I still can’t see them.
“Satisfied,” he says, the word a low growl that vibrates through my bones. “Claimed.” His thumb presses harder, possessive. “Yours.”
My breath catches. “Yeah, well.” I swallow, throat dry. “Same.”
For a moment we just stare. Him: all alien elegance and lethal grace, somehow even more beautiful wrecked and sleep-rumpled. Me: hair a disaster, skin painted with his marks, still smelling like sex and him and us. And yet he’s looking at me like I’m something sacred.
It’s terrifying. And I want it to last forever.
I clear my throat. “So. Mining data. You said you needed to show me something?”
The mask doesn’t quite slam back down, but I watch him shift gears. Soldier mode. Mission focus. He sits up carefully, and I immediately miss his weight. The bunk feels too big without him sprawled all over it.
He reaches for his jacket and retrieves the crystal. In the ambient light, it’s still faintly luminous, pulsing in time with his heartbeat. Or maybe mine. Hard to tell now that we’re bonded.
“This,” he says quietly, “contains the original survey data for the Baltharax sector. Three generations of my family’s work. Mining claims, resource maps, geological analyses.” He turns it over in his palm, and I catch the ghost of old pain in his expression. “Meridian has spent thirty years trying to invalidateour claims through legal channels. Bribing officials, falsifying counter-surveys, challenging every authorization.”
“Let me guess,” I say, pulling the sheet up to cover at least some of my nakedness. “They finally gave up on legal and went for theft?”
“Among other solutions.” His mouth twists. “My family has been... targeted. My brother barely survived an attack last year. Our shipping convoys are harassed. And then someone leaked the existence of this crystal—the master file that proves our claim predates theirs by decades.”
“So you ran.”
“I secured the asset and contracted with OOPS because you were the only courier service Meridian hadn’t already compromised.” He meets my eyes, and the vulnerability there makes my chest ache. “I did not expect... complications.”
“You mean me.”
“I mean us.” He reaches out, fingers tangling with mine. “Polly, if I transmit this data to the Valorian Council, Meridian loses everything. Thirty years of illegal operations, exposed. Billions in contested territory, forfeited. They will come for me with everything they have.”
“They’re already coming,” I point out. “We’ve been running since you unlocked that thing the first time.”
His lips quirk. Almost a smile. “True. But now they will come harder.”
I squeeze his fingers. “Then we’d better make sure that data gets where it needs to go. What do you need? Some kind of quantum relay?”
“Precisely.” He activates the crystal with a thought—or maybe a pulse of bio-energy, I’m still figuring out how his biology works—and the holographic map explodes into the air above us.
It’s beautiful. Spiraling stars and asteroid fields, survey markers and mining coordinates, all rendered in delicate threads of light that cast shifting shadows across the bunk.
“This is the survey data,” Rynn says, voice taking on a formal cadence. “My family’s mines. If I transmit this to the Council, Meridian loses their legal claim forever.”
“Okay.” I study the map, trying to ignore how close he is. “So what’s the problem? Hit send and call it a day.”
“The file is massive. Thirty years of geological data, biometric locks, chain-of-custody documentation.” He gestures, and the hologram zooms in on a series of data nodes. “It requires a military-grade relay to transmit securely. Pink Slip’s communications array is excellent for standard courier work, but this...” He shakes his head. “The encryption alone would take hours. And we would be vulnerable the entire time.”
“Hours?” I whistle low. “Yeah, that’s not happening. Not with Meridian breathing down our necks.”
“Indeed.” He deactivates the crystal, and the hologram collapses. “I had planned to use the relay at Helios Station. But given recent complications—”
“PROXIMITY ALERT.”
Zip’s voice cracks through the cabin like a whip. Rynn and I move simultaneously—him grabbing his pants, me lunging for my jacket. My fingers are clumsy with the zipper, and I can feel his eyes on me even as he yanks his shirt over his head.
“Report,” I snap, already moving toward the cockpit.
