I don’t respond. I don’t trust my voice.
The civilian district is a controlled chaos of color and noise—fabric stalls hung with shimmering polymer cloth, food vendors venting spiced steam into recycled air, music bleeding from mismatched speakers. It smells like oil and citrus andoverheated circuitry. My senses strain, sharpened past utility into something almost painful.
And then I see him.
He sees her at the same moment.
“Mara?” His voice cuts through the din, warm and surprised, and before I can reposition, he’s already moving toward us. Tall. Confident. Too familiar in the way he says her name, like it’s something he’s tasted before.
She smiles.
It is not the smile she gives me.
It’s looser. Easier. The kind that carries history I am not part of.
“Jax,” she says, genuine pleasure lighting her expression. “I didn’t know you were still hopping stations.”
“Wasn’t planning to,” he replies, pulling her into a brief hug. “But the universe hates a straight line.”
My hands curl before I realize I’ve moved them.
The contact is brief. Innocent. And yet something in my chest flares hot and sharp, an instinctive rejection so strong it startles me. My posture stiffens, every muscle coiling as if preparing for impact.
This—this—is not tactical.
Jealousy is not a Vakutan concept. We are taught possession only in terms of duty and protection, never desire. And yet as his hand lingers at her shoulder a second too long, something ugly and territorial twists through me, demanding proximity, demandingclaim.
“Relax, Commander,” she says lightly. “I don’t kiss and conspire at the same time.”
Jax laughs. “You pick up a bodyguard or something?”
“I pick up trouble,” she replies. “He just follows.”
I don’t laugh.
I step closer instead, my presence deliberate, unmissable. Jax’s gaze flicks to me, reassessing. Measuring.
“Commander,” he says, respectful now. Cautious. “Didn’t mean any offense.”
“None taken,” I answer. My voice is even. Cold. “Your business with her?”
Jax lifts a brow, glancing at Mara. “Still sharp, I see.”
“Still alive,” she says. “Which is why I’m asking you a question.”
They talk shop then—quiet, quick exchanges layered with implication. I listen without interrupting, but my attention keeps sliding back to the space between them, the ease of their familiarity. It shouldn’t matter. Itdoes.
When Jax finally gives them a lead—an encrypted node, a name whispered like a secret—the tension eases marginally. He squeezes her shoulder once before stepping back.
“Be careful,” he says. “You’re stirring things that don’t like being stirred.”
She smiles, softer this time. “When have I ever been careful?”
When he’s gone, the air feels different. Thinner.
We walk in silence for several meters before she speaks.
“You’re glaring holes in the bulkheads,” she says. “Care to share what that was about?”
