No trouble too big for main characters

Eris's holographic form shimmered into existence beside the airlock, arms crossed under mercury-slick breasts. Her pupils narrowed to knife-slits. "Your neural sync remains incomplete. Leaving Vorax destabilizes your pack-bond." A pause. The ship's interior lights flickered in time with her irritation. "And mine."

Susan snorted, tossing a stolen credit chip into the air and catching it between her teeth. The metallic tang burst across her tongue—Sylvaari-minted, untraceable. "Sweetheart, if our bond can survive you making me come so hard I bit through a flight harness, it'll survive a little interstellar distance." She spat the chip into her palm and thumbed the ignition sequence. "Besides, Vorax hunts bounties. We hunt *freedom*."

The distinction tasted bitter even as she said it. Three cycles ago, freedom meant escaping Zyxian whips. Two cycles ago, it meant dominating pit fights in the Singulariy Saloon. Now, with Adam's familiar weight settling into the co-pilot's chair beside her, freedom smelled like ozone and the electric prickle of Eris's disapproval humming through her spinal port.

Adam flicked a glance at the rear scanners where Freeport's docking ring still pulsed like a infected wound in the nebula's glow. "Priorities change," he mused, entering nav coordinates one-handed while the other drifted to rest on Susan's thigh. His thumb traced the fresh scar from Vorax's tusks—a claiming mark she'd neither accepted nor refused. "Ours just changed *faster*."