Heel & Crust had gone quiet. The last of the evening shift was gone, leaving only the low hum of the ovens. Maren had claimed the remaining heel of the loaf and was buttering it with deliberate care while I watched.

She caught me staring.

“What?”

“You still fight dirty for the end piece.”

“Someone has to. You always let me have it anyway.” She tore it in half and pushed one piece across without looking at me. “Don’t get sentimental about bread, idiot.”

I took it. Still warm.

We talked about small things—the artificial sky that never quite matched Aldermoor, the recycled air that still tasted wrong, the ridiculous amount of gold Priya had insisted on. She told me she’d already mapped the fastest route from the Warden berths to the bakery. I told her about the battered datapad where I was writing down the things that mattered so I wouldn’t forget how to say them again.

She went quiet.

After a while the bakery felt too bright. I nodded toward the door.

“Walk with me?”

She didn’t ask where. She just stood, brushed the crumbs off her sweater, and followed.

We ended up on Level 5 in the Sky Garden. Real plants under a long skylight full of stars. The air smelled like damp soil and something flowering. Maren walked a little ahead, fingers trailing over a leaf, then slowed until we were side by side.

“I hated you a little,” she said eventually. “When I left for the Taking. Not really you. The fact that you didn’t stop me. That you didn’t say anything.”

“I know.”

“I kept waiting. Even after the breach.” She stopped under one of the small trees and turned to face me. “Then everything happened so fast. The Flare. The testing. Saya. Wren looking at you like you were going to eat her. And I kept thinking… I finally get you, and now I have to share.”

I stayed still and let her talk.

“I don’t know how to do this,” she admitted. “I’ve been in love with you since we were kids and never said it because I was scared it would ruin the only good thing I had. Now I get to say it, and it comes with all of this.” She gestured at the ship, the other Wardens, everything. “Other women. Real ones. Ones who are going to need you the same way I do.”

“Maren—”

“I’m not finished.” She stepped closer. “I can live with it. As long as I still have a place. A real one. Not the first name on a list. Me. The one who knows you still sleep like you’re listening for the colony sirens. The one who gets the heel of the bread. As long as that version of me still matters when the next one shows up.”

I reached for her waist, careful. She didn’t pull away.

“You have that place,” I said. “You always have. None of this changes it. Saya, Wren, whoever comes next—they get what they get. You get the part of me that was already yours before any of this started. The part that ran toward the breach instead of the bunker. That part doesn’t get divided.”

Her eyes went bright. She blinked hard, then smiled—small, fierce, a little wet.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Then I’ll try. I’ll share. But if any of them treat you like a battery, I’m putting them through a bulkhead.”

“I’d expect nothing less.”

She kissed me. Slow. Familiar. Like coming back to a door she hadn’t been sure would still open. When we finally parted she rested her forehead against mine.

“Idiot,” she murmured.

“Yeah.”

We stayed in the garden until the night cycle deepened and the stars above us turned cold. At some point her fingers found mine and stayed there. No diagnostics. No theories. Just the two of us and the quiet understanding that this part, at least, was already settled.

She had a place.

She always would.