The Ruin
Between Us

She bet everything on a dead man's coordinates. He was sent to steal what she found.

Exo-archaeologist Elara Vasquez is brilliant, broke, and blacklisted. When a reclusive collector's estate goes to auction, she empties her last credits on a set of unverified coordinates—the location of a ruin site that could prove the theory her mentor stole and her career died for. There's just one problem: a charming, infuriating stranger bought the access codes. Neither can proceed alone.

Hadrian Voss is a black-market operative who reads people the way Elara reads ancient civilizations—with surgical precision and zero sentiment. His employer, the shadowy Collector, wants whatever the ruins contain. Hadrian's job is simple: get close, get the data, get out. He's never failed a contract. He's never wanted to.

Stranded together on a tidally locked world bathed in eternal twilight, forced into a joint excavation by colonial authorities, they discover ruins unlike anything in the record—ancient architecture that responds not to force but to intent, built by a civilization that vanished before humanity left Earth. As they spiral deeper, their hostile partnership becomes something far more dangerous: genuine trust. Late nights over ancient consoles. Arguments that turn into breakthroughs. An attraction neither can afford.

Then Elara intercepts his transmissions. Every discovery. Every breakthrough. Every moment she let her guard down—reported. And the Collector's extraction team is already on its way.

With a galactic map blazing to life and enemies closing in, Elara must decide what she's willing to lose—and Hadrian must choose between the life he's built and the woman who made him want to tear it down.