The Stars We Carry

Five years into humanity's mission to colonize Proxima Centauri, Chief Engineer Maya Sato is the only one awake aboard the starship Artemis. Two hundred colonists lie sleeping in cryo. Her only companions are ARIA, the ship's watchful AI, and the ache of loneliness pressing in from the endless dark. When critical systems begin to fail, Maya discovers that someone is sabotaging the mission from within. Then Julian Chen, the ship's brilliant, infuriating lead architect, is forced out of cryo after a pod malfunction. Arrogant, maddening, dangerously attractive, he is now the only person she can trust. Their uneasy partnership ignites into undeniable heat. Every system failure pulls them closer. Every dark corridor, every repair, becomes an excuse to touch, to linger, to fall deeper into something neither of them can afford. But the sabotage escalates. Trust fractures. And as the Artemis spirals toward disaster, Maya must uncover the traitor before they all become ghosts in the void. There's nowhere to run. No one to call for help. Only heat. Only gravity. Only the man who might be the one thing holding her together.