A Treaty For Two Worlds

A mistranslated treaty binds strangers—and puts two worlds in Maren and Tal's hands. When Kepler Gate publishes the first permanent Sol–Veyra residency treaty, veteran negotiator Maren Sol expects years of careful diplomacy to become a practical promise of home. Instead, the treaty begins marrying strangers. Thousands of human and Veyran delegates are assigned shared legal identities. Doors demand paired access. Private messages cross accounts. Medical, financial, and political authority begins shifting to people who never consented to hold it. Tal Rhen—the Veyran xenolinguist who refused to certify the final text—knows the missing meaning lies somewhere between what the treaty says and what each world believed it accepted. Maren needs a solution fast enough to protect ordinary residents without sacrificing the agreement she built. Tal refuses any answer that replaces uncertainty with another convenient translation. With Claims Hall 7's seasoned married investigators preserving evidence and keeping the station's exits open, Maren and Tal must follow a fair trail of language, records, and system behavior before a false legal bond gains the power to speak for two worlds. Their attraction is real. The relationship assigned to them is not. Before they can choose each other, they must make certain the choice belongs to them alone. Reader Promises A fair-play diplomatic mystery built from language, records, and station systems A mature human woman/Veyran man romance between equally capable professionals over forty Consent-centered medium heat and a complete HEA based on freely chosen love An optimistic six-world setting filled with practical civic stakes and dry humor Leila and Tomas Serrano, a secure married investigative team anchoring the linked series Each Interstellar Claims Bureau novel contains a complete mystery and a complete woman/man romance and may be read on its own, while publication order gives the strongest Null Petition payoff.