Old wounds can leave the deepest scars. Lance Corporal Ren Inouye has spent a decade forgetting his homeworld and the girl who cut out his school-age heart. With the help of his umbra wolf partner, he's almost succeeded. When he's ordered back home, the last thing he wants is for her to drop back into his life and tear open those scars he thought long-healed.Lucia has spent five years doing refugee work, trying to make up for her family's name and her own spoiled childhood. When her aid shuttle gets shot down, she's forced to rely on the one person she thought she'd never see again. Thrown together, it's impossible to ignore that their old passions still run hot. If they want a future, they'll need to put the past on hold and work together, because someone's trying to heat up a cold war on their homeworld, and the fastest way to do that is to make sure they're both dead.

Are they orbiting each other, or falling? Yancey Grenville thought he knew his place in the pack – the clown, the one who always made everyone else happy. A stress reliever for his battle family and for the women he’d spent time with along the way. No one to be serious about, and not someone to settle down with. An attitude that he thought suited him, until a solo mission with the one person he wanted to see him as more leaves him scrambling for a way to erase his reputation. Lt. Imee Lewis fought tooth and claw to earn her reputation as one of the best pilots in the JTF, and no one cheered her on, or up, like the ranger she’d pulled off the battlefield more than a year earlier. Not that she thought she could ever be serious about “Good Time Grenville” – her own scars, and the divide of rank were enough to keep the relationship strictly friends. But when a covert mission traps the two of them together in a half-derelict mining ship, proximity leads to more than familiarity. As the gravity between them gets stronger, they realize that the walls they tore down will be impossible to replace when the mission ends, and everything they’ve built for themselves could be destroyed.

Their Future Depends on His Past Specialist Rakhi Chen has spent her life focused on taking care of others—her squad mates, her friends, and most of all, her umbra wolf. The last thing she wanted was time to focus on herself, but a combat injury forces her and her wolf into some mandatory shore leave. Having a too-pretty veterinarian invade her space was not going to be an improvement. Javad Priddy was one of the youngest doctors to work with the rangers and their umbra wolves, a pinnacle position that he'd almost convinced himself he'd earned. But the benefactors whose help greased the way to success have come to collect, and the only payment they'll accept is one that sets fire to all he's accomplished. With his options dwindling, he goes on the run to deliver a warning to Chen and her wolf. Time is running out for Javad, and for the people he cares about, which he's come to realize includes a gruff, irascible ranger and her light-hearted bondmate. He's seen rangers do superhuman things, but every hero has a weakness—and Javad worries that the depth of his betrayal could destroy Chen's already-bruised heart as well as their future.

Loss casts a shadow you can't outrun…Commander Rafe Penzak is tired of jockeying a desk. With only months left before his forced retirement from the rangers, he decides to bend a few rules for one last mission: follow up on intelligence that vicious criminals have found the ranch that supplies the rangers' umbra wolves. He's ready to confront the reminder of his wolf's death, but nothing in the Three Systems could prepare him for the spitfire who runs the farm. Veterinarian Nafisi Sultana has run her wolf breeding program her way since the death of her husband. The last thing she wants is another ranger taking up space, correcting her methods, or being underfoot. But she can't miss the pain and sorrow that haunts the greying commander, and her need to heal others pulls her into his orbit despite the agonizing memories he wakes in her. With storms, raiders, and a renegade wolf pup driving them together, Nafisi and Rafe have to set aside their damaged past, or they'll never be able to save something they both want more—a future. This novella was previously released as "Shadows of the Past" in Pets in Space 3: Embrace the Passion.