All Allura Arond wants is to escape from her brutal owner and live a quiet life with her daughter, but as a slave, she doesn’t have many options open to her. When she steals credits from him to fund her freedom, instead of the easy escape she dreams of, she finds herself beaten and thrust aboard the vessel of a slave trader on her way to the unlawful station Cerax, toward a whore house. Banished from his home planet for not protecting his Eternal Fire, Brylax has spent the last forty years searching for the reincarnation of the woman he swore to protect. What he doesn’t expect is for Allura to stir a deep, scorching passion inside him, a passion he cannot give in to. A mark binds them together, a future may keep them apart, but when danger threatens Allura’s life, will her Protector be there to save her, or will he be too late again and lose the one female the universe deems his?