After taking her courses and mastering the talents she was born with, Minya just wants to go home and hold her family close. When her drop pod spins out of control and lands her in the dead zone, she doesn’t know how she is going to survive in the ice and snow. She can’t communicate with family and she doesn’t know where she is, so following her instincts and hiking for the distant hills. The party of strangers doesn’t say anything, they simply bring her into their underground community and help her get warm. The women smile and offer her a crown and sash of woven greenery and the men bow and urge her down a hall where warm air hints at a comfortable place to rest. The warm zone is occupied by a man with ice-white eyes and he offers her hospitality. Her decision will make a choice for herself, and her world.

Yadeel finds herself fired, kidnapped and threatened with dissection on the same day. Being rescued is needed but it doesn’t turn out the way she expects. Yadeel has been teaching for the last six years as far away from home as she can get without coming back. She gets fired and abducted two weeks from the end of her contract and wakes in a cell. Someone somewhere on W’lyn is looking to take her apart and use her for medical purposes. She did not volunteer for any of it. She uses her talent for instinct to escape and is on a cliff edge when a Guardian plucks her from the stone and brings her to safety. It was Toryl, and if there was anything she knew it was that she was not his type. It would have been so much better if she didn’t know that he was her mate. He had no clue. Toryl was the strongest Guardian of his age and Yadeel had been a friend of his younger sister. When he sees her climbing down the cliff face leaving a trail of blood from her lacerated hands he brought her to safety immediately. Once he met her gaze, his intentions took a sudden shift. Things complicate quickly