Claimed by the Warlord

Xenobiology Field Log, Entry 7.139. The vessel currently filling Dr. Maya Ellison's viewport is a Korath-class heavy cruiser at roughly four hundred meters. Her escape pod's sensors are failing, so she is estimating by eye. Her eye is good. The rest of her is debatable.

Maya is a xenobiologist with the Tessene Coalition Research Corps, which means that when she is taken, she does the only thing she has ever been good at under pressure. She observes. She records. She starts working out the rules of a biology that does not play by anything in her training.

Including the bond, which ignites without asking either of them, and seals only with consent. That distinction matters enormously to the warlord who refuses to take the shortcut, and it matters more to the woman who intends to understand the thing before she agrees to it.

Open door, a guaranteed happily ever after, no cliffhanger on the couple, and a heroine who drives the plot with her brain. The galaxy is still messy at the end. She is not.

Claimed by the Warlord is Book One in The Vardan Warlords.