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But they’re being forced to do Oblog’s bidding, at the threat of my life. Now, they’ve been forced to leave me all alone, trapped in a cell – waiting for death.

And then I remember what Marcel and Lucius had told me.

Our one chance is this Captain Aelon.

I don’t know who he is, or what relation he is to my triad, but I know the price my triad would pay for Captain Aelon’s aid iseverything.

Everything they’ve ever worked for. What all those shipments made for Lord Oblog had funded. All that money they’d earned by risking everything, and damning themselves in the eyes of the Empire they were still loyal to.

All traded to a man I’ve never even heard of…

…and all to saveme.

Just like I’d picked up residual memories of how to speak Toad, and how to operate an Orb-Knife, I search my mind for what details the Aurelians shared about this Captain Aelon.

I gasp. He is like us – one of a triad of Aurelian warriors Bonded to a human female.

But what were the odds that an Aurelian Captain, happily Bonded to his Fated Mate, would risk a galactic war just to saveme?

The tears stream down my face. I realize a grim truth.

In the end, I’m just as weak as Tessa.

In the end, I was never strong – not like Ling.

I’m just another statistic – one more on the number of stolen, enslaved, murdered human females. The charts that had inspired Ling and I to embark on our mission to liberate enslaved women.

This last hope – this starship captain called Aleon – is like poison in my mind. He will not save me. My triad can’t save me.

I can’t even save myself.

But what’s worse?

I cannot save the rooted seed now buried deep within my womb. Barely a whisper of conception - but inside a seed that could one day grow to become a powerful warrior with brilliantly colored eyes.

Knowing I will have a son inside me makes the pain of defeat even worse.