Cassandra Chamberlain has always stood out. It's hard not to at 6'1" and 165 pounds, with jet black hair and sapphire blue eyes. And if that isn't enough, she is also brilliant, graduating from Harvard at 15, teaching at MIT at 19, and up for the prestigious Magellan Award at 25. She's never really fit in. Not with her peers, not with her contemporaries, only with her family.

But everything changes when the Earth is attacked, and Cassandra and her niece, Victoria, are the only survivors. Suddenly the smartest woman on the planet has to relearn everything. Everything she's believed to be true is challenged, and she has to learn to survive, not only for herself but for Victoria, because someone wants them dead.

Admiral William Zafar is the youngest Admiral ever in the Coalition fleet, the hero of the Battle of Fayal. At 7'1", he's 325 pounds of Carinian male in his prime who is feared and respected throughout the fleet. He is a royal from the House of Protection, carrying its birthmark, and considers its king one of his oldest friends.

But when the Regulians destroy a previously unknown planet, leaving only two survivors, he finds he's willing to risk it all to protect the woman he loves from the Regulians and the Carinian traitor that wants her dead.