A SciFi Fantasy Tale. Attacking the Usur's forces, Shep-Alij, the ruthless Maeser of the Resistance, captures Maeva. She is the Usur's daughter and the last vanata, a hybrid species. She's "the only vanata left in the world. Those gold rings in her eyes prove it. And the usur's daughter had golded, which meant she'd found a mate. But she wasn't fully golded. She hadn't screwed him yet. Shep looked at her again. They'd gotten to her just in time. If she'd mated with some usur officer, the war would have been over for the resistance right there. They couldn't sustain their fight through the reign of a new usur. They would lose." Maeve's death will be the key to winning the war and freeing Shep's people from a decade of oppression. But when Shep delays executing her and takes her to a secure location to find out for whom she has golded, he finds it more and more difficult to carry out his plans. He'll face a choice between loyalty to his cause and his growing feelings for Maeve.
