by Tammy J.S.
30 year old Galathea Mikhailov is the president of the Ophanim-5, a colony spacecraft launched from Earth in hopes of reaching Kepler-22b. She takes a huge risk when she directs the ship off course towards coordinates her mother discovered. It leads them to an alien megastructure they believe to be a warp gate that may, or may not, get them to Kepler-22b faster than originally planned. When she descends onto the derelict warp gate, behind her council's back, she is intercepted by the creatures that built the thing, and is subsequently abducted by them. She is taken to their home planet, p'Tesserine, and brought face to face with Fara'Thin, a young, intimidating giant of a man, who is next in line to inherit the throne to the intergalactic empire. She's offered two choices; become his consort and assimilate the last remaining humans into his hyper patriarchal, eugenicist society, or be wiped off the face of the universe. Too stubborn to fold, she decides to carve out a third path by any means necessary. Along the way, she finds herself intrigued by the person who initially captured her, Mat'Shirii, and his younger brother, Neii'Shinnis. She figures out quickly that neither of them look anything like the other p'Tesserians, and everyone seems to despise them. As she starts digging for answers, her way out becomes clear, but the feelings she develops along the way make her reluctant to go back home.
