Rook Takes Queen

I should be dead by now.
I’ve spent three years on Chronos as a Keeper of Records, and I walked out with the one thing a powerful Royal Pigment House would kill to bury. Now they know I ran. So I do the only thing I can…I find the one family in the Four Sectors crazy enough to stand against the Xylan ancestral home world.
The door opens and an enormous, gentle Xylan miner fills the threshold. He scents me before I can get a word out, then puts himself between me and his entire family, like I’m something precious instead of a walking grenade.
“You are safe here now,” he rumbles.
Maxon — they call him Rook — is the youngest of the nine Fever Brothers, a male who’s waited his whole life to scent his Bride. He brings me food. He guards my door. And he sets out a board for a game I was sure no one this far from the original planet had ever played.
And they say I’m his mate?
What the heck?
I came here to save these miners, not to fall for one. I will not be the reason this beautiful family loses another brother, no matter what House Vaszneth sends to silence me.
Even if Rook is already the only thing in the universe I want.