The Voraxian king has come again—and this time, he's come for me. I've got no desire to be claimed by the alien king. Blue skin, seven feet, and strapped with muscle, I've seen what his kind does to humans. And I don't care that he watches me with hunger.

Earth is in decline, and the wealthy have fled it, leaving only the destitute citizens behind. And aliens. Gemma McKinley works at a prison cleaning goop off the floors and serving food to inmates. When she is reassigned to the alien ward, Gemma is nervous. Aliens are dangerous and ruthless. They bite. But there is one that isn’t like them. Simon is damaged, starved, and wasting away in complete isolation. Touched by his loneliness, Gemma starts nursing him back to health, dismissing rumors that he’s high-risk, ignoring the advice to let him croak.

Long have we been alone; without brides, without females to warm us during the long nights, without sweet mates. But we see them from afar, the brides that could be ours. Kept away from us by walls and weapons. Females we long for greatly...obsessively. Human females. And the one with red hair? I want her. I saw her first. I will fight to the death for her. She is mine. So, we’ll come together and make an exchange with their men that will benefit us all. After that? To the winner goes the spoil. Let the hunt begin...but the red-headed female is mine.

Veral’monushava’skahalur is an oddity among his species, a lone Argurma cyborg divorced from his own kind by choice and to escape termination as a malfunctioning unit. Wandering the fringes of space as a salvager, he comes across a planet beyond the boundaries of the federation, rich in metals remnant of a dead civilization. Or so he thought. Confronted by cannibalistic mutations of the indigenous species, his salvage has suddenly become a lot more complicated. Even more so when he encounters a female surviving on her own....

Ketahn did not want a mate. Fate has a different plan for him. When the queen he despises declares her intention to claim him, he retreats into the jungle.