Sandy Pena

For my kind, to be without a mate is to be doomed. I know it is too late–all that awaits me is retirement and death, and I’ve embraced it. But when a suicide mission lands on my old boss’s desk, I’m the one he calls. Who better to tackle the mission in the deep, oppressive mines of my own ancestral homeland, if not an Arachnae already slated to die? And it’s not a rescue mission–he wants me to retrieve the corpse of a billionaire’s daughter kidnapped by a terrorist organization. Except our intel was wrong. She’s alive. Tortured and injured–but alive.

Known as a harbinger of bad omens and blamed for Demons eating her family, Reia is shunned by her entire village. When the next offering is due and the monstrous Duskwalker is seen heading their way, her village offers her an impossible choice—be thrown into the prison cells or allow herself to be sacrificed to a faceless monster.

Rogue slavers have landed on the ice planet and captured the tribe. The only ones not snatched? Me, a walking human motormouth with no skill except that of incoherent babbling, and Warrek, who"s as silent as he is attractive. Two more unlikely people have never been paired together. Saving the others is either going to bring us closer together - or drive us completely apart. I"m pretty sure the feelings I"m having for my alien companion are as unrequited as they are inappropriate, but since we aren"t going to make it out alive, what harm is one teeny, tiny kiss?

I dislike people. I despise humans. A cruel mandate from one of my region"s rulers has saddled me with a slew of little alien humans: I"m to put them to work. One problem? I run a rock quarry, where humans’ thin skin is a detriment to productivity. Overseeing these humans is like trying to herd yanaks. If I don"t burn, beat, or strangle them to death by the day"s end, it will be a miracle.