[Excerpt; only first 4 chapters] I'm Ava, a human who has been kidnapped from my home world and forced to live with an abusive scourge,-an alien with a tail that has shown me nothing but hurt and pain. I'm so afraid of scourges I run away and climb to the top of a gigantic stack of storage containers where I hide, refusing food and water. So, when a beautiful, winged alien flies up to me, opening his arms, and telling me to leap... *** I am Rigel of the Archae Bennuidae, a 7-foot tall, muscular winged humanoid living among the scourges. When I'm summoned to help with a scourge's pet, I find a scared human hiding atop a gigantic stack of wobbling storage containers about to topple. I call to her and open my arms. She refuses to let go of that storage container hovel, and it's only when I promise to protect her that she jumps. I catch her. The trembling human in my arms needs so much. Medical treatment and above all, a home. I'm worried, though. My emotions, generally under tight control, are altered by our skin-to-skin contact. I want her in more ways than one. *** This is a story of healing and, along the way, falling in love.