Jackelyn has seen the very worst of life as a slave. As an omega in the 1800s, she has been betrayed, beaten, abandoned and humiliated, but life truly reaches rock bottom when she’s conscripted into the army and sent to the frontlines of France’s war against England. All she wants now is to die, for this brutal and violent life to finally end.

When John Ball deserts his post in the British army, he sets out with a bold plan to forge a new life for himself and his brother on a quiet farm in the French countryside, far away from the troubles they left behind in England. Instead, he stumbles across the most unlikely omega slave he’s ever seen – bruised, broken and bloodied, and yet still proud enough to look him in the eye and dare him to try and harm her.

Unwilling to abandon Jackelyn to her fate as military cannon fodder, John invites her back to his estate. Too many years of seeing omegas beaten and downtrodden has left him with a deep compassion for society’s lowest class… but he quickly finds out there’s nothing lowly about Jackelyn. Opinionated, fierce and fiery, she challenges every decision John makes and demands a position equal in standing to any alpha.

But Jackelyn’s outward aggression masks a woman whose heart has been broken too many times, and who teeters on the very brink of despair. But how is John ever to touch the aching and wounded woman inside, when Jackelyn is doing everything in her power to maintain the distance between them?

Caution: This book contains themes of slavery, graphic violence and descriptions of rape that may be disturbing for some readers.