Chief Diplomatic Officer Ellis Marlow arrives at Andara Station—a tri-species neutral ground on the brink of interstellar war—still haunted by a diplomatic catastrophe years earlier.

When mounting ‘malfunctions’ keep striking precisely as negotiations near breakthroughs, he and Chief Medical Officer Lira Talos recognize a pattern no one else will name and begin an off-the-books investigation into the station’s AI and a hidden hand engineering conflict.

Their partnership deepens into a slow-burn romance built on shared trauma, mutual respect, and honestly chosen limits, tested by sabotage, radiation, and generations of prejudice.

As the conspiracy widens, the same courage that lets them recognize personhood across difference is what peace itself will demand.

Tropes: slow burn, colleagues to lovers, forced proximity, opposites attract (diplomat vs. scientist), shared trauma and mutual healing, investigative partners, found family, protective hero, AI gaining sentience and rights, marriage and epilogue HEA