Behind the books
Meet Morrigan and Luke
Two Broken People Who Probably Shouldn’t Work — But Do
Let me tell you about my two favorite disasters.
Morrigan is a Novian warrior priestess. Or she was. One choice on a battlefield — one split-second decision to spare a soldier she should have killed — and she lost everything. Her wings. Her rank. Her place in the order she’d built her whole identity around. By the time she lands on the Colony, she’s running on borrowed time and hoping nobody looks too closely.
Luke is the man they called the Butcher of the Nova Wars. That nickname alone should tell you everything about how his life has gone. He’s more machine than man at this point, tattooed with trauma and hunted by the organization that turned him into a weapon. He came to the Colony to disappear quietly. Maybe permanently.
So obviously I made sure the universe gave them no choice but to deal with each other.
That’s one of my favorite things about forced proximity as a setup — it removes the easy out. Neither of them would have chosen this. Neither of them is equipped for it. But circumstances don’t care about that, and suddenly two people who are very good at avoiding their own damage are stuck navigating someone else’s.
Here’s what I love about their dynamic: Morrigan knows Luke in a way he doesn’t know himself. She made the choice that set his whole life spinning. That’s a wild thing to carry into a relationship. And Luke — gruff, guarded, and honestly kind of funny once you get past the wall of trauma — has no idea. The power imbalance is real, and neither of them is handling it cleanly.
Which is the point.
This isn’t a love story where two perfect people find each other. It’s two people with serious baggage figuring out if they’re capable of trusting anyone again — including themselves. The slow burn here isn’t slow because they don’t have chemistry. It’s slow because they’re scared, and they’re right to be.
If you like your romance with some actual emotional weight behind it, Morrigan and Luke are your people.
Even if they’d both argue they’re nobody’s people. That’s kind of the whole book.
