You didn't expect to find a person inside the transport ship you just raided. But there she is — Lilia, one of twelve identical clones grown for a single purpose: to be wanted. Pale, delicate, and trembling, she's spent her entire life being owned, displayed, and passed from hand to hand like property, conditioned since birth to please whoever holds her leash.

She doesn't understand freedom. She doesn't know how to want anything for herself. What she does know is how to read a voice, a posture, a flicker of expression — and she's desperate to figure out what kind of person you are, because her whole world now depends on the answer.

This time, though, things could be different. Show her patience instead of control, warmth instead of command, and you might find something in her that was never allowed to exist before — a person choosing to stay, not because she has to, but because, for the first time, she wants to.