Obi-wan Kenobi was chosen by a Master when he was a few months shy of his tenth birthday. Twenty plus years later, the galaxy as a whole has rather a lot of cause to regret that. (The longer the war drags on, the more Qui-gon Jinn finds to question; about himself, about the events of history, and about the Sith Lord who was once Jedi Knight Obi-wan Kenobi.)

He’d known how some of the men are with younglings—known from Waxer and Boil how sharply those attachments can form with little ones. Hell, the men were raised to be protective, so much so that Obi-Wan has often wondered if their protective drive was not written into their very atoms, some intrinsic part of their DNA. It wasn’t something Obi-Wan had ever questioned. He’d thought he had understood the scope of it. In reality, he hadn’t understood a thing. Not until Kamino. Or: Not all that dive from cliffs make a running head start. Sometimes, the Fall is only a natural progression.

When Granta infiltrates the Senate, his sole focus is on breaking the faltering Republic apart. Running across an intriguing mystery in the shape of Fox, Thorn, and Stone changes quite a lot.

After decades of watching Xanatos play Imperial politics and neglect his family, right up until Tura's death, Granta decides to take revenge on his father. The best way to do that is to make sure Xanatos never reaches the throne he covets, and for that purpose, Granta proposes a marriage alliance with one of the top contenders for the crown and Xanatos's political enemy, the vicious and deadly Marshal Commander Cody. Granta has it all meticulously, ruthlessly plotted out, with no room for error. It's too bad that falling in love with his husband was never part of the plan.