Date Published: November 14, 2025
Earth civilians are obsessed with selfies and social media, but my life revolves around alien starships, superhuman strength, and A.I. implants. Too bad none of it helped when I was captured and tortured. Now I crave revenge, but as a genetically engineered Ranger, I must obey Mothership’s rules: protect humanity. Never kill.
When another alien ship sends monsters to invade Earth, Mothership’s Rangers must stop them. My new Ranger teammate is everything I shouldn’t crave: handsome, skilled, and haunted by his own dark past. He helped rescue me from torture, but it cost him his entire team. Now I’m the mess he’s got to clean up.
Battling invisible monsters may be the death of us, but our mutual attraction is undeniable. Can we stop an alien invasion despite our dangerous chemistry?
EXCERPT
Present Day
Diana
I stared at the screen, watching the Earth grow larger as our transport raced toward it. Even after two months as one of Mothership’s Rangers, the sight reminded me how strange my new life had become. Down there, people were obsessed with selfies, celebrities, and social media. I’d plunged into a world of giant alien starships, AI brain implants, and super-strength.
And worse.
An image flashed through my head -- the sadistic grin on Roger Bannon’s face as he leaned in, the surgical drill whining as it spun. I’d fought not to scream as the drill bit in.
Roger loved it when I screamed.
I shoved away the memory, hard. If I wasn’t careful, that thin face with those pale, rabid eyes would start running through my head on an OCD loop. “I should have killed you when I had the chance,” I muttered.
Next to me, Ian Cartwright turned to give me a narrow stare. “What did you say?”
Damnit, Diana, you’re not supposed to creep out your battle buddy. “Bad memories.”
His expression softened, ice-blue eyes going a little less chilly. “I can imagine.”
No, you really can’t. I didn’t say it aloud. Cartwright already thought I was a human hand grenade just waiting for somebody to pull my pin. The team didn’t need that kind of distrust, especially in the middle of an op.
I looked away to see Indra Fox watching me in concern. Crap, I’d even freaked her out. She and our team leader, Rowan Kerr, sat on one of the other bench seats beside the huge oval screens that lined the transport’s curving fuselage.
Indy had been my best friend all my life, my sister in every way but blood. She could read me as if she were telepathic. “Having a flashback?” She tilted her head, long, dark hair swinging around her face, green eyes startling against the silken fall of black. Like me, Indy had a tough, athletic build from the combat and strength training we’d had from the time we could walk. Our dads hadn’t been fooling around.
“I’ve got it handled.”
“Cyberpunk could block those if you’d let him.”
She was right -- my AI brain implant could suppress the firing synapses that triggered those memories. “I’m not going to give Roger the satisfaction.”
Rowan Kerr snorted. “Satisfaction’s the last thing Bannon’s feeling.” Our team leader was even bigger than Cartwright, though his features were less classically handsome, with the rich golden coloring of his Latino heritage. His angular features and intense gaze made him look like he’d escaped a temple in ancient Greece. “If he even thinks about what he did to you, he’ll get a one-way trip to PTSD hell. Pissing Mothership off is never a good idea.”
“She still turned him loose. He could try it again.” That’s why I dreamed of killing him, First Reg or no First Reg. If Bannon was dead, he’d never come back.
Cartwright gave me a frustrated glower. “Newman, he can’t. His conditioning won’t let him. If you violate the First Reg again, you’re going to find out why -- the hard way. You’ve used up the only second chance you get.”
That just pissed me off. “If Mothership had rescued Indra and me when Satan’s Horsemen murdered our --”
“How about not starting a fight in the middle of a mission?” Rowan interrupted. “We’ve got a child and his family to rescue. Preferably before the damn Boars grab them.”
I shut my mouth so fast, my teeth clicked. I’d seen the file photo in Aiden Scott’s dossier. Just eight years old, the kid had huge brown eyes in a pale, round little face under a flyaway mop of dark hair, his grin wide and white and missing a couple of baby teeth.
When Aiden was diagnosed with a high-risk medulloblastoma at age four, doctors treated the brain tumor with surgery, chemo, and radiation. He’d still relapsed three years later. The boy would probably be dead now, except Mothership spotted his family’s medical GoFundMe. She’d sent a Ranger team to the Scott family with an offer to heal Aiden. His parents hadn’t looked a gift miracle in the mouth -- just packed him up and flown off with the Rangers.
Giant alien spaceships are a lot less scary than losing a child.
Mothership’s doctors had infused Aiden’s body with nanotech -- molecule-sized bots that hunted down every cancer cell in his body and killed them all. Then the tech corrected the genetic condition that caused the cancer while healing the damage it had inflicted. He’d been healthy and happy within three months.
But that nanotech also made him a tempting target for the Boarosans who’d invaded the solar system a decade back. The humans whose bodies the Boars used as unwilling hosts were as vulnerable to disease as everyone else, and the aliens wanted to keep their meat suits healthy. That was why they’d ordered the Horsemen to kidnap me, why Bannon and his “researchers” had cut me, scarred me, peeled me so they could watch my tech put me back together. They’d hoped to reverse engineer my nanotech.
They could easily do the same to Aiden. Mothership’s simulations predicted that since I’d escaped, the Boar might well decide to go after the Cured she’d treated.
The idea of that sweet little boy at the mercy of the same aliens who’d given me to Roger…
Rescuing Aiden’s a hell of a lot more important than beefing with my own team. Better mend some fences.
I gave Ian a tight nod. “Sorry for going off on you, Cartwright. Rowan’s right -- an op isn’t the time to get pissy.”
He studied me thoughtfully. Rangers were universally attractive -- Mothership’s genetic engineering at work -- but Ian was even more gorgeous than the typical agent. His face was intensely masculine, all high cheekbones and square jaw, his nose aquiline, his mouth wide, with a lower lip I longed to nibble. He wore his sable hair in a severe style that made him look even harder, sexier, but it was his eyes that pulled me in. An icy blue, they were ringed and rayed in a rich cobalt, watchful and cool. People tend to dismiss a man that pretty, but Cartwright was also six-five and built like an NFL defensive lineman. As one of Mothership’s Rangers, he was even more dangerous than he looked.
“I started it.” His voice rumbled in a way that made me yearn to exchange more than snark with him. “Shouldn’t have poked the wound. I’m sorry.”
“Let’s just… start over, okay? The point is getting Aiden and his family to safety.”
His nod was tight and controlled, like everything else about the man. “Works for me.”
New York Times best-selling author Angela Knight has written and published more than sixty novels, novellas, and ebooks, including the Mageverse and Merlin’s Legacy series. With a career spanning more than two decades, Romantic Times Bookclub Magazine has awarded her their Career Achievement award in Paranormal Romance, as well as two Reviewers’ Choice awards for Best Erotic Romance and Best Werewolf Romance.
Angela is currently a writer, editor, and cover artist for Changeling Press LLC. She also teaches online writing courses. Besides her fiction work, Angela’s writing career includes a decade as an award-winning South Carolina newspaper reporter. She lives in South Carolina with her husband, Michael, a thirty-year police veteran and detective with a local police department.
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