Date Published: November 14, 2025
monsters — inside and out?
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.
Publisher on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok: @changelingpress
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