One year ago, I buried my husband. One year ago, I held his hand and said goodbye. Now I spend most of my days lost somewhere between trying to remember every smallest detail of our lives, and trying to forget it all. I fill my hours with work until I’m too exhausted to remember him, to feel anything at all. One year, 365 days - and then one knock at my door changes everything. A letter from him, a last request, a secret will: My dearest Nadia, trust me, my love. One last time, trust me. Sometimes the epilogue to one story is the beginning of another.

So how did I get myself into this situation, you ask? Simple: desperation. When you're faced with being homeless and hungry or taking off your clothes for money, the choice is easier than you'd imagine. That doesn't make it simple, though. Oh no. I hate it, in fact. There's nothing I'd like more than to quit and never go into another bar again, never hear the techno beat pulsing in my ears again, never feel the lecherous gazes of horny men again. Then, one day, I meet a man. He's in my club, front and center. He watches me do my routine, and his gaze is full of hunger.

In the Shadow World, he was the god of death, and he was called many names. The monsters he hunted called him Anubis. Those who saw his face died. To Guardian Security, he was a number - a surgical weapon they wielded against monstrous evil. One woman called him Kaeden Lang. Anubis never meant her to be anything except an interlude - a moment of light in the darkness of his life, a one-time escape from the ever-present haze of death.

The first time I met Merrick Crawford was during my job interview. Well, technically, I’d met him 20 minutes earlier when he’d barged into a fitting room a few doors down from my appointment. I yelled. He yelled. After an argument while standing in my bra, I proceeded to smash the door into the gorgeous jerk, trying to yank it shut. As you might imagine, I was freaked out when I discovered that the rude guy was my potential new boss. Yet he didn’t seem to recognize me. Or so I thought.... Until we wound up bickering again during my interview and he told me to go sniff my armpit.

Ethan “Chaos” Watson is the unofficial leader of Fallport, Virginia’s Search and Rescue team. The former Navy SEAL has found a lot of different people in the forest in the last five years since he arrived in the small town - escaped convicts, lost kids, hikers who went missing, runaway teenagers, and even a lost pet or two. But this is the first time he’s been asked to look for Bigfoot.

When the unthinkable befalls Alaska during a trip to Russia, it’s Drake’s turn to drop everything and race to her aid. Safely back at The Refuge, he just as quickly realizes what he’s failed to see for two decades—his oldest, dearest friend is the love of his life. A revelation that may be too little, too late. Because Drake’s brought the enemy right to their door.

There wasn’t a lot that surprised me. My years in the Navy taught me a lot, my years hunting human traffickers taught me the rest. Meeting a beautiful woman in a bar and spending the night with her should’ve been a blip on my radar. Instead, I spent years trying to forget her. In the middle of a rescue operation, fate dropped her back into my life, but there was a twist—she wasn’t alone.

Connor Daniels never thought he’d be starting at dating square one again. His career as a successful doctor, and his three boys, are everything to him. It’s not exactly a setup conducive to a scorching love life - but he’s giving it a shot. ER nurse Violet Robinson never intended for Connor to find out she’s had a crush on him forever. It was a dirty little secret only meant for her dirty dreams. Her heart trips every time he’s around - and so do her feet.

Your wedding day is supposed to be the happiest day of your life, right? That's what they say, at least. I went into that day hoping I'd get the happiest day of my life. What I got? The worst. I mean, you really can't get any worse of a day without someone actually dying. So...I may have gotten just a little drunk, and maybe just a tad impetuous...and landed myself in a dive bar somewhere in Alaska, alone, still in my wedding dress, half wasted and heartbroken.

When I'm late for a job interview and get stuck on an elevator with an annoyingly sexy, ancient-Rome-obsessed grump, the last thing I expect is for him to be the billionaire owner of the building. I also don't expect to almost kill him...accidentally, of course.