The 142nd Phantom Lancers

HE’S HER REFUGE. SHE’S HIS WAR.

Fifteen years ago, I entered the United States Air Force Academy and never looked back. Becoming a fighter pilot, protecting my country, pushing limits—this was the only future I saw for myself.

Until one mission changed everything. A split-second decision turned the sky from a place of freedom into a battlefield I...

SHE DESTROYED HIM ONCE. HE’S LEARNED WHICH BATTLES ARE WORTH FIGHTING TWICE.

I never stopped loving her.

Not in college. Not through fifteen hundred hours in the cockpit. Not during deployments to war-torn countries. Not even when I convinced myself I’d moved on.

Because Summer Holt was my first everything—my best friend, my home, my future.

And...

SHE’S BEING HUNTED. HE’S HER ONLY DEFENSE.

I was there the day Ivy’s life went from normal to hell on earth. I watched them stitch up every external wound…and watched her pretend it was enough. Then she was gone.

Not from me—she was never mine. She was his. And I had to watch that, too.

I strapped into my Raptor and flew into the night to avenge...

HE’S SWORN TO GUARD HER LIFE. SHE MIGHT BE THE ONE TO SAVE HIS.

Love burned me once. Badly. I married young, believed in forever, and learned the hard way that vows aren’t bulletproof. Now she’s remarried, I’m deployed overseas, and my orders are…humiliating. Protect the Secretary of Defense’s daughter—a stunning, infuriating model whose life is...