Rise Again

Celeste Smith doesn't need saving. She commands stadiums, headlines world tours, and leads Umbra like a queen crowned in smoke and light. When her longtime bodyguard goes on maternity leave, it's supposed to be a simple substitution. Instead, she's told the replacement will be the man who shattered her heart. Lucian Sterling is a former FBI agent and survivor of a car bomb that cost him his leg and changed the trajectory of his life. In the aftermath, grief hollowed him out, and trauma convinced him he was no longer the man she deserved. But when someone breaks into her rig in the middle of the night, and she's attacked while on a trail, the glittering illusion of tour life shatters. The world tour is canceled, and suddenly Celeste isn't surrounded by lights and noise-she's retreating to the small town where it all began, with danger no longer hypothetical and secrets clawing their way to the surface.