A Cyborg Romance

Cyborg Guardian – Daken Rowe is a work in progress that will become the Book 3 in the Cyborg Guardian Series. The projected release date is January 2026.

Prologue

Daken Rowe

The war was officially over, but it never really ended. The Mesaarkans just became covert as aggressors. I learned that a few months after landing in Phantom. I needed to decompress and debrief from my service, period.

Then I got the call from Vyken Dark asking me to return to Earth to help rebuild what was left of civilization. Commander Dark was awakening the cyborgs that had not been awakened for the war to support the efforts, and he needed experienced leaders to train and supervise them. It was the one thing I could do to help, even though I never expected to find any peace in my life after all the things I’d done.

Raven found Love with Hanna, and Steele found it with Zeya. The others joke that maybe I’ll be next, but they don’t understand. I don’t get to have peace, not when my hands are soaked with blood I’ll never wash away.

I was built to lead, to kill, to carry out the orders no one else could stomach. And I did, until the war ended suddenly. After Phantom, I returned to Earth to become a protector and guardian of humanity’s remnants, becoming more than a weapon.

Shadow Hawk calls it rebuilding civilization. I call it a mission without a clear objective.

But who am I to judge? Period. Enforcing the law among scattered settlements and removing dictatorial, self-appointed leaders who have overpowered the population. I could do that.

When organized gang activity was discovered in the Dakotas, Commander Dark requested experienced protectors to move in on them, and Lieutenant Shadow Hawk volunteered my squad. He traded us for a new group of newbies that he would train. I’ve heard the whispers of my men from time to time that I didn’t feel, that the programming stripped it all away.

But they were wrong. I feel too damn much. And when I fail, when someone dies under my watch, I bear it for years.

I’ve done so much violence and ended so many lives. How could I believe that I would be suitable for a mate, a home, and a family? Those are things for cyborgs who still have pieces of humanity intact. I’m not sure that I do anymore.

At least, that’s what I believed until the day I met her.

Chapter One

Selena Kane

The forest was too quiet.

I crouched at the tree line, bow drawn, eyes sweeping the ridges. The silence pressed heavily, wrong in every way. My gut told me what my eyes couldn’t yet see.

Raiders.

“Selene?” Edda’s voice floated behind me. “You see something?”

“Trouble.”

That was all she needed. My people moved fast—children ushered into the mine shafts, gates dragged shut, rifles loaded. We’d survived this long by trusting instinct.

Metal glinted on the ridge. Raiders, two dozen at least, moving fast with stolen Mesaarkan plating.

I released a signal arrow from my bow. Green sparks flared, and the first of our traps snapped—logs tumbling, stakes rising, snares jerking tight. Raiders fell cursing, but the rest pressed on.

“Now!” I shouted.

Gunfire cracked from our cover—scavenged rifles, crude but deadly at this range. I drew and loosed, arrow striking true in the chest of a raider with a plasma rifle. He went down hard, flames licking across stolen armor.

Still, we were outgunned. Plasma bolts seared bark and earth around me, heat scorching my arm. I gritted my teeth, loosing another arrow, buying time for the children to get clear.

And then the air shifted—a sound like thunder through steel.

They came from the flank—tall, shiny black armored giants with glowing red lenses in their helmets, tearing through the brush. Faster than men, stronger, eyes glowing blue. Cyborgs. Protectors.

The battlefield tipped in an instant. Raiders faltered as the newcomers struck—precise, ruthless, efficient. Plasma fire spat out disciplined volleys, and energy blades cut through alien plating like paper.

I froze only a moment before shouting, “Hold formation! Cover the flanks!” My people looked to me first, but I didn’t miss the way their eyes darted toward the cyborgs. Relief and fear mingled on their faces.

One of the cyborgs cut down a raider with brutal speed, then turned. The faceplate of his helmet retracted. He was magnificent, with a scarred jaw, broad shoulders, and movements honed by years of war. His gaze locked on me, sharp and unsettling.

Something inside me jolted, hot and electric. Attraction. No. Not now. I shoved the thought aside, focusing on the battle.

The last raiders broke and scattered, leaving the field littered with smoke, bodies, and the acrid stench of burned plating. My people began emerging from cover, shaken but alive. I stepped into the open, too, and watched the scarred cyborg’s approach, his helmet now completely retracted.

His presence was like a shadow stretching long, dangerous, but steady.

“Your defenses are clever,” he said, voice low, even. “But they won’t hold against plasma rifles and Mesaarkan tech.”

I held his gaze, chin lifting. Not defiance—just acknowledgment. He wasn’t wrong. Every raid bled us thinner. Every fight left us with less to give.

“Then maybe it’s time we had help,” I said carefully. “How did you know to come?”

For a moment, his eyes softened, the faintest flicker of something I couldn’t name. That was when I knew: dangerous or not, cyborg or not, this man was going to change everything.

Something unspoken, almost kinetic, reverberated between us. I suspected what it meant. Even the scar didn’t distract from his potent masculine appeal, but I pushed that intuition to the back of my mind. I had too much responsibility for my people and their safety to dwell on some unspoken attraction to a cyborg warrior.

“The request came from Cyborg Command,” he said. “Their satellite feed showed movement of Mesaarkan craft ahead of a group headed toward your settlement. I’m Protector Sergeant Daken Rowe of the Cyborg Guardians Western Division in charge of this team.”

“Selene Kane, I am their leader.”

Rowe inclined his head in acknowledgment, but just looked at me with an expression of awe and something I couldn’t quite decipher.

Daken

The ambush should have ended them.

Outnumbered, outgunned, pinned by plasma rifles — a subsistent human enclave wasn’t meant to withstand that kind of assault. But they had. Not by luck or chance. By strategy.

I’d watched their traps spring with precision, rifles cracking at just the right moment. And she was at the center of it all.

She moved like a soldier, though she wasn’t one. Her voice cut sharply through the chaos, directing her people, steadying their aim, covering their retreat when the plasma fire grew too heavy. She didn’t waste courage — she used it.

And when my squad broke through the flank, her eyes found mine. Recognition slammed into me like a detonation. Circuits surged, instincts locked — mate.

I pushed harder, faster, fighting with a fury I hadn’t known I still carried. Within minutes, the ridge was clear. Raiders scattered, leaving their dead behind. Smoke and blood clung to the night.

When it was over, Selene stepped from cover, bow in hand, dirt streaked across her cheek. She didn’t look at me with fear or even suspicion. Her gaze was calm, assessing.

“Good timing,” she said, her voice steady, no inflection of gratitude or hostility, just truth.

“You’d have been overrun without us,” I replied bluntly.

She inclined her head, a small acknowledgment. “Maybe. But we held long enough for you to matter.”

It wasn’t arrogance—it was fact. I found myself respecting that.

My men regrouped, scanning the field. Survivors began to gather, their relief almost palpable. Yet their eyes still turned to Selene first. Not to me. Not to the Protectors. To her.

There was no doubt about her leadership.

I holstered my rifle on my back. “The raiders won’t stop. They’ll come again, stronger. You’ll need more than snares and scavenged rifles next time.”

Her jaw tightened, but she didn’t deny it. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”

The connection between us seared, pulling me toward her and demanding more. But she turned to comfort a child instead, steady and unshaken.

I told myself it didn’t matter. That this was just programming, pheromones, instinct. Selene was burned into my DNA, and she felt it, but she was resisting.

As I watched her lead her people with calm resolve, I knew the truth.

She was more than a mission—more than fate.

I’d seen death, victory, and everything in between. Nothing got through my armor.
Until her.

I never quite believed she existed or that I would ever find her—my genetic match, the one woman wired to my DNA.

The moment I met her, I knew she’d undo me—not with force, but with the quiet things I’d forgotten how to feel.

Selene Kane was my genetic mate.

Selena

The battlefield still smoldered, with acrid smells. My people crept from cover, shaken but alive. Some were injured, but no one had been lost. That was a miracle I didn’t take lightly.

The cyborgs moved among the fallen, efficient and unflinching. They checked for weapons, secured the wounded raiders, and ensured no threat remained. They looked like machines of war, but when the children peeked out from the mine shafts, none of the cyborgs raised a weapon. They simply let them stare, curiosity outweighing fear.

And then he came toward me.

Scarred jaw. Broad shoulders. A presence that made the ground itself feel steadier beneath my boots.

“You held your people well,” he said, voice even. “They follow you.”

I kept my bow in hand, but not raised. “They don’t have a choice. I’m all they’ve got.”

His gaze flicked toward the shattered ridge, where raiders’ bodies lay tangled in traps and smoke. “You’ve kept them alive this long. That counts.”

The words hit deeper than I expected. Few outside my enclave ever understood what it meant to survive with so little.

Still, I wasn’t going to let flattery distract me. “You’re right about one thing—raiders won’t stop. They’ll regroup, and next time they’ll come heavier. My people can’t withstand that alone.”

Something flickered in his eyes—recognition. Approval. “We’re here to help.”

For a heartbeat, silence stretched between us. Daken Rowe didn’t posture. He didn’t demand. He simply offered, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

My people were watching. Edda at my side, Marla just behind her, and even Kieran hovering nearby. All of them were waiting to hear if I’d push back or welcome the Protectors in.

I drew a steady breath. I thought I should probably stay as far away from the cyborg as possible, yet I knew we needed help. We wouldn’t survive many more attacks on our own. “You can stay and fight with us. But this is still our home. My people look to me for guidance. If we’re to work together, it has to be as partners—not commander and followers.”

He inclined his head, slow and deliberate. “Understood.”

Relief eased something in my chest. I didn’t want to surrender leadership, but—for the first time in a long time—I didn’t feel entirely alone in carrying the weight.

I turned back to my people, raising my voice so they could hear. “We’ve stood on our own long enough. Tonight, we’re still standing because of the Cyborg Protectors. From now on, we stand together.”

The spark of hope in their eyes nearly undid me.

I didn’t glance back at him. But I felt his presence, steady and immovable at my back, and I knew: everything was about to change.

Chapter Two

Selena

Smoke followed us down into the earth, the manmade cavern of an ancient gold mine that had been our home since my teens.

We moved in a quiet procession through the slatted gate and into the mine, the last of the evening light striping the tunnel wall before the door thudded shut. The air inside was cool and damp, smelling of clay and ash and the faint ghost of oil from old machines that hadn’t worked since the world fell apart.

“Helmets,” I called, and the children reached for their tin pails with candles waxed into the bottoms. Little hands cupped flickers of flame; the glow bounced off timber braces and the painted marks my father once left to guide us—blue slashes for safe paths, red dots for pit mouths to avoid. We’d added our own symbols over the years. A white star meant water. A green circle meant the medicine alcove. Three short strokes meant the place in the wall where the stone sounded hollow if you needed to pound out a warning.

Fifty of us, give or take, on any day—thirty adults; the rest children from toddlers to near-grown, like Kieran. We filled the central cavern in minutes, bodies and voices and exhausted relief pooling into the space we pretended was a hall. Patchwork blankets hung as dividers, cordoning off sleeping alcoves along the outer wall. A long trench hearth, stoned in with river rock, still glowed from the morning cookfire. Edda and two of the older boys coaxed it back to life, hanging a battered kettle for tea. The sound of it—water, small and ordinary—eased the tightness in my chest.

“We’ll do a headcount,” I said, and Marla was already turning, hand lifted, voice carrying the way mine did when I was too tired to raise it. “Families first. Little ones sit with Edda. Anybody bleeding, to the green circle.”

A Protector head ducked under the beam behind me. Daken. He moved carefully through the crowd, the way you walk in a church or a room full of sleeping babies. Helmet retracted; he scanned without the menace I expected, cataloging injuries, exits, and the places where the roof dipped lower than it should.

He waited until I finished the roll—everyone present, everyone breathing—and then fell into step beside me as I started the rounds.

“You live down here full-time?” he asked.

“When the raids come often.” I touched the chalked white star and led him left, where the tunnel widened into a chamber lined with barrels and earthenware jars, neatly arranged. “We sleep in the open on good weeks, up in the south clearing. But the mines are reliable.”

“Water?” he guessed.

I knocked my knuckles against the rock near the star; it answered with a hollow thrum. “Spring runs behind. We cut a channel. Gravity does the rest. We filter through gravel and goat wool, boil what we can.” I pointed to the barrels. “Two for drinking, one for washing, one for fire. We lose the fire barrel; we lose the mine.”

He studied the staved wood and the way we’d lashed hoops with wire instead of iron. “I can plate the seams. Won’t be pretty, but it’ll hold if they hit you with incendiaries.”

A part of me bristled at the assumption. A larger part softened. “If you can plate, we’ll haul.”

We moved on. Past the food alcove—sacks of beans and a precious cache of flour, dried strips of venison, jars of chokecherry preserves Marla made from a recipe she swore she didn’t remember learning. Past the rack of hunting snares and fishing line. Past the long, low shelf where the children’s readers sat in a row: three books with spines still attached, four without, a bundle of hand-copied stories we’d written out on scavenged paper.

Daken’s gaze lingered there.

“We teach at midday,” I said, because explaining was easier than the way his attention made my skin prickle. “Reading and fieldcraft both. Kieran takes the older boys to set lines along the creek—usually without getting himself killed.”

“Usually,” he repeated, and the corner of his mouth tugged, the ghost of a smile that didn’t quite make it to his eyes.

We reached the sleeping alcoves. Bunks we’d built ourselves, two and three high, framed with timber scavenged from a collapsed barn. Hay-stuffed mattresses, patched quilts. Children in the central cavern, near the heat; adults along the edges—those on night watch sleeping nearest the gate. My pallet sat three turns down the right-hand wall, close enough to the entrance to reach it in a sprint.

“Leader near the door,” Daken said, as if reading my mind. “First up, last down.”

“That’s how it works.”

He angled his head, listening. Somewhere deeper in the mine, a baby fussed, then quieted. The steady scrape of a whetstone on steel—Kellan, sharpening the one decent machete we had. He cataloged it all like a map he’d carry behind his eyes.

“What about food in winter?” he asked. Not a challenge. A ledger.

“Traplines. Root cellars in the north tunnel. The old south slope still throws potatoes if the deer leave them alone.” I exhaled. “We trade when we can. There’s a woman two valleys over with a hand mill. We give meat; she grinds grain. Or did. Last time we sent a party, they didn’t come back.”

He didn’t say, “I told you.” He only nodded once, the kind of acknowledgment that felt like a hand bracing the small of your back without pushing.

We stopped at the green circle. Shelves cut into the rock held clay pots of salve, bundles of dried yarrow and willow bark, a treasure of real gauze sealed in waxed tins. Edda already had a line—scraped palms, a split scalp, a shallow burn from a plasma bolt that had kissed rather than consumed.

“You’ll need antibiotics,” Daken said quietly, eyes on the burn. “We have a med kit with nanite boluses and antibiotics. Limited, but enough to stave off infection until we can get a drone drop.”

“Thank you.” The words were small and felt too big in my mouth. I meant them anyway.

He looked at me then, with the kind of gaze that sees to the bone. A flare of attraction hummed, low and insistent, like the spring running behind the wall. It made my breath hitch, made me too aware of the space between our bodies. I tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear and pretended I didn’t feel it.

“What do you need from us tonight?” he asked.

Not what he wanted. What I needed was almost like he cared. The difference mattered.

I gestured for him to walk. “Two things. First, we have an escape tunnel that breaks out halfway up the ridge. It’s narrow—children first if we ever need to use it—but the exit grate is rusting. If you can reinforce it, we’ll sleep easier.”

“We can do that.”

“Second,” I said, “training, sooner than later. Half of our adults can shoot; a third can’t. Kieran thinks a rifle is a dare. The raiders will come back, and I want my people to put rounds where they mean to and not in each other.”

His mouth clicked with the sound of assent. “We’ll run a rotation: short drills, low light, noise discipline. I’ll start with stance and sighting. Then reloads.”

“Good.” I stopped, turned to face him fully. The mine lamps threw long shadows up the walls; the children’s voices had softened to the buzz of tired bees. “There’s a third thing.”

“Name it.”

“This is my home. My people look to me.” I kept my voice even because I didn’t want the words to sound like a wall. More like a line we could both see. “If you and yours stay to help, we do it as partners. You don’t issue orders to my people over my head. You don’t move them without telling me. You don’t make promises I have to keep.”

Daken didn’t bristle. He didn’t lecture. He only inclined his head, slow, a soldier acknowledging a commander he respected. “Understood.”

Something unknotted in my chest. I hadn’t realized how tightly I’d been holding it. That was easier than I expected, though I could still feel an undercurrent trying to pull us together. Why did he have to be so downright sexy? What was it about him? I’d never met a man who affected me the way he did. All I could do was tamp it down. My people depended on me.

We walked back toward the central cavern. Edda had tea going. Marla handed out cups with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. The children were beginning to drift toward blankets and pallets, fingers still sticky with chokecherry, faces smudged with the day. Kieran leaned against a post, trying to look tougher than his shaking hands allowed.

“Perimeter?” Daken asked.

“Two posts in the old tool sheds above. We keep bells on a wire and a line of tin cans on the west trail. It’s loud and stupid, and it’s saved us twice.”

“Keep them,” he said. “Stupid and loud works. We’ll add sensors, Claymore equivalents without the shrapnel. Nonlethal, where we can—your kids roam.”

“Our kids roam,” I corrected before I could stop myself.

He looked at me with something like gratitude. Or maybe that was just the strange connection we had talking through the nerves in my palm. Either way, it warmed the cold parts.

A little boy—Tomas, still too thin no matter how much stew I pushed his way—drifted over with his tin cup clutched two-handed. He peered up at Daken, solemn as a judge.

“Are you staying?” he asked.

Daken glanced at me. I gave the smallest of nods.

“Yes,” he said, like an oath. “We’re staying.”

Tomas considered that, then touched the edge of Daken’s armor with one finger, like a child testing a stove that might not burn. “Okay,” he said, and trotted back to the warmth.

I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. The weight on my shoulders remained. It shifted from a single point to two.

“Get your men fed,” I told Daken. “After that, pick your watch rotations. I’ll take the first post. We’ll start drills at dawn.”

His brow knit. “You should sleep. Cyborgs don’t need as much rest as naturals—unenhanced humans.”

I shook my head. “I’ll sleep when the bells don’t make my heart stop.”

He was quiet for a beat. “I’ve got you now.”

Suddenly, I felt like I needed space between us as a sensual tension pulsed through me, warm enough to make my skin prickle. I stepped back to the hearth where Edda pressed a warm cup into my hands and Marla murmured something about blankets left to dry. The mine hummed its familiar hum—water, fire, people breathing, the soft clink of tin and stone.

“Let us take watch and you get some rest,” Daken urged.

I nodded. He was right, I was running low on energy now that the adrenaline surge of battle had passed. It was better to rest while I had six cyborgs guarding the perimeter, so I could.

Above us, the wind moved the pines. Beyond that, the ridge. Beyond that, the dark.

We’d survived the day. The night was ours to hold.

And for the first time in a long time, “ours” felt bigger than just the fifty souls in this cave.