Launch day is fast approaching! Before we know it, Thursday the 16th will be here, and The Elemental’s Guardian will hit the shelves!

Have you heard about the pre-order bonuses?

If you email me a pic of your proof of purchase to raine@swraine.com by 11:59 p.m. on the 15th, I’ll mail you a signed bookplate.

Once we reach 10 pre-orders, anyone who has/will email me proof of purchase will also get a sticker and a bookmark! Want more goodies? Spread the word! The more pre-orders I get, the more stuff you get! Check out the pre-order campaign here!

Still on the fence? Would reading the first chapter help? You’ve come to the right place!

CHAPTER 1
Ferenc

     Ferenc felt most at home in the sky.
     He couldn’t remember exactly when his taste for flight started, but that love—that longing—for gliding through the air had always been there, deep inside of him.
     The money wasn’t his favorite part about being a freelance test pilot. While it definitely helped, the sensation of sheer bliss mattered most. Flying was like pulling a fast one over Mother Nature herself and getting away with it—to a certain point. Gravity was a cruel mistress.
     Ferenc focused on the blanket of black clouds ahead. He’d successfully completed test plans through storms in the past, but this one didn’t sit right with him. He had an excellent and natural feel for any aircraft he flew and could sense exactly how they behaved. While jets were easy to handle in most conditions, flying too fast in heavy turbulence sometimes caused structural damage—something Ferenc sensed this aircraft already had.
     Lightning flashed inside the dark, dense clouds. Ferenc checked his radars and flipped a few switches before descending into the summer storm to finish the test plan.
     A familiar British voice sounded through the headphones of his flight helmet: “Stick to the perimeter, Jazz-Nine-Two. Bring her home.”
     “Roger.” His voice had been called “folksy” on occasion; he’d sometimes been told it held an infectious calm.
     But a frown soon made its way to his face. There it was again, that barely detectable oscillation through the frame despite the buffeting turbulence. The jet was built to withstand battle damage, but that wobble made the skin beneath his flight suit prickle. He’d need to record it in his report.
     As he slowed to maneuvering speed, a bright light illuminated his surroundings. He flinched back as something slammed into the front of the jet, rolled up the nose from the momentum, and came to a stop at the canopy. Ferenc froze as he stared into an equally surprised pair of emerald eyes.
     All the training in the world could never have prepared him for a moment like this. It wasn’t an everyday occurrence for people to fall from the sky, especially when the radars showed there was nothing around him for miles. Usually very level-headed, his brain simply couldn’t compute the sight of this woman, soaked platinum-blonde hair whipping wildly about her, watching him with bulging eyes.
     How she miraculously hadn’t splattered like a bug against a windshield was beyond him. His head tilted, his mouth opening—to say what, he had no idea—but a shift in the aircraft pulled his attention back to the larger issue at hand: while distracted by the sudden appearance of the woman, he’d forgotten what he was about to do and had lost control in the turbulence.
     He’d have to worry about the woman later—if he didn’t regain control soon, they’d both be in trouble. He reasoned that if she hadn’t died on impact, she would manage a bit longer. Muscles tense, he slowed his speed as the jet jerked about, his skin going cold as the blood instantly drained from his face and body when the woman slipped from the aircraft.
     As she fell, a large bolt of lightning struck down, briefly illuminating her form . . . and then she disappeared.
     “Shit!”
     “Jazz-Nine-Two? Report.”
     His heart racing, Ferenc tried to chase what he had witnessed from his mind in favor of his current situation. A loud clatter helped hone his focus.
     “Jazz?”
     “Lost control in air pocket.” His undisturbed voice did not once betray the jackhammering of his heart or his concern with the loud rattling. “Maneuvering speed failing.”
     “Copy, Jazz-Nine-Two. Climb and maintain one five thousand.”
     Before he could reply, the aircraft gave a judder, and one of the tail stabilizers tore off, causing the jet to spin out of control through the air. Clenching his jaw, Ferenc pressed a few buttons and flipped some levers, but every time he attempted to slow down to regain control, the aircraft rolled. The only way to straighten it was by increasing his airspeed, which was what had gotten him into this predicament to begin with.
     “Unable.”
     Another flash of lightning evoked fresh images of the woman, and Ferenc desperately tried to blink them away, but quickly found himself drowning. For the first time in forever, he couldn’t think straight; he couldn’t focus in the most critical of moments.
     “All right, Jazz-Nine-Two, amend altitude and report.”
     “Unable, I’m in a spin.” Despite being thankful for the British woman pulling him back to reality, it didn’t matter what new direction she gave him; all chances of recovering and safely landing were no longer viable. He needed to eject. “Just lost a stabilizer. Bail out! Bail out! Bail out!”
     Those last words tasted bitter. He was the best at what he did. He took on the dangerous jobs nobody else wanted for that exact reason. And never once had he needed to eject . . . until now.
     He mentally ran through every item on his standard ejection checklist as he positioned his body in the seat—helmet against the headrest, feet in the stirrups, legs against the braces, and elbows inboard—before grabbing the handle above his head and yanking down the face curtain.
     The canopy propelled away, and the downpour quickly soaked him as the seat thrust him out of the jet within half a second. The exertion of nearly three thousand pounds of force on his body was excruciating, and it knocked the wind out of him. Now he understood firsthand why pilots could only have three ejections in their entire career. Thankfully, it was over in the blink of an eye.
     There was a split second of weightlessness—his favorite part of being in the sky—after the seat fell away before the butterflies fluttered and squirmed inside his stomach as he fell through the swirling clouds. Thunder angrily roared around him with a deafening pitch.
     Ferenc tilted his head back to assess the situation and found some of the suspension lines from his harness caught up over the top of the chute from the chaos of the ejection.
     Despite his clear mind, his heart still pounded, threatening to escape his chest. With a few deep, controlled breaths, he tugged on the lines to find the one that got snagged to yank it free. Unfortunately, it was impossible to figure out as pockets of the orange parachute sail billowed wildly, obstructing his view.
     He reached for a small compartment in his flight suit and pulled out a hooked knife. With it gripped in his gloved hand, he brought it to the line he thought was problematic and cut it.
     Nothing happened.
     Before he tried another line, one of them snapped on its own from the force of the updrafts and downdrafts, then another. Ferenc’s stomach dropped, sudden dread rising as he began falling faster.
     He was going to die.
     The constant light show brought the blonde woman back to the front of his mind. He could still vividly picture the look of shock on her face.
     A loud snap pulled him from the flashbacks as a third line broke. His breath caught in his throat as the parachute fully domed out, untangled, slowing his fall.
     He broke through the storm clouds and quickly calculated his altitude before attempting to judge where he would touch down. Each potential landing zone within the large Floridian wildlife and conservation areas in his line of travel rapidly passed by. Because of the storm, he was moving horizontally much faster than vertically.
     Not wanting to touch down in any body of water, he juggled with the parachute risers, preparing for his landing, and growled when a powerful gust of wind jerked him back.
     One of the rigging lines snapped, and Ferenc braced for impact with the ground, but another stormy blow lifted him back up like a rag doll. With a little more string pulling, he finally landed, falling along one side of his body as they trained him to do, maximizing the number of impact surfaces.
     A cry escaped him as sharp and sudden pain seared through his left shoulder upon contact before he tore across the ground, dragged by the wind through his still-billowing parachute. He reached for the harness to disconnect as swiftly as possible, but his left arm wouldn’t cooperate—the pain in his shoulder was so severe, he almost blacked out.
     With the hooked knife still clutched in his other hand, he cut a few more lines, tumbling, rolling, and finally skidding to a halt. Ferenc lay there, tangled in the soaked parachute sail, dizzy and disoriented. The blade easily jabbed through the nylon as he thrust the knife upward and dragged it across the smooth material, peeling away the fabric and exposing himself to the torrential rain.
     Another flash of lightning jerked his mind back to the woman while the present yanked him toward the paralyzing sensation threatening to overcome his body. His heartbeat thrashed through his ears louder than the thunder, and he wheezed against the suffocating tightness in his chest.
     He discarded the knife in favor of tearing off his mask and helmet, and he gulped the air—almost choking on the downpour—before sitting upright. With his injured arm cradled against his body, his free hand grasped the side of his head. Suddenly hyperaware of the musty stench of worms and flooded dirt, he tried to regain control of the panic and hysteria that finally settled in after being level-headed for so long despite everything.
     Ferenc was still alive; now it was only a matter of surviving until someone found and rescued him.

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Excited for my release!

Raine