Renegade: Beyond Human, #1

By Jaide Fox

From the New York Times and USA Today best-selling box set TAMING THE ALPHA:

 

Altered by science, the Renegades are the ultimate warriors—indestructible and deadly.

 

When border patrol brings a suspected Renegade into town, Dahlia knows he’s moments from condemnation and death. Sick of the violence and killing of innocents, she thrusts herself between the stranger and the townspeople—too late discovering their suspicion is fact. Now Dahlia must put herself in harm’s way again and discover if the enigmatic stranger is there to bring about their destruction and raid their town for anything of value. But when Connor, the Renegade, looks at her, sensations she’s never experienced begin wearing down her resolve to remain aloof, and she begins to wonder if the townspeople aren’t the real threat.

 

RATING: Contains mild violence, descriptive adult language and situations. Post-Apocalypse, Futuristic Romance. If you purchased Taming the Alpha Box Set, you have already bought this book and don’t need to purchase it again unless you just love the author and want to have a separate copy with the new kick butt artwork. This title is a romance with simmering tension. It is not an erotic romance with gratuitous love scenes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrea DePasture
• Release date: May 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781513017716

Book preview

RENEGADE

Jaide Fox

Other titles by Jaide Fox:

Mating Heat 1: Mating Rights (Interracial Fantasy Romance)

Mating Heat 2: Bear Trapped (Interracial Fantasy Romance)

Beastmen of Shadowmere 1: Marked by the Beast (Interracial Fantasy Romance)

Beastmen of Shadowmere 2: Seduced by the Beast (Interracial Fantasy Romance)

Beastmen of Shadowmere 3: Conquered by the Beast (Interracial Fantasy Romance)

Dark Lords 1: Captured by the Dark Lord (Dark Fantasy Romance)

Dark Lords 2: Seized by the Vampire Lord (Dark Fantasy Romance)

Dark Lords 3: Ensnared by the Dream Lord (Dark Fantasy Romance)

Dark Lords 4: Pursued by the Demon (Dark Fantasy Romance—COMING SOON)

Captured by Aliens 1: Alien’s Captive (Interracial Futuristic Romance)

Captured by Aliens 2: Alien Insurgence (Interracial Futuristic Romance)

Captured by Aliens 3: Alien Intent (Interracial Futuristic Romance)

Captured by Aliens 4: Alien Resistance (Interracial Futuristic Romance—Coming late 2015)

Interstellar Mayhem 1: StarCaught (Futuristic Romance)

Interstellar Mayhem 2: StarRomped (Futuristic Romance)

Pleasure Masters 1: Ravaged (Futuristic Romance)

Pleasure Masters 2: Dominated (Futuristic Romance)

Pleasure Masters 3: Mastered (Futuristic Romance)

PleasureBot (Futuristic Romance)

Trained for Pleasure (Futuristic Romance)

Archangel (Futuristic Romance)

Summoner’s Captive (Dark Fantasy Romance)

Earth Girls Aren’t Easy (Interracial Futuristic Romance)

His Forbidden Fruit (Interracial Fantasy Romance)

Renegade (Futuristic Romance)

Primal (Futuristic Romance—COMING SOON)

© Copyright by Jaide Fox November 2014

Cover art by Eliza Black, © copyright May 2015

www.jaidefoxbooks.com

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter One

Earth 2037

The American landscape forever changed after the big one hit—the earthquake of 2021. Scientists and doomsday preppers had been predicting the catastrophe for as long as anyone could remember. The doomsdayers seemed downright gleeful that the end of the world they’d been preparing for had finally happened. No one should have been surprised at the devastation caused by the west coast breaking off and sinking into the Pacific.

Tidal waves obliterated the Far East. Japan was gone with the first wave along with half of Russia and all of the Indonesian isles; the repercussions were felt everywhere. Displaced oceans took out the Eastern seaboard, Manhattan, Nova Scotia, all of Florida, Louisiana, New Zealand, Bahamas, and more. No land that touched the sea was unscathed. Most were just...gone.

Nuclear reactors burned unchecked. Perhaps the only thing that saved humanity from instant annihilation was the sea swallowing Japan’s reactor into the bottom of the ocean.

The punches kept coming. With the lack of government resources, the avian flu spread unchecked, infecting and killing millions who were struggling to survive.

Knowing the disease could decimate the surviving population, the United States government revealed an experimental program—nanotechnology capable of combating every disease known and unknown to man. It had never been tested on humans. The long-term effects were unknown, but given the circumstances, the project was given the green light to inject scores of US soldiers with citizens to follow.

They created monsters instead of the cure they hoped for.

Capable of immediate tissue regeneration, impervious to disease and harm, highly infectious, and driven completely insane by symbiotic infestation as the nanos imbedded in the glial cells of the brain—mankind was doomed from the start.

Before the blackout, the media called them Renegades. They tried to warn the populace, but it was too late. Pandora’s Box was open, and there was no one left to close it.

Renegades signaled the end of Homo sapiens rule over the world.

Those not infected scattered and hid to die another day.

No one who’d ever seen a Renegade lived to tell about it.

Dahlia was never entirely convinced they were real. For most of her life, she’d been warned not to leave her father’s side. The Renegades would get her.

They were the boogeymen of her nightmares.

But what did she know? She’d been five when the world ended. She couldn’t even remember what her mother looked like except her father said they shared the same black curly hair and olive complexion.

Survival and the real world took precedence over stories of the past.

Dahlia looked at her father, Wallace, and worried how much longer she’d have with him. He wasn’t young anymore. Wrinkles crinkled his face. Gray stained his hair, and he’d lost enough weight that he’d fashioned a belt out of cordage. His shoulders held his patchwork shirt like a thin rod.

The urge to hug him stayed ever present. Not that she would let him know she worried about him. He’d raised her to be a survivor, to keep her emotions in check.

She didn’t want to think of a time without him, but she knew it would happen someday. If the worst happened, no way she’d stay here. There wasn’t a soul in town she considered a friend. Not anymore. Not since Jacob...

Better to be on her own than at their mercy.

As the youngest female in town, she had no delusion that she was safe. The male majority licked their chops whenever she ventured outside alone. Two rapes were enough to convince her she couldn’t trust most men. Just because it hadn’t happened here yet didn’t mean it wouldn’t. When she had sex, it would be on her terms—not at the whim of another.

Her Bowie knife provided her only sense of security when she wasn’t glued to her father’s side, and Wallace carried a machete sharp enough to shave with.

Threatening with the blades was usually enough to deter their unwelcome advances, but if Wallace continued his decline, they wouldn’t be enough.

He coughed as he tinkered with something he called his wind generator. The cough and machine had both been picked