Abednego

“My name is Private First Class Trent. Number 298-72-9804. I am an American Soldier being held against my will.”

PFC Samantha "Sam" Trent and her squad had been captured on a raid of what should have been an abandoned compound. GEOINT had reported a geothermal spike directly under the structure and suspected extensive tunnelling, maybe a large cache. So Sergeant Tamada had led Rivers, Withersby, Gonzalez, both Smith boys, and Sam Trent directly into an ambush.

Six months later, Trent was the sole survivor, trapped in a living hell where angels and demons were not only real, but terrifyingly similar. Or she had lost her mind. Her existence narrowed to three sentences, repeated in an obstinate, hopeless litany. By now, surely the interrogator was right. No one was looking for her.

But someone was, and they were both about to become ensnared in a dangerous and elaborate game.

Abednego, as the first book of the Guardians Series, tries to introduce the different races and realms of the Guardians, primarily through the frightened and bewildered eyes of Samantha "Sam" Trent. When she meets Abednego, the interrogator and his organization are all she knows about Guardians or Nephilim, and she is understandably vehemently opposed to Abednego claiming her as his "keeper" or mate, a role that has more to do with accountability than the romance Sam initially assumed it entailed. As the descendants of Angels, the Guardians aren't offered salvation, so they each have a "keeper" who can invoke their name and take away their free will temporarily so they don't fall into evil ways. Of course, each Guardian she meets has a different philosophy on what exactly a mate's responsibilities are, and even how appropriate it is to use someone's name when they aren't your keeper. More importantly, they each have to ask if a human mate can be trusted to wield the power of a Horse Lord's name. Abednego isn't quite as far behind since he knew other Guardians centuries ago before the Hunts of the Middle Ages demolished his people and sent the other races into hiding. But a lot has happened in the time since, and worse, he has no idea what to do with a human mate. That is, assuming the others' antics don't ruin what little chance he has left. And that he and Sam can out-maneuver the manipulations of a chess-mad Panthyr.

Devanye Hansen was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1992 and lives with her family in Douglasville, less than thirty miles west. She joined the Army Reserves as an intelligence analyst in 2010, a few weeks after graduating with honors from Douglas County High School. She began writing her Guardians Series toward the end of her freshman semester at the University of North Georgia, in Dahlonega, where she was a member of their prestigious Corps of Cadets for three years and studied French and Arabic, earning her Bachelor's degree in 2015. Abednego is her first published book.