Novels by Tom J. Croft

The Red Mist was never supposed to reach the cities. When a weaponized genetic pathogen is unleashed, the world splits in two: the Elite Tier sealed inside concrete sanctuaries, and everyone else left outside to mutate into something that belongs in the deep ocean. Valerie Kane is a field medic with one fatal advantage. Her blood is the only sequence that can stabilize the virus. Her family sees it as a bargaining chip. They throw her to the infected to buy their own survival. She is pulled from the chaos by Commander Garrison Vance, the hard, territorial head of security, and the man whose heart she broke six months earlier for a political alliance she never wanted. The old government collapses. The city burns. And when Garrison is exposed to the pathogen, Valerie does the only thing she can. She drives an experimental stabilizer into his bloodstream and locks his mind inside a body that is no longer fully human. Gray-scaled. Stronger. Dangerous. Still him. Trapped together on a crumbling maritime fortress surrounded by a boiling red ocean, they are hunted by Valerie’s sister Cynthia, who has become something far worse than either of them. To survive, Valerie must take a high-stakes seat inside the Southern Fleet Command and force a vaccine into existence. Garrison holds the harbor gates with lethal precision. Bound by a dark, possessive chemistry and a shared refusal to die, they understand the truth too late. The old world is finished. The only territory left is the one they guard together.