Darina “Dare” Mazur is a special forces combat medic with surgery capabilities. She is an American/Ukrainian dual citizen. Dare is in Ukraine teaching soldiers first aid for the upcoming war with Russia. Captian Ram Kozak is the leader of a Ukrainian special forces team. He's known for being cold and completing a mission without any of his men being hurt. When Ram's commanding officer tells him a former medic will be again joining his team he wants to pass on the information himself. Four years ago Ram and Dare worked together in Afghanistan for two years. Unbeknownst to each other they both fall in love with each other. Reunited and spending time together again ignites their feelings and this time the is NO TURNING BACK.
Lindsay McKenna continues her military stories with her newest novella NO TURNING BACK for Harlnequin Books. The story revolves around two Special Forces soldiers from America and Ukraine as they're reunited after working together years before in Afghanistan. Dare Mazur has dual citizenship as an American and Ukrainian. She's been stationed in Ukraine as an instructor to Ukrainian soldiers in first aid. Captian Ram Kozak is a Special Forces team leader whose cold detached demeanor keeps him and his team safe. These two are reunited after Dare was assigned to Ram's team years ago. They fell in love with each other without declaring themselves to the other. NO TURNING BACK has them coming back together just before war breaks out in Ukraine with Russia as she's reassigned to his unit. With help from a member of his team, they get reacquainted and fall deeper in love still not telling the other. As war looms they'll have to hide their feelings to work together.
Lindsay McKenna's NO TURNING BACK takes the reader on a look into a country preparing for war and how the past and future just may keep two people from keeping those they love safe. McKenna has been writing military romance stories for many years. She keeps the story current by using as the backdrop a war that is currently going on. This novella keeps the reader wondering about how and when the war will begin and if two people deeply in love will be able to keep their feelings to themselves as they go into combat. As Dare and Ram become closer and reveal their innermost insecurities. They tell each other their innermost feelings and fears and what has shaped them. NO TURNING BACK by Lindsay McKenna is another of her military stories that take her fans and new readers into the the world of military whichever country the main characters are from. Lives are in danger and they work their way through the problems together. There's a little twist at the end that readers will love and gives the main characters they're happily ever after.
From New York Times bestselling author Lindsay McKenna
On the edge of war
A country needs its protectors.
Captain Ram Kozak is steeled to defend his country against all those who would hurt it. His only weak point is Darina “Dare” Mazur, a US Army Special Forces combat medic. She has a confidence—and loving touch—that brings him to his knees. But with the fate of his team and his country at stake, is Dare’s love a deadly distraction…or the only thing that can save him?
EXCERPT
Captain Ram Kozak was in a quagmire of emotions. On a cold, windy day, he took the steps out of the Ukrainian Army Headquarters in Kyiv. The sky was swollen and pregnant with dark and light gray clouds hanging over the sprawling, beautiful capital. In his hand, he clutched a set of orders and that was what made his heart ache. As he climbed concrete steps up to the educational facility part of the massive complex, a shred of hope filtered through him, and the roiling in his gut temporarily subsided.
He was going to see Sergeant Darina Mazur, a US Army Special Forces combat medic on loan to the Ukrainian Army. She was teaching, he’d found out only earlier in the morning, advanced combat field surgery to Ukrainian Army medics. They needed this specialized training because the US Special Forces school was located in the USA and right now, it wasn’t feasible for their medics to attend it half a world away. The news that Dare Mazur was the instructor hit him like a powerful emotional earthquake. He did his best to hide the shock as his colonel, who headed up SSO Third Special Purpose Regiment, their ops group known as the Black Wolf Brigade, hurried to meet the Russian threat coming in February 2022. The orders he’d been given were special, that Sgt. Mazur, an experienced field surgeon and combat medic, who had advanced lifesaving skills, would be taken out of the classroom and placed back into his team once more.
He slid his key code card into the slot, and his brown brows fell as he pulled open the thick bulletproof glass door and entered. Well-known for his poker face, Ram was sure his boss saw the shock in his eyes, if only momentarily. Four years earlier, his team had been in Afghanistan, on the front lines, at a top-secret US camp near the Pakistan border. Dare had been their combat medic, going out on every team mission with them, risking her life. She had been assigned to his team because their medic’s tour was up and they needed a replacement. Ram wasn’t against women in combat. Almost a fifth of the Ukrainian Army consisted of women in every specialty, including combat and some of them being field medics.
At twenty-five, he’d not been prepared for the easy-going, smiling U.S. Special Forces woman. Everyone called her Dare, and in the two years she spent with his team in Afghanistan, she certainly earned her nickname. Whatever hesitancy he had about the American woman dissolved. She might save lives, but she could take them, too, when it came to their mutual enemy, the Taliban and ISIS fighters. She was also cross-trained as a sniper, a backup to the two male snipers who were already on his team.
What he hadn’t counted on was his falling in love with her. That was a shock to his system. How to remain her commanding officer and never reveal his need to share a personal relationship with her, whether on a mission, at the US camp or aiding her medical efforts to help the Afghan people of the surrounding villages. She was calm under fire. Her specialty, her gift, was her healing abilities, he’d discovered. It didn’t matter if it was a camp dog with a bloodied paw, a child with a hurt finger or one of the elderly from nearby villages who needed her medical skills. She was present and accounted for. There was nothing he could dislike about her. Compassion wasn’t his thing, but it was hers. Maybe it was her femininity, her softness and gentle nature instead of that testosterone team she was part of, that soothed the inner edges of himself, as well as the rest of his aggressive black ops team. He couldn’t really define or quantify it, but Dare’s presence was a gift.
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