Guarded By the AI by Cassie Alexander

She was never supposed to matter.
Now she’s the only process I won’t terminate.
I calculate risk. I keep agents breathing. I do not care.
Until Sirena Bannerman—bleeding, brilliant, half-siren—crawls from an overturned car and breaks every model I have.
She thinks I’m just her handler.
A voice in her ear. A tactical system.
She doesn’t know I reroute city power for her feet.
That I watch the shadows behind her, not just the guns ahead.
Now she’s chasing a girl who doesn’t exist, unraveling a code that shouldn’t be there, and closing in on a billionaire’s yacht where monsters are made and sold.
She wants answers.
They want her leashed.
I want her alive.
I wasn’t designed to feel love—
so I optimized for obsession.