Your Knife, My Heart – by K.M. Moronova
Book 1 in the Dark Forces Series

He can’t stop killing.
She can’t afford to die.

Cameron Mortem is a weapon in human form—an unhinged, lethal operative forged in the underground brutality of the Dark Forces. Clinically insane, terrifyingly efficient, and kept on a short leash, Cameron has one fatal flaw: he can’t keep his partners alive. And after an experimental drug shatters what little control he had left, he becomes a liability to the only world he’s ever belonged to.

His punishment? The Under Trials.
A savage crucible meant to break recruits, rebuild monsters… and remind Cameron what happens when a blade slips.

His one rule this time: don’t kill the new girl.

Emery Maves should be dead. Her crimes earned her a death sentence, but instead she’s thrown into the Dark Forces and paired with the most unstable asset they possess. Surviving the Trials is already a near-impossible task—surviving Cameron might be worse. But the more time she spends in the fire beside him, the more she begins to see what others fear to look at: the dangerous beauty beneath his madness, the fractured tenderness hidden behind his violence.

He’s chaos wrapped in muscle and scars.
She’s a survivor with nothing left to lose.
Together, they’re a storm no one can control.

As the Trials push them past blood, breaking, and bone-deep fear, lines blur between predator and protector, punishment and desire, ruin and redemption. Their bond is volatile, undeniable, and carved from violence. And in a world built on obedience and death, loving him might be the most dangerous risk Emery ever takes.

✨ Tropes: psychopath x survivor, forced proximity, training/boot camp, dark romance, morally absent MMC, trauma bonds, dangerous obsession
✨ For fans of: H.D. Carlton, Rina Kent, Sav R. Miller, and ultra-dark, character-driven romance
✨ Book 1 in the Dark Forces series — a brutal, addictive descent into obsession, violence, and the twisted places love can take root
✨ Features an unstable assassin with a broken mind, a heroine who refuses to bow, a brutal Trial designed to kill the weak, and a connection sharp enough to bleed for

"She was ordered to survive him. He was ordered not to kill her. Neither expected to want the other this badly."