The Wicked Sting: Codename: Scorpius by Candice M. Wright

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I used to be that girl.

Before loving you.

The daydreamer who believed in fairytales

And I knew I was right to have faith when a moment of serendipity led me to both of you.

The three of us were blissfully happy

Until your lies were exposed and the dream faded

Now I know that falling in love was just the point of impact,

A single moment when life veered dangerously off course.

Now I’m that girl.

After loving you.

The one you once made strong but left broken in the wreckage of our happily ever

Yet here we are again in another time, in another place

Only instead of taking your heart, I take a bullet.

I should have stayed far, far away

But how do I move on when all roads lead me back to you?Authors

The Wicked Sting

Broken, Betrayed, and Back



The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: ❤️💙💚💛
Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Chemistry: 🧪🧪🧪🧪
Story/Plot: 📕📗📘📙
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌏🌍
Character development: 😋🙂😁😛
Narrator(s): 🎙🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration type: Dual Narration

Character Backgrounds and Plot Summary

The Wicked Sting is the third installment in Candice Wright’s Apex Tactical series, and it is very much a book that rewards readers who have followed the series from the beginning. While each book is described as a standalone, characters and plot points from the previous entries are heavily referenced here, and the emotional weight of the story depends almost entirely on understanding the shared history between Avery, Creed, and Hawk.

Avery is the heroine at the center of this particular storm. She is a woman with a paranormal ability, specifically a gift for visions and premonitions, that has functioned more as a burden than a blessing throughout her life. She has never had an easy life, and events from her past have left her deeply haunted. Four years before the events of this book, Avery was in a committed three-person relationship, and then legally married to both Creed and Hawk, two elite operatives at Apex Tactical, a private security and mercenary firm. She disappeared into the night, leaving them confused and blindsided. What seems at first like a betrayal or abandonment has a far more complicated explanation rooted in secrets Avery has kept buried for years. She is a woman who chose pain and solitude over exposing a truth she was not ready for the men in her life to know.

Creed and Hawk are both Apex operatives, dangerous, fiercely loyal to each other, and equally damaged by Avery’s departure. They are hurt because of how she left them, but they still love her. Creed is written as the somewhat more emotionally accessible of the two, capable of conflict but also of reflection. Hawk is far harsher, and many readers found his behavior toward Avery genuinely difficult to forgive, at least initially. He is the one who pushes harder, reacts with more hostility, and doubles down on emotional cruelty before he begins to reckon with his own role in the original breakdown of their relationship.

The plot kicks off when Avery receives a new vision that compels her to return to Apex against every instinct she has. She has been given a message by way of a vision, and she knows she must deliver it, even though she did not want to come back. When the team discovers her, the reunion is anything but warm. The men are not happy at all, and how she left has left a sour taste in their mouths.

What follows is a slow, bruising, and ultimately cathartic unraveling of the lies, half-truths, and betrayals on both sides. The romantic thread is a second-chance story with a “why choose” structure, but the book also carries forward the larger series arc. More is revealed in this third installment about the shadowy organization that has been threatening people with unique abilities, and Avery’s gift becomes central to Apex’s ability to fight back. The more they dig, the more the riddles multiply, and certain secrets land like a slap, leaving listeners shocked and eager to know what comes next.

Highlights & Limitations

One of the book’s most notable strengths is the emotional layering of all three central characters. Wright does not let any of them off the hook easily, including Avery. Her departure was not a clean or blameless act, and the book refuses to frame her purely as a victim. She withheld information, she made unilateral decisions, and she carried secrets that had direct consequences on people she loved. That complexity makes her sympathetic without making her saintly, which is a far more interesting choice than the typical wounded-heroine formula.

The rivalry element also proves to be a genuine highlight. A third alpha male enters the picture who treats Avery notably better than Creed and Hawk do, and the resulting competition adds a layer of heat and tension that many readers did not see coming, finding it a pleasantly surprising development. This is where Wright’s storytelling gets genuinely clever: she uses the presence of a viable alternative to hold Creed and Hawk accountable. Their path to redemption is not guaranteed, and the threat of losing Avery permanently to someone more deserving lends the reconciliation arc real stakes.

The pacing is largely well-handled. The book is described as fast-burn, and the intensity is maintained throughout. The suspense and tactical plot threads are woven tightly enough into the romance that neither feels like filler for the other. Listeners who came for action will get it; those here for the relationship drama will not feel neglected.

That said, there are limitations worth noting. Hawk in particular behaves in ways that strain credibility as a romantic lead. He is described as a grade-A jerk toward Avery for a substantial portion of the story, and while his arc does eventually pivot toward accountability, some listeners may find the timeline of his redemption too compressed to feel earned.

Additionally, there are secrets floating around the story and while I know that secrets are a valid plot device to keep the story moving along, I tend to hate secrets and miscommunications between characters in a story, especially secrets that the reader doesn’t know. I like being in on the secret and just waiting for it to be revealed. There is some secret that the guys are holding about why they married Avery and the secret Avery is keeping about why she left the guys when they were together. The scene where the secrets all come out was somewhat confusing to me. I didn’t know the significance of some of the things that happened and I was left guessing about what really happened in the past. Plus, I was surprised at the romance and the relationship between Avery and Ev. Some of the characters surprised me as well. I wasn’t quite sure who all the men were.

Narration

The audiobook is produced by Tantor Media and features a dual-narrator setup, with Camille Quinn voicing Avery and John William Maddux providing the male perspective across Creed and Hawk’s chapters. This pairing has been used together in several Tantor Media projects, including other titles in the Apex Tactical series starting from Book 1, which gives them a working familiarity with both the series’ tone and each other’s rhythms.

Camille Quinn handles Avery with a quality that suits the character well. She voices a woman who is outwardly composed but internally battered, and she manages to carry that contradiction without overdramatizing it. The moments of dry humor that Wright builds into Avery’s inner monologue land cleanly in Quinn’s delivery, providing necessary tonal relief in what is otherwise a dense and emotionally heavy story. Her pacing during the tense confrontation scenes, particularly those in which Avery is fielding hostility from Hawk, reflects both the character’s restraint and the undercurrent of hurt beneath it.

John William Maddux takes on the considerable challenge of voicing two male leads who are distinct in personality and emotional register. Creed and Hawk need to feel like different men even when they are sharing scenes, and Maddux mostly succeeds in differentiating them through subtle shifts in vocal tension and delivery speed. Hawk’s chapters in particular require him to convey aggression and wounded pride simultaneously, which he handles with a controlled edge rather than outright hostility. This is the right choice because it keeps the character sympathetic enough to follow even at his most infuriating.

The dual-narrator format serves this story well because so much of the narrative tension lives in the gap between what Avery is feeling and what Creed or Hawk are telling themselves about the situation. Having separate voices carry those perspectives makes the emotional disconnect between them more visceral and immediate than a single narrator could achieve. The handoffs between Quinn and Maddux are clean and well-edited, with no jarring transitions that interrupt the flow of the story.

Final Opinion

The Wicked Sting is a well-constructed, emotionally demanding entry in the Apex Tactical series that delivers on the promises Wright’s previous books made. It is a well-written second-chance romance that, even for listeners who do not typically gravitate toward second-chance narratives, proves consistently engaging. The central relationship triangle is given enough complexity that the reconciliation feels like something genuinely fought for rather than simply gifted to the characters by narrative convenience.

That said, this audiobook comes with caveats. It is not a comfortable listen. The content is mature, the emotional dynamics are sometimes brutal, and Hawk’s behavior before his arc completes will alienate a portion of the audience. Wright herself includes a trigger warning noting that the book contains scenes some readers may find upsetting, and the content is intended for adults 18 and older. That is not a disclaimer to skim past.

For series followers, this is a strong and satisfying chapter, and the audiobook format enhances it meaningfully. Quinn and Maddux are a well-matched pair who understand both the tonal demands of romantic suspense and the specific emotional beats Wright is working with in this story. Listeners who have invested in the Apex Tactical world through Books 1 and 2 will find this third installment pays out on that investment generously. Those considering a standalone entry should start at the beginning of the series instead. The emotional core of The Wicked Sting is richest when you already know exactly how much Avery, Creed, and Hawk have lost, and how hard the road back is going to be.

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