11

DAHLIA My heart stills and my fingers freeze as a tremor grips me. I claw at the slick damp ground beneath me as Kane’s front covers my entire back, his weight oppressive, his body an unyielding slab of muscle, like being squashed by a wall. A faint mixture of cedarwood and citrus lingers in the stale air and seeps into my flaring nostrils. I should feel some form of relief that he finally showed up tonight, but I don’t. Far from it. My muscles lock and dread twists my insides. A creepy tension squeezes my throat, and my breaths come in short, frantic gasps. The air thickens and a gloomy cloud envelops him with a shroud of darkness. This isn’t the Kane I thought I knew. His presence doesn’t soothe—it suffocates. He’s not the Vipers’ agreeable captain or the ‘philanthropist’ who so generously offered to help me. No. This is Kane Davenport. Vencor’s Senior member. I’ve often found it hard to correlate Vencor’s destructive nature with his personality, but right now, I can see the shadows