Light glinted off a silver key sitting across the room. Wiping the tears that were flowing down my face, I lunged for the set of keys and the photos before sprinting to my car. I didn’t lock my front door. What was the point? Logan had already proven he could enter without being detected. I tossed the Polaroids onto the dash, letting them scatter across the surface haphazardly.
Starting the car, I peeled out of my driveway in the direction of Lovelen’s city limits. Tonight, Acelynn Thorton would die, and I would don a new identity somewhere that had never heard of the Knights of Lovelen or the Death Dealers. Somewhere I could blend in without feeling the need to constantly be looking over my shoulder. Somewhere safe, Kaius soon forgotten about. We would be a passing regret to one another. Tears burned the corners of my eyes as I selfishly prayed that he would think of me often, maybe even as the one who slipped through his fingers.
The sun spotlighted the“Welcome to Lovelen” sign, and I could almost feel my body beginning to relax at the thought of leaving this cursed town. I was moments away from being free, but a screeching sound began from the engine of my car. Smoke puffed out the sides of the closed hood as it began to sputter and lurch forward. I coasted the car off to the side of the road until it was sitting right in front of the welcome sign.
Slamming my head back against the headrest, I let out a frustrated scream. Panic clenched down on my chest as I realized I was stuck on the border of Lovelen with no way to contact anyone. Both the burner phone and my cell were lying somewhere in the middle of my living room, and there was no way in hell I was pressing the panic button hanging around my neck—not with the photos I had stashed on my dashboard.
Throwing two of the three images in my back pocket just in case, I searched around for the other one, but it must have slid under my seat during the drive. Whatever. I could get it later. For now, my mind was solely focused on escaping this godforsaken town.
Blowing my bangs away from my face, I leaned down, pulled the lever to pop my hood, and stepped from the vehicle. Smoke billowed from the engine, the smell of burning oil filling the air around me. I cursed under my breath. Of fucking course this would be my luck right now.
The roar of a motorcycle approaching filled the silence as I tried to fiddle with the radiator cap. Hissing, I ripped my hand away from the hot engine as it burned me. The stream of a headlight shone against the side of my car, and I could hear the driver cut the engine.
My hand curled around the lip of the car’s hood, anticipating the worst. Right now would have been a great time to have a wrench in my hand. The crunch of gravel sounded under heavy footsteps until I could see a set of dark boots standing right next to me. My heart quickened in anticipation as I waited to find out what they wanted from me.
“Running from us already?” Kaius’s dark voice filled my ears.
I peered at him from the corner of my eye.
There was a tinge of a smirk ghosting across his lips. “And here I thought you weren’t scared of anything. Especially the big bad Knights of Lovelen.”
Leaning further into the car, I turned to stare up at the man. “I’m not running away, Kaius.”
He hummed in amusement, settling a hip against the car. “Mm-hmm, sure you’re not.”
“I’m not,” I yelled at him. A deep sigh escaped me as I tried to regain my composure. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”
He lifted a single finger, brushing some of the dark hair that had fallen from my ponytail behind my ear. “Everything all right, kitten?”
“No,” I whispered, my hand reaching out to tinker with the radiator cap again now that it was cooler. “Everything in my life is going to shit.”
Kaius maneuvered himself around the car, one arm coming over my body while the other one landed onto my hand in the car. I breathed in his cologne of old leather and amber, letting the scent capture my senses. Digging my heels into the gravel, I refused to lean back into him like I wanted to as his words tickled the inside of my ear. “If everything is going to shit, let me help you, Acelynn.”
Shaking my head, I bit the inside of my lip. “You can’t help me, Kaius.”
“I am sure that anything you tell me can’t be worse than the things I have done in my life.” His voice was a soft comfort I wanted to wrap myself in.
Maybe he could alleviate my Logan problem. He had helped the last time my deranged ex left me a present. But the weight of my duty to find out what happened to my family still made me wary about whether I should trust him. Could one night of vulnerability make up for slaughtering everyone that I loved? No, it couldn’t. But if I left Lovelen, I wouldn’t be able to find out why Kaius and the Knights had done what they had.
Turning in place, I set one hand on his chest and lightly pushed him back. He stepped an inch away and watched as Ireached into my back pocket to grab the two Polaroids. Holding them up like a pair of playing cards, I let him pluck them from my grasp and examine them. “They are from Logan.”
“Fuck,” he hissed out, eyes trained on the very intimate photograph of the two of us. One thumb came up, stroking the image lightly before he shuffled to the next image of Oscar’s execution. Kaius’s eyes darkened as he stared at the scene, a flash of regret coming and going quickly, but then he was moving on to the words at the bottom.
“Venom,” I breathed out. “The letters spell out venom. He is reminding me that he could hurt me if he wanted to and do worse than just leave a poisonous snake in the middle of my bed.”
“I won’t let him touch you.” Kaius met my eyes, anger for the male responsible shining in them. His words were sharp and clipped, laced with a protectiveness I had never experienced before. I wanted to bathe in that protectiveness. To let it wrap me in its embrace and keep me safe from the world.
I stepped forward into him, and without even a second thought, his hands found my hips. I shivered at the contact, trying to remind myself that I could not fall in love with Kaius. But he had to fall in love with me. It was the only way I could get answers from him.
“I’m not scared of getting myself hurt, Kaius.” I rested my hands on his chest, tilting my head back to see him. His grip on my hips tightened, but I continued, “I don’t want to get Astoria or any of the Knights killed. I don’t think I could live with myself if that happened.”
“Logan isn’t going to get anywhere near Astoria or you,” Kaius assured me.
I scoffed at him and pushed out of his hold. My hands gripped the roots of my hair as I walked away from the overly confident man and toward the welcome sign. Logan wasdangerous, and he had just proven he could slip in and out of places he was not supposed to be able to.I turned in a circle, taking in a deep breath. Kaius inched forward but kept a good amount of distance between the two of us.
“Acelynn, you need to trust me. Astoria has someone with her at all times right now. She is protected, and you will be as well.”
“He got into your room,” I snapped at him. “I guess we should have done a better job of checking for the monster in the closet before you told me your deepest secrets. Don’t worry, I’ll remember that for next time so that if I don’t pull away and you fuck me, it won’t be all over the internet the next day.”
