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“The name given to your bloodline. The Cheld.”

“Cheld,” she tested the word on her tongue. “And you believe I am one of them?”

“I know you are. That you can sense . . . that your abilities have begun to manifest confirms it.”

She had too many questions to formulate even one of them.

“Each one develops a bit differently. When it becomes necessary, when a threat is posed—”

“Lawrence?”

He smiled. “Yes, Lawrence.”

She swallowed.

“Their powers begin to manifest. Most become fast and strong. Their senses heighten—”

“Yes! That’s what’s happening to me. It’s as if I can feel and see everything more . . . intensely.”

“All very typical.”

“And smell . . .” The scent she’d begun to associate with him had lured her into the house, as strong then as it was now, a good distance away from him.

“That. And more.”

There was no mistaking that glimmer in his eyes. Desire. Alessandra couldn’t help but imagine what would happen if he acted on it.

“And each Cheld usually develops another ability unique to him or her.”

“How? How is any of this possible?”

She jumped up from her seat.

“This is . . . nuts. I am nothing, no one. There’s nothing special about me. I grew up in a rural town in the middle of nowhere. Aside from my father leaving and then dying, nothing extraordinary has ever happened to me.”

Kenton stood, recalling her saying as much once before.

“I don’t win anything. Not the lottery, like Lawrence . . .”

Kenton’s brows raised at that.

“Or even those peelback cards at carnivals. Every good thing in my life, I’ve fought for. School, my degrees. Even my friends. I’ve been burned so many times by being naive. “Too nice,” my brother says. So I guard the people I can trust with my life, try to enjoy the little moments when I can . . .”

Tears sprang to her eyes. Why was she telling him all of this? She couldn’t trust this man.

“This cannot be happening to me.”

Kenton reached out and grabbed her arm. There was that look in his eyes again—desire and something else.

“Do you hear me?” she asked.

She was being irrational now, and she knew it. But Alessandra couldn’t stop. He had the wrong person. This . . . Cheld . . . it was not her.

“I hear you,” he said, inching closer to her. “I feel you.” He slipped his arm behind her back and pulled her toward his chest.

A million emotions flooded her at once. But one was stronger than all of the rest. And as his hand moved from her arm upward, sweeping back her hair, his intentions were suddenly crystal clear.

And only one of those million emotions mattered.