As one of the genetically enhanced Kyndred, Lilah can read and control the minds of animals. Rescuing a group of kids from a wayward bear brings her to the attention of GenHance, the shadowy biotech company willing to murder to acquire superhuman DNA. After being drugged and abducted, Lilah wakes up handcuffed to a half-dead man in a refrigerated truck.
Walker, a soldier critically wounded in Afghanistan, is brought back to life by Lilah’s warmth and determination, and resolves to do anything he can to free and protect her. But as the two struggle to escape their grim fate, they stumble upon a remote town hiding a dark secret, and learn that Lilah as also being hunted by someone she never expected to fear: a Kyndred friend.
This is maybe the worst day of Lilah’s life so far: she gets fired from the job she loves, animal rescue, and her car gets stolen. Holing up inside her little house, she gets online with a friend and shares her troubles with him. She is feeling in danger, and promises to tell him when she gets to the next safe place. But before she can do anything, she is abducted from her own home, drugged, and handcuffed to a naked and almost dead man in the back of a truck.
They are both abducted by GenHance, taken to the new laboratory to be taken apart, killed for their DNA. Walker was a mercenary soldier in Afghanistan, left for dead after an ambush where he tried to save the lives of American soldiers, even though he is not American himself. He wanted to die in the war, but he is still alive. And now there is this woman he is drawn to, like never before.
They escape their capturers just in time, and end up in a quaint little town called Frenchman’s pass, somewhere in the snow covered Rocky Mountains. Lilah and Walker never were normal human to begin with, and the drugs they were given have strange side-effects. Together they can melt the frost around them, to keep from freezing to death in the inadequate clothing they found in the back of the truck. To their horror they see their abductors being attacked and eaten by some things that just have to be werewolves! They themselves get rescued by the town sheriff, and taken to a Bed and Breakfast to get warm and dry.
Lilah wants to go to Denver, to ask her friend Samuel, or Paracelsus, for help. He is very rich, and can help them with new identities, and a safe place to stay for a while. What she doesn’t know, is that Samuel is one of the men trying to find her. He has actually hired the woman who has had her abducted. Samuel’s gift is slowly killing him, and he is convinced that her DNA has the clue to his own salvation. So he is kind of desperate to find her in time, and won’t take the risk of her refusing his request. Because why would she want to be a lab experiment ever again? They share the same childhood memories.
In the mean time, Richard has summoned Gabriel and Nicola to his retreat, to order them to America, to capture a Rogue Darkyn. They are not to tell the American Seigneur Michael Cyprien about it, or else he will hunt the Rogue down himself. So now there are three parties hunting for Lilah and Walker, and it is only a matter of time before they are found. Due to the tracking device in the truck they were abducted in, they are not that hard to find. After having escaped Frenchman’s Pass, they are again rescued just in time by the same people they fled from, and here the storylines start to come together. The strange history of the towns people, and the Darkyn and the Kyndred.
Never, ever would I have guessed the identity of the Rogue Darkyn, Walker. Perhaps if I had recently read the previous series, but this time, no, not a clue! But Walker and Lilah have fallen in love from the first time they were handcuffed together, and nothing will come between them, not even death. Their powers are truly awesome and a sight to behold. Two lonely people who have found each other, and together are so much more.
I liked the story, was drawn into it from the start. Then it became kind of convoluted with just a bit too many players and threads. I liked Lilah from the start, how she had to stay apart from other people, never making close friends or finding a lover, because of what could happen. And now there is Walker, she senses how he fights the need to just take her, or hurt her, and falls in love with him. She can trust him, just knows he will never hurt her. But Walker is afraid of his own feelings, afraid of what he might do to her, and tries to get away from Lilah. But she will have nothing of that, finally she is not afraid of going after what she wants, and she wants Walker. So she leaves him no choice, and together they face who or what is after them. And in the end, Lilah is truly magnificent!
I would have like some more personal details about Lilah, but I really liked this fast paced story. I can hardly wait for the next book in this great series. A series you really have to read in order though.
9 stars.
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