*Guarded in Darkness by Victoria Lum

He was sent to protect her until he could eliminate her. Then she became the one person he couldn’t destroy.

Aria Connors thought losing her fiancé was the worst thing she would ever survive. Then come the gifts. The warnings. The feeling that someone is watching her while she sleeps. Until a masked stranger starts haunting the edges of her life—first as a presence in the shadows, then as a faceless voice, then as the man who seems to understand the most broken parts of her. The deeper Aria falls, the harder it becomes to tell danger from desire.

Ren is the Triads’ most feared weapon—a silent assassin known as the god of death. He was given one job: keep Aria alive until a key is recovered…then kill her. But Ren has spent his life obeying orders without hesitation. Aria was supposed to be a job. A problem. A means to an end. Instead, she gets under his skin, into his blood, and past every wall he’s ever built.

Now enemies are closing in, the secrets buried in Aria’s past are beginning to unravel, and the empire Ren serves will destroy them both before it lets them walk away. As betrayal, obsession, and desire collide, Ren will have to choose between the world that made him a monster…or the woman who makes him want to be a man.

Because in a world ruled by death, falling in love may be the most dangerous betrayal of all.