33 year old Shannon Flannery held a secret, many that traced the generations of her family with a wicked streak, a flame sizzling right below everyone's noses. After becoming pregnant in her teenage years, facing the rejection and anger from both her religious parents, she faced two options; marry the boy who fathered the baby, or give the baby up for adoption, both choices which left her stark and afraid of the results. Choosing with the hardest difficulty, she gave the baby away, to a loving set of parents, Ella and her husband Travis Settler. From there, her baby would grow loved, until Ella's death 3 years prior, and as Dani, her baby turned 13, both their worlds would begin the descent into shattering.
While seeking under a hidden alias, Dani searched frantically for her birth mother, the one her father refused to open up about. This lead to her sneaking out, and finally skipping last period, she found herself abducted by a mad man, the Beast as she called him. Facing constant terror, she believed herself to be dead, as the man with the scarred back held her horribly captive for days, while her father ran from Oregon to California in search of his beloved daughter, whose disappearance baffled detectives across state lines. Travis, determined her birth mother knew where his daughter fled to, landed on her house, only to capture it amiss ablaze on an out building, before his heart caught in his through at the sight of her beauty.
Reddish curls that framed a heart shaped face, nearly beaten into oblivion, he fought to remain by her side, while Nate Santana, the ranch hand clung to a hidden secret, one that tore them in two. While Shannon struggled to accept her family's deceit,. she learns the horrible truth. Her father, the Night Scorcher who set ablaze and murdered a woman accidentally, to her brother's Shea, Robert, Aaron, Nevill and Ollie who held up his cruel footsteps and planned the murder of her divorcing and abusing husband Ryan Caryle. After he switched placed with Neville and Ollie took up as his twin's face for weeks, he hunted down to murder Shannon for her crimes to him. It wasn't until she collided with him after Dani was used as bait did she realized how terrifying he was. With the cabin in the woods set ablaze, she shivered in the embrace of Settler, who captured her as she clung to consciousness.