The Viper

The Viper is a paranormal romance by the American writer J. R. Ward, published in 2022. It is set in the world of the Black Dagger Brotherhood and follows the series about the brotherhood's prison camp.

Kane has spent a very long time in the camp after being framed for the killing of the woman he was mated to. He was never told what lay behind the marriage that was arranged for him, and his life since has been shaped by a conviction he did not earn, which he has made his peace with in his own fashion.

When a fire in the camp leaves him severely burned, he is treated by Nadya, a self-taught nurse who does what she can for the prisoners and who recognises rather more of his situation than she lets on. Kane is taken away from the camp afterwards and offered a course of treatment that would change what he is, and when he accepts it he also undertakes to come back for the woman who took care of him. That promise brings him into conflict with his own history, which had been buried deliberately and does not stay buried.