I leaned in, keeping my voice low as the monitors beeped in the background. “I’ve got your back, pretty angel. I won’t let any more harm come to you.” It was more than a promise; it felt like a vow. Being this close to her, I couldn’t shake the feeling that fate had thrown us together for some higher purpose. Here I was, a beast, and there she was, a beauty—our lives slammed together by some twist of destiny.

~Conan Thorin, Day Shift

“Mouse, you’re not going to hurt me.” I guided her down. “It’s time you found your place over my heart.”

Tears welled in her eyes.

“How do you always read me so well?” she whispered.

I brushed my thumb along one of her cheeks.

“Because you’re the first woman I’ve ever wanted to know by heart.”

“Hey, Mr. Captain!” she puffed, weaving through the crowd. “You training for the Reindeer Games or something? Some of us have short legs, you know! Or do you just like dashing through the airport like you’re a one-horse open sleigh?”

~Captain Kol Vinter, Christmas Cancellation

A Manhattan mafia man and a princess hidden inside a cartel compound on the side of a Salvadoran volcano should never have met.

Certainly not in a dungeon with me chained to a chair and her holding the key.

I would never call the lies, torture, blood, or loss that brought us here a gift. But chance no longer seemed big enough to explain how two lives that should never have touched had somehow collided in the darkest of places.

Every selfish part of me wanted to tell her she was already mine.

But I refused to use the worst day of her life to decide the rest of it for her.

I’d worship the goddess when she wanted worshipping and spoil the princess until she forgot there had ever been another way to live.

And if she ever wanted a dangerous man on his knees in front of her, I’d go there willingly.

That realization should’ve bothered me.

No one forced Lachlan Byrnes to kneel.

“She’s mine to protect. Touch her again, and you die.”

Those crystal-blue eyes of hers…they cut through all the bullshit and pierced my soul. I was forever lost to her. That twenty percent angel, eighty percent devil mix made me want to dive headfirst into whatever underworld she’d take me.

~Conan Thorin, Day Shift

I stayed silent, watching her breath. I wanted to freeze time, to hold on to this moment forever. No woman had ever affected me this deeply. Maybe it was her innocence—the fact that she was a blank slate due to her amnesia, free to write her story anew without the weight of past memories. God, how I longed to help her fill those empty spaces.

~Conan Thorin, Day Shift

Braxton Thorin was strong enough to carry the broken pieces of me. And gentle enough to put them back together.

~Daria Melnichenko, Mission Shift