“From the moment fate brought me into your emergency department, you became the best example of what a man should be. Honest, even when I couldn’t be truthful about my past. Kind, when no one else was. Giving, to a complete stranger without hesitation. Funny, when things were at their worst. You protected my heart, my soul, and my body. You understood me even when I didn’t understand myself.”

~Anastasia Volkov, Day Shift

“Conan, you make me feel…safe. More than that, you make me feel valued. You’re the first person who has ever made me feel truly alive. Before I met you, my life was on a course dictated by others. You’ve shown me what it means to be cherished, to matter. Every moment with you is a gift I never thought I’d get. I don’t have the words to express how much you mean to me, but know this: you are my strength and my courage. I trust you with my life—with my heart. I’ve never experienced anything like this, and I never will again. You’re everything I never knew I needed.”

~Anastasia Volkov, Day Shift

Her eyes locked onto mine, and I had the insane urge to close the gap, to taste that sass on her lips.

~Captain Kol Vinter, Christmas Cancellation

“I went from a career that was on track, a boyfriend who I thought was total husband material, and a past that was neatly tucked away where it belonged…to this.” I glanced around the room, holding my hands out in a helpless gesture. “Jobless, single, hitching rides with strangers. And a past that’s now the only future I have.” I laughed bitterly. “Sometimes fate’s a little bitch.”

~Noelle Nichols, Christmas Cancellation

Noelle was a challenge I couldn’t refuse, an adventure that would either be the best damn thing I’d ever experienced or would blow up spectacularly in my face.

~Captain Kol Vinter, Christmas Cancellation

“No one will ever hurt you again, not on my watch. I’ll stand between you and the world if I have to. You’re my heart, my soul, and I’ll spend every last breath ensuring you feel loved, cherished, and safe.”

~Dr. Atticus Thorin, Night Shift

And when she’d met my eyes—when she’d chosen defiance, chosen provocation—something inside me detonated.

Not romance. Not tenderness.

Claim.

Possession.

A dark, ruthless certainty that she was going to be mine to protect, mine to keep, mine to ruin the world for if I had to. And she had no idea.

~Lucian Byrne, Eyes of the Unholy

Tonight I wanted to be wrecked, to be so consumed by someone that I couldn’t remember my name, much less all the screwed-up things life had thrown at me. Kol was the kind of man who could do that; I could tell just by the way he moved. I wanted him to worship every inch of me, to let him light up every one of my nerves like a Christmas tree.

~Noelle Nichols, Christmas Cancellation

By the time he’d finished the song, I was so wrapped up in his playing and the sound of his voice that I hadn’t realized how much my imagination had run wild. I was having a vivid daydream about those very fingers, imagining how well he could play—me—and betting mentally that he could make me sing too.

~Anastasia Volkov, Day Shift

In his eyes there had been genuine compassion. Those kinds of eyes didn’t belong to liars or cowards. They were the kind of eyes someone could hold on to in their darkest moments. That kind of human decency was foreign to me, a quality I’d never witnessed in the cold, calculated men who had shaped my life—the Bratva, the Kremlin. It made him compelling and dangerous because it drew me to him.

He was an American, a man risking his life to help in a war that wasn’t his and believing he’d be safe. And that trust in the better angels of our nature was my undoing. And now, for reasons I couldn’t fully explain, I was willing to risk everything to help him. If I hadn’t felt compelled to act before, the decision was now clear. Letting him die here wasn’t just a part of the mission I’d chosen—it was unthinkable. My fate was sealed.

~Daria Melnichenko, Mission Shift