“You killed my father.” The dragon prince smiled. “I went to a great deal of trouble to be captured by you.” Commander Lucian Winters has the man he blames for his father’s murder in chains. He only needs to reach into Kaelen’s mind and find the truth. Then the chains snap. Kaelen knows Lucian’s scent. He remembers the winter they met. And he remembers a promise he made to a boy in the snow fifteen years ago, on a night someone erased from Lucian’s memory. When Lucian’s own house brands him a traitor and orders his execution, he has to run with the dragon he swore to kill. Kaelen knows what happened on the night Lucian’s father died. The longer they spend together, the harder it gets for Lucian to decide what scares him more: that Kaelen might be telling the truth, or that he wants the dragon to stay even after he’s heard it. Then Kaelen leaves a golden mark on his throat, and Lucian discovers just how much a dragon means when he says he’ll never let go.

Five-year-old Sophie carves a crooked arrow into the ice at Vincent Romano’s private rink. It points straight to a red maintenance door, where a man in a gray hat is tearing apart an equipment cabinet. In his bag is an old staff badge with the face of a man believed dead for six years. Sophie recognizes him. He came to see her mother yesterday. Her mother is Elena Reyes, the girl who used to beat Vincent across the ice and the woman he hasn’t spoken to since his father’s funeral. She’s been keeping a key that Carlo Romano meant for Vincent to have. What it opens could explain his death and put thirty-seven families in danger. Vincent wants answers. Elena wants him to keep his word to Sophie. Before the rink opens again, he’ll have to decide how much of the life he inherited he’s willing to give up to do both.

Noah Hayes took a job at the Cascadia Reptile Research Institute expecting to work with animals that couldn’t talk back. Then he met Avery. The institute’s most stubborn black python refuses his food, steals Noah’s towels, and flicks his tail across Noah’s backside whenever he bends over. Noah is pretty sure Avery hates him. Then one morning, he wakes up in the arms of a handsome, gold-eyed stranger who knows exactly what happened the day Noah kissed Avery on the head. Turns out Avery’s been flirting this whole time. He wants a home, a family, and kids with Noah. He just hasn’t thought to ask him on a date. Noah suggests dinner. Avery asks if breakfast will do. And somehow, between three desserts before eight in the morning, a stolen pillow, and an incident involving a folding chair, Noah starts looking forward to whatever ridiculous thing Avery will do next.

After a fourteen-hour hospital shift, nurse Emma Reed climbs into the wrong luxury sedan and asks a stranger to take her home. Dominic Moretti could have thrown her out. Instead, he offers her a phone charger and waits until her real ride arrives. Only afterward does Emma discover why his name makes people nervous. A forgotten scarf leads to dinner. Dinner becomes late-night conversations, lingering kisses, and the unfamiliar comfort of being cared for. Then an old family photograph reveals something Dominic never mentioned. He knew her grandmother. And the night Emma mistook him for her driver, he recognized exactly who she was. Now she must discover how much of their love began with kindness—and how much began with a secret.