Two firefighters. One burning building. The call that almost took them both — and the adrenaline that took everything else.Ryan Callahan has been a firefighter for five years. He knows the job, knows his station, knows his partner. He's been running calls beside Nate Ortega for two years and the trust between them is total — the kind that only builds when two men have run into burning buildings together often enough.He's also been noticing Nate for about ei...

Six months of not looking. Three days in one hotel room. Something was bound to give.Jake Mercer is straight. He's been straight his whole life, and he has a very solid argument for that — an argument he's been quietly constructing for six months, mostly to manage the fact that he cannot stop noticing Luca Ricci.Luca is his teammate. His road-trip roommate — again. Openly bisexual, dark-eyed, and irritatingly aware of the specific way Jake has been not-look...

He's built his entire career on following the rules. His most trusted soldier is about to make that impossible.Captain Ryan Cole doesn't break rules. Not fraternization policy. Not chain of command. Not the careful professional distance he has maintained for eight months of deployment with Sergeant First Class Jace Harmon standing right there, being competent and patient and impossible to stop noticing.The rules exist for a reason. Cole knows the reason. He...

A backdraft happens when fire meets fresh oxygen after being starved of it. Jake Kowalski has been starved of something for eight months. He just didn't know what.Jake talks for a living. Fills every room he walks into, makes every crew feel like family, has been the Station 12 extrovert for seven years running. He has a system for everything — including not examining why he started timing his mornings around the new transfer's breakfast.Mateo Vega arrived ...

Six months deployed. One man for company. Sergeant Reed Calloway has followed every rule the Army gave him — except the one he's about to break.Reed is good at control. Eight years of service, a military family behind him, and the particular discipline of a man who built himself around doing things correctly. Six months on a forward operating base with forty personnel and one man he cannot stop being aware of hasn't changed that.Sergeant First Class Mateo V...

He's hated Dex Morrow for three years. Turns out hate and want have been running in the same lane.Nate Cole knows exactly what he thinks about Dex Morrow: rivals, opponents, the most aggravating presence in the Northland Conference. For three years, every hit, every play, every composed look Dex gives him from across the ice has made Nate want to put him through the boards.He's been thinking about it longer than is strictly reasonable.The night befo...

"Fully involved" means the fire has consumed the whole structure. Crew Chief Owen Garrett has been in complete control for twelve years. His new probie is the first thing to change that.Owen runs a tight house. Four years as crew chief at Station 15, twelve years on the job, the kind of professional control that sets the temperature of everything around him. He's developed eleven probies. He's never once lost his operational equilibrium over any of them.The...

Three deployments. Nine years. Sergeant Webb has been calling it brotherhood. After the near-miss on the western sector road, he can't call it that anymore.Marcus Webb is methodical. He plans ahead. He runs the mission from multiple angles before he's in the field so that when something goes wrong, he's already mapped the contingencies.He did not map this contingency.Nine years of serving beside Sergeant First Class Danny Ochoa. Three deployments, h...

One captain. One co-captain he didn't ask for. Five days in a cabin with one broken pull-out couch and no more excuses.Marcus Webb runs things by the book. He's had a system for everything since the day he was named captain — binders, structure, clear chains of command. The system works. The record says so.Then Coach Reyes gives him a co-captain.Jonah Price transferred from Lakeview with opinions about everything and apparently no awareness that som...

He's the team captain. Cole's mentor. The most untouchable person in the program. Cole is nineteen and completely in over his head.Cole Rafferty came to Hartwell ready for the hardest hockey of his life. He was not ready for Ash Delaney.Ash is twenty-four, a fifth-year captain, the best player on the ice in any session Cole has watched on film. He's been assigned as Cole's mentor for the fall semester — film sessions, skating drills, an open door. Professio...

Every material has a temperature at which it ignites. Danny Holt drove forty minutes for quiet. He found something that changed everything.Danny volunteered for the three-night cover shift at the remote Station 22. He wanted the space — away from the density of the main house, away from the noise. Just a small outpost, a slow patch, and somewhere to reset.He didn't account for Will Connolly.Will has been running Station 22 alone for four years. He k...

Hand-to-hand combat training means getting personal. Private Eli didn't expect his instructor to affect him like this. He really didn't expect to want more.Three weeks. Twelve other trainees. One combatives instructor who moves like the job made him and says exactly what he means and nothing else.Private First Class Eli Carr came to Fort Benning's advanced training course to learn how to fight. He's learning something else entirely.Staff Sergeant Do...