Cold Haven
By @john1208
I was running on exactly three hours of sleep, an IV drip of caffeine, and crushing depression when my estranged father died. His final act? Handing me the deed to a remote cabin in the Vulkari Peaks. Desperate to escape my soul-crushing job as a logistics dispatcher for a soulless megacorp, I packed up my teenage brother, Bram, and fled to the snow. Enter Calder Hest. The quiet, broad-shouldered innkeeper next door chopped wood, made terrible jokes, and brewed excellent coffee. For the first time in years, my chest stopped aching. I thought I'd finally found a fleeting slice of peace. I was dead wrong. The cabin wasn't a gift to help me heal; it was a beacon designed by my father's enemies to lure us to a killbox with no witnesses. Suddenly, my relaxing vacation turns into a high-octane bloodbath in the snow, and Calder reveals a lethal set of black-ops skills that definitely aren't on an innkeeper's resume. We barely survive, and I flee back to the city to hide. But when a knock echoes through my apartment door in the pouring rain, and Calder is standing there bleeding, I have to ask: did the danger follow me, or did my heart?
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