Peregrine Carrow

Milonka Drastov likes brass locks, heavy iron, and keeping to herself. As the head gate-warden of the sprawling, snow-starved Privoz ski resort, she knows every service tunnel, every avalanche barrier, and exactly how to keep the city's bickering co-owners out of her hair. But when industrial saboteurs start acid-washing her hinges and paralyzing the lifts, neutrality stops being an option.

Enter Stanimir Vlashk. He’s a high-altitude tactical fixer with a bag full of wire-cutters, an encrypted contract he refuses to explain, and an aggravatingly competent attitude. He swears he isn't the one breaking her mountain, but given the people shooting at them both, he's the only one who can help her defend it.

Trapped in a forced-proximity alliance as a brutal proxy war rips the resort apart, Milonka must trade access for Stanimir's physical protection. Worse, she actually has to trust him. As the sabotage forces the resort's owners into a reluctant truce against invisible backers, keeping Privoz alive means turning the city's infrastructure into a weapon. Milonka and Stanimir just have to survive long enough to figure out who's cutting the checks—and try to keep their hands off each other in the dark.

Two years ago, medical translator Sabina Valero walked out on her hospital rotation and the man who trained her. Now she’s back on the same ward, forced into proximity with Mateo Corazón, the brilliant, infuriating resident who expects excellence and remembers every mistake she ever made. They’re stuck together on a complex case involving an unwanted medical inheritance—a rare genetic condition that no one wants to take responsibility for. Sabina can interpret the clinical terminology, but she also hears the family secrets they try to keep out of the charts. As they dig into a case that threatens a patient's life, Sabina and Mateo must navigate their shared past, professional friction, and undeniable attraction. The hospital walls are thin, the stakes are lethal, and the hardest thing to translate might be the space between them.