Updated Apr 20, 2026 • ~9 min read
Chapter 13: One-Oh-Four
Nadia
Fever takes Riot under sometime around dawn on Day Two in Alaska, and Nadia’s aware of how close she came to losing him only in the terrifying spikes when his temperature climbs past dangerous and into life-threatening territory, and she’s pressing ice-cold washcloths to his burning skin while praying to gods she stopped believing in twelve years ago.
He drifts in and out of consciousness, caught between waking nightmares about failing to protect her and fever dreams where she’s already dead and he’s too late to save her, and what anchors him—what keeps him from sliding completely into delirium—seems to be her voice, so Nadia talks until she’s hoarse, murmuring things she barely registers about her day and her work and how he needs to wake up because she can’t do this without him.
At some point during the worst of it, when his fever spikes to one-oh-four and she’s seriously considering ignoring his orders about hospitals, she presses her face into his neck and starts crying, and the words that come out aren’t planned or careful or protected by any of the walls she spent three weeks maintaining.
“You have to be okay,” she says, her tears hot against his feverish skin and her voice raw with emotion she can’t contain anymore. “I know I’m terrible at this, I know I keep pushing you away and I’m probably the most emotionally unavailable person you’ve ever met, but you have to be okay because I can’t—I can’t lose you.”
Riot makes a sound that might be him trying to respond, but the fever has him too deep and all that comes out is something incoherent that definitely isn’t reassuring.
“Because I love you,” Nadia admits to his unconscious form, the confession torn from somewhere deep and unguarded. “I didn’t want to. God, I fought so hard not to. But I do—I’m in love with you, Tobias Hawke, and you can’t die on me now that I’ve finally figured that out.”
The words hang in the quiet cabin, terrifying in their honesty, and Nadia knows she should feel exposed or vulnerable or panicked about saying them out loud even if he can’t hear.
But mostly she just feels relieved, like maybe admitting it to the universe means he’ll fight harder to stay alive.
“You’re not allowed to leave me,” she continues, finding his hand and gripping it like she can physically anchor him to consciousness. “I’ll never forgive you if you do. Do you hear me? You promised you wouldn’t leave, and I’m holding you to that because I can’t do this without you. I don’t want to.”
Her voice breaks on the last word, and she presses a kiss to his knuckles that feels like a promise and a prayer.
She holds onto that—onto her confession, her fear, her desperate hope that love can be enough to keep him here—as the hours blur together and his fever finally, mercifully breaks sometime around midnight.
When she checks his temperature and finds it back below dangerous, Nadia collapses next to him on the bed and sleeps for the first time in forty-eight hours, her hand still clutching his like maybe if she holds on tight enough, he won’t slip away.
🔥
Three days after the bullet extraction, Riot’s fever finally breaks completely, and Nadia wakes up in the chair she’s pulled next to the bed to find him watching her with clear eyes for the first time since they arrived in Alaska.
“Hey,” his voice is rough from disuse but blessedly coherent. “How long was I out?”
“Three days.” Nadia straightens up, ignoring the protests from her spine about sleeping in chairs. “Your fever spiked twice and I thought—” Her voice cracks despite her best efforts. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“Sorry about that.” He shifts carefully, testing the limits of his healing shoulder, and winces. “How bad was it?”
“You had a bullet lodged against your shoulder blade that I had to remove with forceps while you talked me through it like we were assembling furniture instead of performing amateur surgery. So pretty bad.” She reaches for the water bottle on the nightstand, helps him drink because his good arm is still weak. “How do you feel?”
“Like I got shot and then had field surgery performed by someone with no medical training.” But he’s smiling slightly, which Nadia takes as a good sign. “Thank you. For taking care of me. For saving my life.”
“Well, I couldn’t let you die after you went through all that trouble to save mine.” She’s going for light and casual, but it comes out sincere instead. “We’re even now, I guess.”
They fall into easy conversation after that—Nadia updating him on Marcus’s check-ins and the status of Viktor’s organization, Riot asking about her work and whether she’s been eating properly while playing nurse. It feels normal, comfortable, and Nadia starts to relax for the first time in days.
Until she catches him looking at her with an expression that suggests he’s thinking about something specific, and the hair on the back of her neck stands up with warning.
“What?” she asks, suspicious.
“Nothing,” Riot says, but there’s something knowing in his eyes that makes Nadia’s stomach drop.
“That’s not your nothing face. That’s your ‘I know something you don’t know’ face.” She crosses her arms defensively. “What are you thinking about?”
“Just how much I appreciate you taking care of me,” he says mildly, but Nadia doesn’t believe him for a second.
They let it drop, moving on to discussing their next steps and how long he needs to recover before they can risk moving again, but the conversation lingers in the back of Nadia’s mind like a warning bell she can’t quite place.
It’s not until later—after dinner and medication and helping him back into bed despite his protests that he’s fine—that Riot drops the bomb.
“Tell me how you feel about me,” he says quietly, and Nadia’s entire body goes tense.
“What?”
“How do you feel about me, Nadia? I want to hear you say it.”
There’s something in his voice—something knowing and purposeful—that makes warning bells start ringing in her head. “I care about you. Obviously. I spent three days nursing you through a bullet wound and fever—”
“That’s not what you said when you thought I was asleep.”
The world tilts sideways, and Nadia feels her stomach drop through the floor.
No.
No, he couldn’t have—
“You were FAKING?” The betrayal hits like a physical blow. “You let me think you were unconscious while I—I can’t believe you—”
“I wasn’t faking the fever,” Riot interrupts, sitting up despite the obvious pain it causes. “But yes, I heard what you said. And I didn’t respond because you needed to say it when you thought it was safe. But now I need you to say it for real.”
“You had NO RIGHT—”
“I have every right to want honesty from the woman I’m in love with!” His voice rises to match hers. “You confessed your feelings while thinking I couldn’t hear, Nadia. But I DID hear, and now I need to know if you meant it or if it was just fear talking.”
“Of course I meant it!” The words explode out of her before she can stop them. “I love you, you impossible, manipulative—” She stops, horrified at what she just admitted. “I take it back.”
“Too late. Already heard it twice.” There’s something almost triumphant in his expression. “You love me.”
“That doesn’t mean—it doesn’t change—” Nadia’s backing toward the door, panic clawing up her throat. “This was supposed to be casual. Friends with benefits. No feelings.”
“And how’s that working out for you?” Riot’s trying to stand, moving toward her despite his injury. “Because it’s not working for me. It stopped working the moment I realized I was falling for you.”
“You can’t love me. This isn’t real. It’s just circumstances and proximity and—”
“It’s real for me.” He’s close enough now that she can see the intensity in his eyes. “I’d love you in a cabin, on a battlefield, in a fucking grocery store. Geography doesn’t change what I feel.”
“I don’t do love,” Nadia says desperately, her back hitting the wall. “People I love die, Riot. My parents, my friends, everyone—”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“You don’t KNOW that!”
“I know I’m going to fight like hell to stay alive because you’re worth fighting for.” He cups her face with his good hand, and Nadia hates how much she wants to lean into the touch. “So yeah, I love you. And you love me. And we can either keep lying about it or we can actually try to figure out what this is.”
Nadia wants to run, wants to retreat behind her walls and pretend this conversation never happened. But Riot’s looking at her like she’s the only thing that matters in the world, and she’s so tired of being afraid.
“I’m terrified,” she admits quietly.
“Me too.”
“I don’t know how to do this. The relationship thing. The trust thing.”
“Then we’ll figure it out together.” He leans his forehead against hers. “But Nadia, I need you to stop running from this. From us. Can you do that?”
She wants to say yes, wants to promise she’ll try, but what comes out instead is: “What if I can’t? What if I’m too broken?”
“Then we’ll be broken together.” He kisses her softly. “But you have to choose it. Choose me. Choose us. Not because we’re hiding in Alaska or because I got shot protecting you—choose it because you want to.”
Nadia closes her eyes, feels tears sliding down her cheeks, and whispers: “I want to. I’m just so scared.”
“I know. We’ll figure it out.” Riot pulls her close, careful of his injured shoulder. “One day at a time. No pressure. Just—stop pushing me away when things get hard.”
It’s not a promise to fix everything, not a guarantee of happily ever after. But it’s honest, and it’s real, and it’s more than Nadia thought she’d ever let herself have.
So she nods against his chest and lets herself believe, just for this moment, that maybe love doesn’t have to end in loss.
Maybe this time, she gets to keep what she’s found.
Reader Reactions