ONE
MAPLE
The Arizona sun blazed overhead as Maple adjusted the weight of her pack. Five years of working with Ben had taught her to read his expressions, and the one he wore now—equal parts resignation and concern—meant he thought she'd finally lost her mind.
"Dragons, Maple. Really." Ben shifted his own pack higher on his shoulders, the metal buckles catching the harsh desert light. "We're talking about creatures that breathe fire and hoard gold. Not exactly what I'd call archaeological advancement."
"The iconography is consistent across three separate civilizations that had no contact with each other," Maple shot back, her boots crunching against the loose gravel as they approached the unmarked boundary of Trigg Corporation land. "Similar metallurgy techniques, identical symbolic patterns, and references to territorial markers that match nothing in recorded history."
"Or it's a coincidence. Cultural convergent evolution. Shared human mythology." Ben's voice carried the patience of someone who'd had this argument before. "You know, the logical explanation."
Maple's heart hammered against her ribs, though whether from the hike or anticipation, she couldn't say. The pull she felt toward this place defied every rational instinct she'd cultivated over the years—a magnetic tug that had been growing stronger with each step into the canyon country.
"Since when do you care about logical explanations?" She glanced sideways at him, noting the way his jaw tightened. "You followed me into that collapsed temple in Peru based on nothing but a fragment of pottery and a hunch."
"That was different. That was?—"
"Based on evidence you could hold in your hands, I know." The familiar ache of being misunderstood settled in her chest. "But what if some evidence can't be quantified? What if there are things that exist outside peer review and academic approval?"
Ben stopped walking. The silence stretched between them, broken only by the distant cry of a hawk circling overhead. When he finally spoke, his voice was gentler.
"Maple, I've watched you build a reputation most archaeologists would kill for. You've got instincts that border on supernatural themselves—I've seen you read a site like other people read newspapers." He gestured toward the sprawling canyon landscape ahead. "But this? This feels different. Desperate."
The word hit harder than she expected. Desperate. Was that what this was? Years of chasing fragments and whispers, following leads that evaporated the moment she got close enough to examine them properly. The growing certainty that she was running out of time to prove something she couldn't even articulate to herself.
"Maybe it is desperate." The admission scraped her throat raw. "Maybe I'm tired of playing it safe and following the approved dig sites and publishing papers about pottery shards that tell us nothing we didn't already know."
They reached a cluster of warning signs—NO TRESPASSING, PRIVATE PROPERTY, AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY—each more emphatic than the last. Ben's expression darkened as he read them.
"This is a really bad idea, Maple. We're talking about Trigg Corporation here. These people don't just press charges—they destroy careers. Permanently."
"What's the worst-case scenario if we don't find anything?" Maple stepped around the signs, her pulse quickening. "Trespassing charge. A fine. Maybe some bad publicity."
"And if we do find this rumored dragon artifact?"
The question hung in the air. Maple forced herself to meet his gaze, seeing her own reflection in his sun-weathered face—the careful mask she'd worn for so long that she sometimes forgot what lay beneath it.
"Then we deal with that when it happens."
Ben studied her for a long moment, then sighed and hefted his pack higher. "Five years, Maple. Five years I've been following your hunches into places we shouldn't go, and somehow you always find something worth the risk." He shook his head but fell into step beside her. "I just hope your streak holds."
They moved deeper into the canyon country, where red rock formations rose like ancient sentinels and the air shimmered with heat mirages. No surveillance cameras tracked their movement, no fences barred their path—just the vast, empty landscape that had swallowed countless secrets over millennia.
With each step, the pull grew stronger. Something ahead called to her, a resonance she felt in her bones rather than heard with her ears. The rational part of her mind cataloged the risks—career suicide, legal consequences, the very real possibility that she was chasing shadows based on nothing more than childhood fantasies she'd never quite outgrown.
Her parents would be appalled. Two retired history professors who'd spent decades teaching her to value evidence over imagination, to choose reputation over wonder. They'd worked so hard to cure her of what they called her "impractical obsessions," steering her toward archaeology as a compromise—a way to channel her fascination with the past into something academically respectable.
If they could see her now, trespassing on corporate land in pursuit of dragon artifacts, they'd probably have her committed.
Her ex-boyfriend Harrison's voice echoed in her memory even now, that particular tone he'd used whenever she mentioned pursuing an unconventional lead. "You're being impractical again, Maple. Reckless. Why can't you focus on the kind of discoveries that actually matter? The ones that build careers instead of destroying them?"
The ones that brought fame and fortune instead of wonder and truth.
She'd tried to explain once—the electric thrill of following a thread that led somewhere unexpected, the way certain artifacts seemed to whisper secrets just beyond the edge of understanding. But Harrison had looked at her like she was speaking a foreign language, and eventually she'd stopped trying to make him understand.
Eventually she'd stopped trying to make anyone understand.
"You're thinking too loud," Ben observed, his voice cutting through her brooding. "Whatever's eating at you, it's making your shoulders bunch up like you're carrying twice the weight."
