Page 24 of Knotted by the Mountain Man Dragon

I stare at him.

He is completely serious.

This is the man who knotted me last night, growled mine with his teeth against my throat, and is now personally offended that he served me black coffee this morning. The priorities of a dragon alpha are genuinely beyond my comprehension.

We walk in and the warmth hits me first, then the smell: fresh roast, cinnamon, baked goods. It’s a real small-town coffee shop, mismatched mugs and local art on the walls and a pastry case that makes my stomach growl despite the enormous breakfast Cage already fed me.

The woman behind the counter looks up and her eyes go wide.

Not at me. At Cage. Or more specifically, at Cage with his hand on the small of my back, standing close enough that our scents are obviously mingled.

“Morning, Cage,” she says carefully. Her gaze flicks between us. “Haven’t seen you here in… a while.”

“Jess.” He nods. “She needs a coffee. Cream and two sugars. And whatever she wants from the case.”

She needs. Not “we’d like.” Not “can we get.” She needs.

Jess looks at me with an expression I can’t quite read. Sympathy? Amusement? A little bit of “oh honey, you have no idea what you’ve gotten into”?

“I’m Mara,” I offer, because Cage is apparently not going to introduce me using actual social conventions.

“Jess. I run this place.” She smiles. It’s warm and real. “You must be new in town.”

“My car broke down yesterday.”

“And you’re… staying with Cage?”

The pause before “staying” carries about forty layers of subtext. Jess is a beta, I think, but she clearly knows what Cage is, and she can clearly smell the situation.

“Temporarily,” I say.

Cage’s hand presses slightly harder against my back.

Jess’s mouth twitches. “Right. Temporarily.” She starts making my coffee. “Well, the Wi-Fi password is on the chalkboard by the window. Stay as long as you like.”

I take my coffee and a blueberry scone, because apparently blueberry is my thing now, and settle into a table by the window. Cage doesn’t sit. He stands near the counter with his arms crossed and watches me open my laptop, and I can feel his gaze on me, warm and steady and constant.

I check my email. I have seventeen messages, none of them urgent. I respond to a few clients. I text my sister: Car is dead. Stuck in a tiny mountain town. Long story. I’m fine.

She responds immediately: Define “fine”

I look at Cage. He’s still watching me. Gold flickering at the edges of his dark eyes.

Very fine, I type. Tell you later.

I’m midway through a client email when the door opens and two men walk in.

I notice them immediately because they’re both enormous, like Cage. And they carry themselves the same way he does. Like they’re used to taking up more space than the room really wants to give them. The first one is tall and lean with silver-blond hair and pale eyes and a face so coldly beautiful it looks carved. He’s wearing a charcoal coat that probably costs more than my car did when it was alive. The second is broader, warmer, with sandy brown hair and a friendly face and the kind of build that suggests he spends most of his time outdoors hauling things.

Dragons. Both of them. I can tell now. Something about the way they move, the density of their presence, the faint otherness underneath all that handsomeness.

The cold beautiful one sees Cage first. His nostrils flare. His pale eyes cut to me. Back to Cage.

“Well,” he says. His voice is cool and precise and carries the weight of someone who has been alive for a very long time. “That explains the restlessness.”

“Silas,” Cage says. Just the name. No warmth. No hostility. Just acknowledgment.

Silas studies me with unsettling focus. I feel like I’m being appraised by something very old and very expensive.