Page 32 of Knotted by the Mountain Man Dragon

“You just don’t like being seen.”

She’s right. I don’t. I’ve spent decades being invisible in plain sight. The big quiet mechanic who keeps to himself. The dragon nobody talks about because he doesn’t invite conversation. I built a life designed to need nothing and no one.

And then she saw me anyway.

“My laptop.” She straightens suddenly. “Cage, my laptop is at the shop. I left it in the office yesterday when I was using the Wi-Fi.”

“It’s fine. The shop is solid.”

“I have client files on it. If a power surge fries it, I lose everything.”

“Mara…”

“You’re right. It’s not safe to go out.”

She’s a freelancer. Her laptop is her livelihood. And the shop’s wiring is old. I’ve been meaning to update the surge protectors for months.

“I’ll go.”

“Not alone. If a tree comes down on the road, you’ll need someone to spot. I can navigate.”

I want to say no. My dragon wants to lock her in this cabin and wrap himself around her and wait out the storm in the dark. But she’s looking at me with those brown eyes and her jaw is set and I can tell that this is a test. Not of whether I’ll protect her. Of whether I’ll let her be part of this.

Whether I’ll treat her like a partner or a possession.

“Stay close to me,” I say.

She nods.

We drive down the mountain into the teeth of the storm.

The road is bad. Worse than bad. Water runs across the gravel in sheets. Branches litter the path. Twice I have to stop and drag fallen limbs out of the way, and Mara guides me through the gaps, leaning out the passenger window to call clearances through the rain.

She’s soaked. She’s focused. She’s competent as hell.

My dragon is losing his mind with pride and fear in equal measure.

We make it to the shop. The power is out here too but the building is intact. Mara runs inside and grabs her laptop and the charger and shoves them into her bag. I check the bays, the wiring, make sure nothing is sparking.

We’re heading back to the truck when the sound hits.

A crack so loud it splits the air like a gunshot. Then a groan. Low, deep, structural. The kind of sound a tree makes when it gives up its grip on the earth.

I look up.

A Douglas fir, maybe a hundred feet tall, is falling directly toward the parking lot.

Toward Mara.

Time does something it’s never done to me in ninety-three years.

It slows down.

I see the tree. I see the angle. I see her, turning toward the sound, her eyes going wide, her bag clutched to her chest.

I don’t think.

The shift takes me in a heartbeat. Full. My body tears apart and remakes itself in the space between one second and the next, and then I am not a man standing in a parking lot.