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Cage Brannon. I sat in Jess’s coffee shop months ago and watched him scent-mark Mara’s coffee cup while she stepped away from the table. He picked up the cup, stroked the handle, set it back, and did not appear to realize he had done it. I found the display undignified. I remember thinking: if I ever find my mate, I will certainly conduct myself with more composure.

I am standing in my study at ten in the evening, gripping the edge of a desk because my employee’s scent is seeping through the floor and I cannot make myself stop breathing it in.

I owe Cage an apology I will never give him.

I open her file. Nina Lake. Twenty-seven. Bachelor’s in accounting, minor in business administration. Three years at a mid-sized firm in Portland, two years at a boutique consultancy in Seattle. Solid references. One described her as “the most competent person I have ever employed and also completely impossible to intimidate, which I say with mixed feelings.”

I liked that reference. My dragon liked her photograph. Professional headshot. Brown eyes, warm skin, a smile that manages to look both friendly and like she already knows what your accounts payable department is hiding.

I have looked at this photograph six times since she submitted her application.

I close the file.

The fire in the study has burned low. I add a log and watch the flames climb and think about the fact that she pushed back on the forbidden rooms within ten minutes of walking through my door.

Nobody pushes back on me.

People in Blackridge treat me with the careful deference of those who know I have owned half this mountain since before their great-grandparents were born. The previous property manager called me “sir” and flinched when I entered the room. The one before that lasted eleven months and cried twice.

Nina Lake heard “four locked rooms” and told me it would only make her more curious.

Mate is brave, my dragon observes.

She is direct.

Same thing.

I remove my jacket. Hang it on the stand beside the door. Roll my sleeves to the forearm. This is as close to informal as I come.

I sit at the desk. Open my laptop. I have correspondence to review. Investment reports. A property tax appeal for the eastern timber holdings. A request from the Blackridge Historical Society for a donation to their preservation fund, which I will grant because I built two of the buildings they are trying to preserve and I would prefer they do it correctly.

I stare at the screen.

I can smell her from here.

Through the floor. Through the walls. Through decades of cedar and woodsmoke and old leather, her scent cuts through everything and settles at the base of my skull and my dragon begins doing something he has never done before.

He begins cataloging her, like a jeweler handles a stone that has no known equivalent. With the understanding that a number cannot be assigned because the object has rendered the entire system of valuation obsolete.

Her eyes are brown. Dark, warm brown. She tilted her chin up when she spoke to me. She did not step backward when I stepped forward. Her pulse jumped when I asked her scent, but her voice stayed steady. Her hair was pulled back and I wanted to take it down.

Her hands, my dragon notes. She talks with her hands.

I noticed.

We should acquire rings for those fingers.

I close my laptop. It has been approximately six hours since I met my mate and my dragon is shopping for jewelry.

I will not think about the way her scent changed when she stood in the bedroom doorway. Warmer. Sweeter. The faintest trace of arousal that hit my blood like sixty-year-old Scotch. I will not think about the fact that a lifetime of impeccable manners is, right now, the thinnest wall I have ever stood behind.

Wall is unnecessary, my dragon says. Remove wall.

I pour myself a whiskey. Drink it at the window, watching rain slide down glass.

She is lying in a bed I chose for her. Under a duvet I selected because the thread count met my standards. In a room I had prepared with fresh flowers and a fire laid because that is how I prepare any room in my house for an arriving guest. Mrs. Hughes uses lavender on the guest linens. The flowers are what the florist in Blackridge had available. Everything was arranged with precision.

None of it was for her specifically.