Chapter Three
Nolan
I missed him.
That chant had never stopped in my head since I caught the scent of my mate at that rest stop. I went back there before I left the area, and the faintest trace remained, driving my beast from agitated to angry to uncontrollable.
Completely unfit to be around anyone after it became obvious that I’d lost my one chance to meet my fated mate, I had to make choices. Going home in my current state was not one of those because my dragon was willing to burn anyone to ash for any reason. I understood why he felt that way, but I couldn’t allow our rage to spill onto innocent bystanders.
If I didn’t get away somewhere isolated, I’d end up being put down for the good of all. So, I set out to find a place where I could hide until such time as things changed for the better, or I died of old age. Or maybe grief.
I didn’t care where I landed, as long as I was where I couldn’t hurt anyone. And that search led me into the mountains, to a broken-down cabin in the deep woods. It came with several acres of land and lay almost a half mile off the road up a steep dirt track that nobody would want to drive if they even found it.
I bought it online from a family who wanted to get rid of their eccentric late-uncle’s property as soon as possible and had no idea of its real worth. The land itself held a value of more than I paid. I hardly had to dig into my hoard at all, at least for the property itself.
The cabin… Well, the Unabomber would have looked down his nose at its run-down state. But it had the one element I needed. Privacy. When I first approached the building, having left my car halfway down the road, all I could think of was the home I’d so thoughtlessly left behind on this adventure.
If I’d stayed there, none of this would have happened.
But as I walked around the outside of my new home, taking in the damage and needs for repairs, I couldn’t regret the fact that I had come this far. If I’d never left home, for sure I wouldn’t have found my mate’s scent, and I wouldn’t have known he existed. Despite the heartache and rage, I held the memory of that scent close, and I knew I’d never forget it.
The cabin was constructed largely of logs, most of which seemed to be structurally sound, although they needed new chinking in many places. I should be able to manage that as well as making new shingles by splitting them with an ax. I’d never done it, but I’d watched videos on things like that purely out of interest.
So, how much better was it to have the opportunity to fix up my own place? Even in my mind, the lack of enthusiasm was clear, but I didn’t have a whole lot more to go on. Never one for doing physical labor, it was going to take a lot of perseverance to make the cabin inhabitable, but I could do it. As long as the internet connection held up so I could watch video how-tos.
And then, if my mate did show up, I’d have created a decent lair for us to spend our first days or weeks or even months together in. Slightly cheered by the thought, I returned to the front door and pulled the huge old-fashioned key I’d been provided with, from my pocket.
What would the inside look like? Keeping the idea of creating a lair on the off chance Fate sent my mate my way a second time, I slid the key into the lock and turned it then pushed on the door. And pushed. And shoved, and grunted with effort as I finally got the solid wood to move inward. I wasn’t sure how long the previous tenant had been gone, but it seemed either the door or the floorboards had gotten wet and warped. Still, I shouldn’t have too much trouble fixing that.
I managed to sneak through the opening to find myself in the midst of a hoarder situation. When I bought the place “as is,” I expected repairs to be needed, but as a dragon who had a hoard, I didn’t consider what I stepped into worthy of the name. The door was flanked by towers of newspapers and magazines that threatened to tumble down and bury an unwary passerby, and the reason the door had been so difficult to open was due to more of the same filling the space behind it. I carefully moved into the big main room, or at least I thought it would be big if I cleaned out the items piled in every available inch of space and rising toward the ceiling.
Doorways were visible, barely, but I couldn’t quite get to them to find out what lay beyond. Presumably a kitchen, bedrooms, a bathroom? Please let there be a bathroom.
Torn between letting my dragon have his head and torching the whole building to start fresh and my plan to clean it out, I struck a deal with him. Wading through the weeds in the backyard, I found a fire pit, and we agreed that once I cleared the brush to avoid setting the forest ablaze, I would pile all the burnables in there and let him have his fun.
Each task I took on served to occupy my physical self but only a portion of my mind. The rest never let go of the loss of my mate. But I reminded myself that if my mate ever did randomly show up, he’d find a comfortable house worthy of him.
Carting armloads of newspapers and magazines and other burnable trash out each day, once the sun set, I shifted and flew, swooping down to set the trash on fire. At first, I worried that someone might notice, maybe a traveler on the main road smelling the smoke, but no authorities came to investigate, no journeyer found their way up the track.
Of course, not everything could be burned. Some items were garbage that had to be carted off to the landfill, which I did with as little contact with the people there as possible. The beer cans and other things that could be recycled for a fee, I bagged up and left near a homeless encampment. It kept me from having to risk my temperament around people and those who were staying there would put the money they could collect to good use.
Back at the cabin, I began the process of building a home for a mate who might never come. The previous owner had left all sorts of tools behind debris in a shed, and the forest lent me many of the materials I needed. The rest were ordered online and delivered to the end of the drive.
Day by day, I chinked the outside, fixed the windows, polished the woodstove, scraped, sanded, and refinished the floors, repaired the ladder to the loft I hadn’t even been able to see past the towers of debris.
I did have a bathroom. And it was charming, if a bit out of style.
My mate, if he ever came, would find himself welcomed into a three-bedroom cabin with a lovely old-fashioned eat-in kitchen and a view from the loft of the valley below.
I prayed Fate would shine down on me and send my mate soon. A dragon could dream.