SEAL’D By The Mountain Man (Tidehaven SEAL Romance #5)

Chapter 1

CORY

The mountain doesn't give warnings. It just kills you.

I crouch at the base of a granite outcrop, my fingers tracing the fracture line where last night's freeze split the rock clean.

Two inches to the left and the overhang my intermediate class used for shelter practice last week would've collapsed.

Eight students. One instructor. Nine body bags if the timing had been different.

I pull my notebook from my chest pocket and sketch the damage. Note the date. Note the temperature drop. Note everything because notes are what keep people breathing up here.

Behind me, the sun cracks over the eastern ridge and floods the valley with the kind of gold that makes people write poetry. I don't write poetry. I write survival assessments.

"Mountain Ready base, this is Matthews." I key the handheld radio clipped to my pack strap. "Eastern ridgeline is compromised at marker fourteen. I'm flagging it off for the advanced course reroute. Copy?"

Static. Then Tuck's voice, tinny through the speaker. "Copy that, boss. You want me to pull the rope anchors from that section?"

"Already done. I'll drop them at the equipment shed when I come down. Make sure the group from Denver has their gear check at oh nine hundred. No exceptions."

"You got it."

I clip the radio back and stand, rolling my shoulders against the pack weight. Thirty pounds of emergency gear, rappelling equipment, and enough rations to keep two people alive for seventy-two hours. I carry it every time I go above the treeline. Every single time.

Because the one time I didn't carry enough was the time that mattered.

I shut that door in my head. Lock it. Move.

The trail down from the eastern ridge is a forty-minute descent if you know where to put your feet, which I do.

I built this trail. Cleared it by hand over the course of two summers, cutting switchbacks into terrain that wanted to stay wild.

Mountain Ready sits on sixty acres of Colorado high country that borders national forest land, and every inch of it is mine.

Not in the ownership sense, though that too.

Mine in the way that matters. I know every drainage, every game trail, every spot where the wind shears hard enough to knock a grown man sideways.

This is what I traded the Teams for. Teaching civilians how not to die in the wilderness.

Some people would call that a downgrade from eleven years of classified operations in Arctic conditions and Eastern European theaters that don't officially exist. I call it the only thing that keeps the screaming in my head at a manageable volume.

I hit the treeline and pick up speed, my boots finding the packed earth of the lower trail without conscious effort.

The air's different down here. Warmer. Thick with pine resin and the first hints of spring mud.

At altitude, everything is thin and clean and honest. Down here is where things get complicated.

My phone buzzes in my jacket pocket. I ignore it.

It buzzes again.

I pull it out. Two texts. The first from Tuck:

Denver group confirmed 9am. Also someone from a magazine called. Adventure something. Wants to profile the school.

The second from Logan Creed:

Cal Hayes is sending one of his people your way. Adventure writer. Doing a piece on veteran-run operations for some outdoor mag. Rhea Alvarez vouched for her. Be nice.

I stare at the screen. Logan knows me well enough to know that "be nice" is the most useless instruction he could give.

We went through BUD/S together. He watched me sit motionless in fifty-degree water for six hours without flinching.

He also watched me make a journalist cry at a fundraiser in Billings because he asked me what it felt like to kill someone.

I type back:

No.

Logan's response is immediate:

Too late. She's arriving today. Rhea already confirmed it with your office. And the piece is good press for the veteran community. Don't be an asshole.

A second message follows:

Okay, be yourself. But a version of yourself that doesn't make women cry.

I pocket the phone and keep walking.

A magazine profile. Some adventure writer who's going to follow me around for a few days, take photos of me building fires, ask me deep questions about my "journey," and then write three thousand words that make me sound like a broken man who found healing in the wilderness.

They always write it like that. Like there's an arc. Like there's a resolution.

There's no resolution. There's just the next morning and the work that fills it.

I clear the treeline and Mountain Ready's base camp spreads out below me.

The main lodge sits at the center, a timber and stone structure I designed for function, not aesthetics, though the mountains behind it handle the aesthetics just fine.

To the left, the equipment shed and the vehicle barn.

To the right, the student cabins, four of them, each sleeping six.

Behind everything, barely visible through the pines, my cabin.

Higher than anything else on the property.

Off-grid. Built to outlast whatever comes.

Tuck is already in the equipment yard, laying out gear for the Denver group.

He's twenty-four, ex-Army, did two tours as an infantryman before a knee blew out his career.

He showed up at my gate eight months ago with a duffel bag and a resume that was ninety percent combat deployments and ten percent "I can do whatever you need, sir.

" I hired him on the spot. He's the only employee I have who doesn't annoy me, which is a low bar but one that most people fail to clear.

"Morning, boss." He doesn't look up from the rope coils he's inspecting. Good. Eye contact before coffee is unnecessary.

"Morning. Who called from the magazine?"

"Woman named Shelby. Shelby Cruise. Said she's writing a piece for..." He checks a sticky note on his clipboard. "Altitude Magazine. Feature on Mountain Ready. Multi-day embed. She's supposed to arrive this afternoon."

Multi-day embed. I stop walking.

"How many days?"

"She said three. Maybe four depending on weather."

I look at the sky. The western horizon is steel-gray, which at this elevation and this time of year means one thing. "Weather's going to be a factor. There's a system building."

"Yeah, I saw that. NOAA's calling for possible heavy snow above eight thousand feet starting tomorrow night."

"Then she'll need to be in and out before it hits or she's stuck here until it passes."

Tuck finally looks up. He's got that expression he gets when he thinks I'm about to be difficult.

"You know, boss, it might be good for business.

A feature in Altitude is solid exposure.

We've got that corporate contract with the tech company in Boulder coming up, and if they see us in a national magazine. .."

"I'm aware of how marketing works."

"Are you? Because last time someone from a newspaper showed up, you told them Mountain Ready doesn't need press, it needs students who can follow instructions."

"That was accurate."

"It was also on their Instagram. The quote went semi-viral."

I set down my pack near the equipment shed. "Semi-viral is not a real metric."

Tuck grins. He's not afraid of me, which is either admirable or stupid depending on the day. "Just... maybe let her do her job? She comes in, she shadows you, she writes her thing, she leaves. No one's asking you to perform."

He's right, and I hate it. The rational part of my brain, the part that built a business from raw land and reputation, knows that a well-placed magazine feature could fill my advanced courses for the next two years.

Mountain Ready is good. The training is rigorous, the outcomes are real, and the veterans who cycle through my instructor pipeline, Tuck included, are some of the most capable people walking the earth.

A profile that shows that could mean the difference between running at eighty percent capacity and running full.

But the other part of my brain, the part that lives in a tent in the Arctic dark and doesn't come out for company, wants everyone to stay off my mountain.

"Fine," I say. "She gets three days. She follows safety protocols or she's off the property. No exceptions."

"Copy that."

I head for the lodge. Coffee first. Then the Denver group. Then, apparently, a woman who writes about adventure for a living and thinks she can handle mine.

The lodge's main room smells like coffee and woodsmoke, which is exactly how it should smell.

I pour a mug from the industrial percolator that's been running since five and stand at the window that faces south.

The valley stretches out below, forests giving way to meadow, meadow giving way to the distant shapes of Grizzly Ridge where the rest of the veteran community has put down roots.

Logan's down there. So are Dan and Clara, Max and Claire, Ryan and his wolves.

A whole network of people who came here broken and built something.

I'm not broken. I function perfectly well.

I just don't sleep. And I see Petty Officer Tyler Rawlings' face every time I close my eyes.

Twenty-two years old. Good kid. Fast learner.

Followed every instruction I gave him during that training exercise in the Alaskan backcountry, and it still wasn't enough.

Exposure took him in the night while I was a hundred yards away running drills with another group.

The investigation cleared me. The review board cleared me. The commanding officer told me I did everything right and that sometimes the mountain takes people regardless.

I know that's true. I teach it to every class. I say those exact words. The wilderness is not your enemy and it's not your friend. It doesn't care about you at all.

But Tyler Rawlings' mother cared about him. And I was the one who called her.

My phone buzzes again. I check it expecting Logan with another lecture about hospitality.

It's from an unknown number: Hi, this is Shelby Cruise from Altitude Magazine. I'm about two hours out. Rhea Alvarez from Salt & Steel connected us. Looking forward to the embed. Is there anything I should know before I arrive?

Professional. Direct. No exclamation points. No emojis. That's either a good sign or a very effective mask.

I type: Bring cold weather gear rated to zero. Trail runners won't cut it, you'll need boots with ankle support. Altitude is 9,200 at base, 11,400 at the upper course. If you have altitude sickness history, disclose it now.

Her response comes in under thirty seconds: Gear is sorted. Boots are Salomon X Ultra, broken in. No altitude history. I've filed at 14,000+ in Nepal and Peru. I'll be there by 1400.

Fourteen thousand feet. Nepal and Peru. So she's not a lifestyle blogger playing dress-up.

I don't respond. She doesn't need acknowledgment. She needs to show up prepared, follow the rules, and stay out of my way.

The Denver group arrives at nine sharp and I spend the next three hours running them through fire-starting fundamentals, water purification, and basic shelter construction.

They're a corporate team, eight mid-level managers from a tech company who booked the beginner package as a team-building retreat.

Two of them are competent. The rest are terrified, which is appropriate. Fear keeps you alive up here.

By noon, I've got them building debris huts in the clearing behind the lodge, and Tuck is coaching the ones who can't seem to grasp that insulation needs to be three feet thick before it does anything useful.

I'm correcting a guy named Trevor on his ridgepole angle when Tuck catches my eye and nods toward the access road.

A rental SUV is climbing the last switchback toward base camp. Dusty. Loaded. The driver is handling the gravel with confidence, which means she's either done mountain driving before or she's too stubborn to slow down.

I straighten up and wipe my hands on my pants.

"That's her," Tuck says, jogging over. "Want me to handle the intake?"

"No. My operation. My problem."

The SUV pulls into the gravel lot beside the lodge and the engine cuts. The driver's door opens.

And Shelby Cruise steps out.

Strawberry blonde hair pulled back in a loose knot that's already losing the fight against the wind.

Blue eyes, and I mean blue, the kind that look backlit even in flat afternoon light.

Freckles across the bridge of her nose like someone scattered them there on purpose.

She's wearing broken-in hiking pants, a fitted base layer under an open flannel, and the Salomon boots she mentioned.

Camera bag over one shoulder. Duffel over the other.

She moves like someone who's used to carrying her own weight.

She looks up at the mountains and smiles.

Not a polite smile. Not a professional one. The kind of smile that happens when someone sees something that genuinely stuns them. Open. Unguarded. Like the landscape just told her a secret and she's delighted by it.

Something shifts in my chest. A tectonic plate I didn't know was loose.

She turns, spots me, and the smile redirects. Full wattage. Aimed directly at me.

"Cory Matthews?" She walks toward me with her hand extended. Her grip is firm, warm, and she doesn't let go a second too early or a second too late. "Shelby Cruise. I promise I'll stay out of your way."

Her voice is warm and a little raspy, like she's been singing along to the radio for the last two hours. She smells like sunscreen and something citrus and the open window of a car that's been driving through pine country.

"You won't be in my way," I say. "You'll be following my schedule, my rules, and my safety protocols. If that works for you, we'll get along fine."

Most people flinch at that. Or bristle. Or laugh nervously and try to charm their way around it.

Shelby Cruise does none of those things. She holds my gaze and those blue eyes flicker with something I can't name. Interest. Challenge. Maybe both.

"I'm very good at following instructions," she says. Then her mouth twitches at the corner like she's fighting something back. "When they're worth following."

I stare at her.

She stares at me.

The wind pushes a strand of hair across her face and she doesn't move to fix it.

I have stood in Arctic whiteouts. I have held my position in negative-forty windchill for six hours without moving. I have been trained to withstand every form of physical and psychological discomfort the United States Navy could devise.

None of it prepared me for this woman standing in my parking lot with the mountains behind her and a dare in her eyes.

"Tuck," I say, without breaking eye contact. "Show Ms. Cruise to Cabin Four."

I turn and walk away before she can say anything else. Before I can notice anything else. Before whatever just shifted in my chest has time to settle into something I recognize.

Three days. She's here for three days.

I can survive three days.