Chapter 7
Mara
Once again, I wake to the smell of pine smoke and something cooking—gamey, unfamiliar, but my stomach doesn’t care. It growls loud enough that I’m grateful K isn’t in the cave to hear it.
Day three. I’ve been in this cave for two nights, and somehow I’m still kicking. Somehow, I’m sitting up without my chest screaming. Somehow, I’m considering the absolute insanity of trying to hike down a mountain today.
Movement at the cave mouth. K steps through, and my breath catches because he’s carrying—
“My boots.” The words come out strangled. “You have my boots.”
“I took them off when I was tending to your wounds.” He sets them down beside me along with my messenger bag—battered, singed at the edges, but intact. “And you had this when I carried you from the wreckage.”
I unzip the bag with shaking hands. My iPad, cracked screen but maybe salvageable. My external hard drive with all my backup footage. My spare power bank. Relief floods through me so sharp it stings.
“You also had this in your hand.” He passes me my phone, dead but possibly chargeable. “Even then, you would not release it.” Something that might be amusement flickers across his face.
“Oh, my God, my phone! That’s what I asked you for before.” Does he really have no idea what a freaking phone is? I clutch the bag to my chest as I stare at the dead screen. “I can’t believe—even unconscious, I was holding onto my tech. That’s either really dedicated or really pathetic.”
“Dedicated,” K says simply.
I examine the boots—my beloved Doc Martens, black leather scuffed from a year of wear but otherwise pristine.
No char marks. No melted rubber. I turn them over in my hands, half-laughing.
“These things survived a helicopter crash and an inferno. I should write a testimonial. ‘Doc Martens: Apocalypse-Proof Since 1960.’”
K tilts his head. “Apocalypse?”
“End of the world. Catastrophic destruction. You know…” I gesture vaguely at the boots. “The kind of thing that should’ve melted these but didn’t.”
He crouches beside me, studying the boots with that focused intensity he brings to everything. “They are… sturdy.”
“Sturdy. Right. That’s one word for ‘survived literal hellfire.’” I set them down, throat suddenly tight. “Thank you. For keeping these. For…” I gesture at the bag. “All of it.”
“You needed them.”
Such a simple answer. Like keeping these things for a complete stranger he just saved is just obvious logic.
I swallow hard and focus on lacing up the boots.
The familiar weight of them grounds me. Makes me feel almost human again instead of a half-broken thing in borrowed clothes.
Then I reach into my bag for my power cable and plug my phone into the power bank.
It takes a few seconds for the battery icon to flicker on, but pretty soon the screen flashes to life.
“Hallelujah!” I feel jubilant, but then my hopes fade as I realize that there’s not a single bar of signal.
Of course there isn’t. We’re in the middle of the mountains, miles from civilization; what did I expect?
I pull up my gallery folder and scroll through the last images I took before the accident.
A strange sense of déjà vu strikes me. When I glance up, K is staring at my hand, brow furrowed.
“What is that?”
“Footage I took before we went down,” I say, turning to show him the screen. “This is Ember.” I tap her image with my fingertip and the short video streams; she grins and looks out the window. “Just before we went down.” I swallow hard.
His eyes fix on the video, then flick to my face. “Magic.” He practically breathes the word.
“I know. I’m pretty good with the camera, if I say so myself.” I keep scrolling.
He’s staring. “Are you… a sorceress?”
“What?” I blink at him.
“Witch,” he says.
“What are you talking about, K?”
“You have… magic.” He points at the phone.
Oh, hell no. He can’t be serious.
“Cut it out. You’re being weird.”
“Weird? You have… people in that thing.”
“I don’t have people in—” I stop. “This is the kind of technology we use in cities, K. I’m guessing you don’t leave your village much.” Or at all.
“No,” he says, still staring at my phone. I power it off and pack it in my bag.
“I’m ready to go now,” I announce, testing my weight on my feet. This isn’t the time to be educating rural amnesiacs about the miracle of high definition.
K’s expression doesn’t change, but I see the slight tension in his shoulders. “You should rest longer.”
“I’ve rested for two days. I can’t stay in this cave forever, K.” I stand carefully, boots solid beneath me. “Besides, we need to figure out how to get me back to civilization. And you…” I pause, meeting his eyes. “You need to figure out where you belong. Sitting here doesn’t help either of us.”
For a long moment, he just looks at me. Then: “If you tire—”
“I’ll tell you.” I lie smoothly. “Promise.”
Thirty minutes later, I’m regretting every confident word.
My legs burn. My chest aches with a deep, grinding throb that suggests the crushing damage wasn’t as healed as I’d like to believe. Each breath comes shorter than the last, and the trail—barely visible between pine trees and granite outcrops—keeps climbing.
K walks beside me, silent. Watching. I pretend not to notice.
The morning is crisp, cold enough that my breath fogs.
Sunlight filters through branches overhead, dappling the path.
In another context, this would be beautiful.
Peaceful, even. The kind of landscape I’d film for my channel with some dramatic voiceover about ancient mysteries and unexplored wilderness.
Instead, I’m focused on putting one foot in front of the other without face-planting.
“The terrain levels ahead,” K says quietly. “Then descends toward the valley.”
I nod, saving my breath.
“We could stop. Rest before—”
“I’m fine.” The words come out sharply. I soften them: “Really. I’ve got this.”
He doesn’t argue, but I can practically feel his attention. Like he’s reading every hitch in my breathing.
Another ten minutes. My vision starts to blur at the edges. The trail tilts sideways, or maybe I do. My boot catches on a root I should’ve seen, and I stumble—
K’s hand catches my elbow, steadying me before I fall. His grip is gentle but absolutely secure, and the heat of his palm burns through my sleeve.
“Okay.” I lean against a boulder, chest heaving. “Maybe a short break.”
He studies my face with those unsettling gold eyes. “You have walked far enough.”
“I can keep—”
“You are shaking.”
I look down. He’s right. My hands tremble where they grip the stone.
“It’s just… I’m out of shape. Too much time sitting at a computer, not enough—”
“Mara.” His voice is gentle but firm. “You nearly died two days ago. Walking this far is remarkable. But we have much farther to go, and you cannot make the distance on foot. Not yet.”
Pride wars with exhaustion. Exhaustion wins.
“I hate this,” I mutter. “Being weak. Needing help.”
“Needing help is not weakness.” He crouches in front of me, eye level. “It is honesty.”
The simple statement undoes something in my chest. “Sure,” I husk out.
“I can carry you,” he says. Not asking. Stating.
I want to argue. To insist I can manage. To prove I’m not some damsel who needs rescuing.
But my legs are jelly, and my chest screams, and the thought of walking another mile makes me want to cry.
“Okay,” I murmur.
He stands in one smooth motion and reaches for me. “Put your arms around my neck.”
I do. He lifts me like I weigh nothing—one arm under my knees, one supporting my back—and settles me against his chest.
The world shifts, then steadies.
Heat hits me first. Not normal body warmth; K radiates heat like a furnace, soaking through my clothing and into my skin. It should be uncomfortable. Instead, my body melts into it, every aching muscle sighing in relief.
His heartbeat drums against my side. Slow. Too slow. I count without meaning to—maybe forty beats a minute. My brain flags it as wrong, impossible, but he’s carrying me uphill without strain, breathing steady and deep.
I press my cheek against his shoulder and catch his scent—warm skin and leather and something as wild as the mountains around us. Something that makes my pulse kick despite every logical reason it shouldn’t.
“Comfortable?” he asks.
The rumble of his voice vibrates through his chest into mine. I make a noncommittal sound because comfortable doesn’t begin to cover what I’m feeling.
He starts walking again, his gait smooth and easy. No adjustment to compensate for the extra weight. Just steady forward motion like this is the most natural thing in the world.
His muscles shift beneath me with each step. I’m hyperaware of every point of contact: my hip against his hard stomach, my arm around his neck, his hand splayed across my thigh. The heat of his palm burns through fabric, and I wonder distantly if I’ll have a mark there. A brand.
The thought sends a jolt through me that has nothing to do with injury.
Stop it. He saved your life. He’s being kind. Don’t make this weird.
But my body doesn’t care about logic. It only knows warmth and safety and the visceral pull of attraction that seems wildly at odds with nearly dying in a fiery crash.
I try to distract myself. Count trees. Identify bird calls. Mentally catalog the footage I lost and what I’ll need to recreate.
None of it works.
The rhythm of his stride lulls me. His heat seeps deeper, making me drowsy in a way that feels almost like magic. Not just warmth—something that reaches past my skin into muscle and bone, easing tension that had settled between my shoulder blades.
My eyes drift closed.
“You should rest,” K says quietly. “We have distance yet to cover.”
I want to protest. To stay alert and helpful instead of being dead weight in his arms.
But his heartbeat drums steady beneath my ear. His warmth wraps around me like a shield. And somehow, I feel safe.
The thought should terrify me. I barely know this man. He doesn’t even know himself.