Belle and Zoey had come into their lives while the brothers were searching for the person who was responsible for the death of a local young man who’d been killed after he had stolen an eight-hundred-year-old journal written by a girl who had once lived in this very village.
Ranulf remembered that meeting very well.The beautiful girl had been tied up and left as a sacrifice to the “dragon gods” by the villagers as an enticement for the dragons to ensure their harvest and hunting was good that year.
Superstitious nonsense!
Ranulf and his brothers were dragon shifters who could choose to be dragons or warriors.They were not cannibals.Which was why they had untied the girl and flown her to the safety of a convent far from the village.
It had been a shock to Ranulf and his brothers to discover, all these centuries later, that the nun had learned to read and write.Having done so, she had then written in one of her journals about the dragon warriors who had saved her life.
A journal that Belle, now Lachlan’s mate, had bought in a house sale without having any idea of its importance.
The same eight-hundred-year-old journal that was now in the hands of the modern-day dragon hunter who was searching for them in the area where the nun had said she had met them: in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands.
In this very part of the Scottish Highlands, to be exact.
Hunter, the family tech expert, had tracked the dragon hunter to his home in Cornwall from the exchange of emails on the now-deceased young man’s laptop.The content of those emails also revealed that the two men were to meet once the journal was in the thief’s possession, where he’d expected to hand it over and be paid.
Instead of receiving payment for the journal, the younger man had been horrifically murdered by the dragon hunter.The killer had then returned to his home in Cornwall, with the journal in his possession.
He had just as quickly disappeared after Hunter had tracked him to that remote home, and they had not been able to find any trace of him since.
Hunter believed, after learning that Edgar Wallis had flown out of Cornwall in his helicopter, that the man had gone to ground for the moment and would not reappear until he was ready to do so.
It had been almost a week since his disappearance, and despite using their dragon-enhanced senses, they hadn’t been able to find a single trace of his scent.
Lachlan and Hunter had both tried to fight their need to mate, despite how painful that denial was for them and the women with whom they were in love.Finally, Lachlan could stand it no longer, and he had given in to that driving need to be with Belle.Followed by Hunter and Zoey a week later.
Which was why, a week after that, Ranulf was still doing everything he could to avoid being anywhere near the woman with the enticing scent of strawberries.To allow himself to feel the inner frenzy of the lust and possessiveness for his mate was the very last thing that he needed to happen right now.
But just hearing this young woman’s voice clearly for the first time and not distorted through the thick glass, as it had been when he had watched her through the windows of the inn where she helped her parents by working in the bar in the evenings, Ranulf was unable to continue to deny that she truly was his human mate.
A mate who the wild clamoring of his dragon inside him said he wouldn’t be able to resist for too much longer.
During all the centuries they had been alive, the three Drake brothers had always assumed, when they thought of it at all, that their mate must be a female dragon shifter.And as there weren’t any of those left in the world, the brothers had resigned themselves to a life of solitude with only each other for company.
Belle and Zoey, both human, had shown them how wrong they had been to think that way.
Ranulf couldn’t have been more pleased for his two brothers.But the possibility of there being a third human mate, one meant just for him, had seemed extremely remote.
Except for the obsession he had felt, these past few weeks, to observe the young woman with the vibrant pink hair, the freckles across her nose, and the voluptuous curves that had aroused and continued to arouse him the moment he so much as set eyes on her.
Ranulf still remembered his feeling of inner panic, a distress he had managed to hide from his brothers when, earlier in the New Year, Hunter had returned to Drake House and told them that a search was being organized for a girl who had gone missing from the village.
Ranulf had instantly jumped to the conclusion that the girl was the pink-haired beauty who smelled of strawberries and whom he couldn’t stop thinking about.
He had only learned later that it was Belle, Lachlan’s fated mate, who had gone missing.
But for the short time Ranulf had thought the missing girl was the one with pink hair, he had felt a tight heaviness in his chest that had threatened to choke him.
Hearing his name now on his mate’s lips, knowing she was standing only feet behind him, Ranulf knew he had no choice but to turn and face the beautiful young woman who had the power to literally bring him to his knees.
CHAPTERTWO
Sephie had previously only ever caught glimpses of the imposing Ranulf Drake.Usually when he was on his way to or from the village shop.The first time she’d seen him striding purposefully—and majestically—through the village, she had gasped and then hadn’t been able to breathe again.
Because both those words, imposing and majestic, accurately described this towering and ruggedly beautiful man.
He was six and a half feet of pure muscle: wide shoulders and muscular arms in a black leather jacket, defined chest and abdominal muscles beneath a black T-shirt.He also had narrow hips, with long, long legs shown to advantage in fitted and faded denims, with black biker boots on his huge feet.His slightly overlong hair was mid-brown mixed with gray streaks, his eyes a deep and piercing green, with a thick beard covering the squareness of his jaw.
