“Show her your dragon,” Zoey encouraged, accompanied by a reassuring squeeze of his arm.“That was how Hunter convinced me I was his mate.”She gave her dragon mate a smile that encompassed all the intimacy that now existed between them.
Ranulf knew and appreciated how difficult it must be for the two mated couples to be here now, when their instincts had to be screaming for them to return to their treasure hoards and continue their mating frenzy.He would be forever grateful that they had chosen to temporarily leave that intimacy so they could be here to support him instead.
“You’re our brother,” Lachlan said gruffly, easily picking up on his thoughts.“The three of us have been together for all our long lives.We aren’t just going to desert you now, in your greatest hours of need.”
Zoey chuckled.“From the way Sephie questioned her parents about the manse, I’m sure she already suspects something about this situation isn’t quite adding up.”
“She told me she sees the castle, not the house,” Ranulf confirmed.
“There you go.”Hunter nodded his approval.“You’ll be mated before you know it.”He placed his arm about Zoey’s shoulders and held her against his side.“But we have to decide what we’re going to do with Wallis before the four of us can completely disappear again.”He grimaced.“Something I realized when the Malcolms asked if we had reported the situation to the police.”
“Involving the human police is the one thing we definitely aren’t going to do,” Lachlan rasped.
“Of course we aren’t,” Ranulf accepted.“But to Sephie, and her parents, that would be the logical thing to do in this situation.”
Hunter shook his head.“Once you’ve explained the truth to her, I’m sure Sephie will appreciate why we can’t allow that to happen.”
Once he had told Sephie the truth…
Ranulf felt a tightening in his chest just thinking about doing that when the outcome was far from a positive conclusion.
“I’m happy to go along with whatever you all decide to do with Edgar,” Zoey assured.“He’s killed three people already and was more than happy to kill three more, if necessary.”She frowned.“I don’t know if he was always this way, but I suspect he might have been.But whatever state of madness previously existed inside him, the depth of his obsession now with dragons and their gold has tipped him over the edge.”
“Speaking of which…” Lachlan reached into the back pocket of his jeans.“I took this from his jacket pocket before we locked him in the dungeons.”He held up Sister Agnes’s journal, the catalyst which had initially involved them in Wallis’s rapidly increasing madness.
Ranulf gave a disbelieving shake of his head.“When I asked where it was earlier, he told me it was somewhere safe.”
Zoey snorted.“I’m sure that to him, it was.”She shook her head.“He’s always been so full of his own arrogant bullshit,” she added scathingly.
Having once been Wallis’s ward, Zoey would know.
“Is he still bleeding out?”Ranulf prompted.
“Nah, I cauterized the stump with a little dragon heat,” Hunter dismissed.“It must have hurt like hell, because he passed out in seconds.But at least his blood isn’t dirtying up our floors anymore.After what he’s done, the people he’s killed and the danger he represents to all of us, I want him fully awake and completely compos mentis when we decide what to do to him,” he added grimly.
“Whatever that is, it’s okay with me,” Belle stated as she entered the kitchen.“He’s already murdered to get this far, and he’s demonstrated that he’s capable of killing again to get even further.”She smiled at Ranulf when he gave her a questioning glance.“Sephie is spending a few minutes with her parents, reassuring herself that they’re really okay, after their ordeal.She said she’ll rejoin us shortly.”
Ranulf understood Sephie’s need to reassure her parents they were all safe now, but the possessive dragon in him wanted her where he could physically see her.It wasn’t enough that Ranulf was now totally attuned to the steady beat of Sephie’s heart in another part of the castle, that his own heart was now beating in that same rhythm.Or that he knew she was completely safe in his family home.
He wanted her back at his side.
Forever.
He only hoped she would grant him the opportunity to persuade her into remaining with him for the rest of what would be their very long, mated, lives.
“Oh.My.God.”
Everyone in the kitchen froze at the sound of Sephie’s gasped exclamation.
“Oh my God.Oh myGod,” she cried out again.
Ranulf used his preternatural speed to rush out of the room in search of his obviously distressed mate.
Sephie wasn’t exactly screaming, and he doubted she would run away either, when her parents were in one of the bedrooms upstairs.
But something had disturbed his mate enough for her to cry out loud enough for them all to hear.
CHAPTEREIGHT
