Sephie snorted a laugh.“Dad!”
Ranulf smiled the open and happy smile Sephie had grown to love seeing on him.“Belle and Zoey also have one more semester of university to complete their degrees.They have spoken to their tutors and will be taking those last classes online.Lachlan and Hunter will be accompanying them down to London when they take their final exams.”
“Then I’m sure Sephie can arrange to do the same, and that you will go with her to Oxford,” her mother approved.“But we would like you to know that we will be very proud if you will allow us to be a part of your family for however many of the three score years and ten of a human’s life we have left.”
“To know that Sephie will live on and will be the beloved mate of a dragon shifter long after we’re gone gives us great joy,” her father agreed emotionally.
“I haven’t officially accepted being his fated mate yet,” Sephie reminded them awkwardly.
“In that case, as you told us Lachlan and Hunter and their mates aren’t here right now, with Ranulf’s permission, your father and I will go into the kitchen and make ourselves a cup of tea,” her mother stated briskly, smiling when Ranulf nodded.“Come on, Tim, let’s leave these youngsters so they can say what they need to say to each other.”
“He’s well over a thousand years older than me,” Sephie’s father could be heard grumbling to her mother as they went through to the kitchen.“And I’ll still expect to be able to walk her down the aisle,” he shouted loud enough for Ranulf to hear.“But not before we’ve had the pleasure of seeing you shift into your dragon.”He closed the kitchen door quietly behind him.
“Your parents are amazing,” Ranulf sounded in awe.
“Yes, they are,” Sephie agreed affectionately.“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about their…hobby before, but I wasn’t totally sure how they would feel now about learning you’re a dragon shifter.Wallis holding them at gunpoint and then threatening to blow them up was tough.Telling them that the reason for Wallis’s behavior was that you’re all dragon shifters guarding treasure might have just been too much for them immediately after that.But I should have known they would come through for me,” she added proudly.
CHAPTERTHIRTEEN
The fact that the Malcolms had taken the news of Sephie being the fated mate of a dragon shifter so well was a miracle.So much more than Ranulf could ever have hoped for.
Now he just needed to formally ask Sephie to be his mate.
And wife…
“What are you doing?”Sephie cried in alarm as Ranulf dropped to one knee in front of her before taking one of her hands in his.
“I researched the subject and learned that this is the way that a human female expects to be proposed to,” he told her with his usual seriousness.“So…Persephone Malcolm, will you marry me and be my wife and mate?”
“I hope you don’t think you’re going to make this proposal instead of the bite, mount, and mating me part of being a dragon’s fated mate,” she rebuked.“Because I’ve really been looking forward to that bit.”
Ranulf tried to maintain a serious face.After all, this was a serious subject.But Sephie just made everything seem so much lighter and brighter.It was as if she were the sun and he was no more than a lesser planet caught and held in her orbit.
Ranulf kept hold of her hand as he rose to his feet before stepping close enough to rest his forehead against her pink curls.“I have been looking forward to that part of our mating for a thousand years.”
“Hm.”She nodded.“So longer than me, then.”
“Much longer,” he conceded with a chuckle.
“Of course, until this last couple of weeks, you didn’t have any idea who you were waiting for, so on the timing of discovering each other, we’re on equal footing,” she stated pertly.
“I—”
“On reflection, I don’t particularly like you being with or thinking about other women,” she cut in.
Ranulf placed a light kiss on her frowning brow.“When you have thousands of years to look forward to, there is no urgency to anything.”He shrugged.“I have had sex in the past, but that was long ago, and, pleasant as the experience was, it meant nothing to me because it was not with my mate.”
“I don’t suppose any of you ever…with Sister Agnes?”
“Absolutely not,” he dismissed instantly.“To us, she was no more than a child, and also very distressed to have been abandoned by her family and the villagers she had known all her life.We took her to the safety of the convent and then left.”
“Okay,” Sephie answered in the same manner Ranulf often did.
He searched her face for any signs of lingering resentment about his past.In truth, his sexual encounters had been few, by choice, because he had very quickly realized that sex without love was both hollow and lacking in purpose.
Just being in Sephie’s presence gave him far more pleasure than anything else he had ever known.
Apart from their lovemaking the previous night, of course.
