Chapter 7 #2
Which, if Sephie really was starting to question whether they might have once existed, and if their treasure was stored nearby, was more than a little worrying.
Admittedly, her parents had brought her up to be open-minded about such things, but having a receptive mind and accepting that dragons might once have existed was something else entirely.
“I’ll try to explain everything once you’re happy your parents are settled into their room.”
Sephie looked up. Without her realizing it, Ranulf had crossed the kitchen and was now standing beside her. He had spoken to her softly enough that no one else in the kitchen would be able to hear him.
Except…Lachlan, Hunter, Belle, and Zoey all seemed to be staring at them as if they knew exactly what Ranulf had just said to her.
She gave a shake of her head. “Believe me, you aren’t going to just try to explain everything. You’re going to succeed,” she informed him firmly.
* * *
“I am so pleased for you!” Zoey threw her arms around Ranulf and hugged him tightly the moment Sephie and her parents had left the room. Bella had offered to accompany the Malcolms and show the couple their bedroom. “Sephie is perfect for you,” Zoey added once she had released him.
Yes. Yes, she was, Ranulf acknowledged proudly. Sephie was strong, resilient, everything a dragon’s mate should be. She would make a fearless dragon in her own right. An even fiercer and protective mother to their offspring.
Ranulf had never dared to hope that he would ever become a father.
Oh, he’d thought about it, but only in the past and always in the abstract, never as something that might ever become a reality.
Now he couldn’t stop thinking about it, imagining the joy he and Sephie would share in their children.
Not immediately, of course, because Sephie was still very young, but the possibility of them having children together was more than Ranulf had ever dared hope for before.
If, that was, Sephie agreed to become his mate once Ranulf had explained the situation to her.
That really was a big if.
He had seen the disbelief, then curiosity, in her eyes as she listened to Wallis’s ravings about dragons and treasure. Just as the man had said, the Drake name was connected to dragons and, by associated, their vast hoard of treasure.
It would be easy enough for Ranulf to show Sephie his dragon and the treasure. It was her reaction to those revelations that would be the defining moment as to whether Sephie could accept him and his dragon. Because they were one and the same. Indivisible.
Ranulf would be lying if he denied being extremely nervous about doing that. Because once he’d explained the situation to Sephie, he would have no choice but to accept her decision if she refused him.
Lachlan gave him a slap on the back. “She is perfect for you, brother,” he approved before frowning.
“The situation is a little more complicated in that she has parents who will grow old and die while their daughter remains looking exactly the same. But Sephie is an intelligent young woman, and she obviously already likes you a great deal. Once you’re mated—”
“If we’re mated,” Ranulf cautioned.
“You know what will ultimately happen if she refuses you,” Hunter warned.
They all knew that he would go mad and eventually die without the emotional and physical connection to the woman who was his fated mate.
Even so, Ranulf refused to pressure Sephie in any way. She needed to know the truth, all of it, before she would be able to make a learned decision on things that were going to seem totally unreal to her.
“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 my God,” 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.