“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.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  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.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” he reminded gently.

  “It’s yes! Yes, yes, yes, of course I’ll marry you!” As seemed to be becoming her habit, she launched herself into his arms, confident that Ranulf would catch her.

  Which he did, his hands cupping her bottom as he lowered his head and claimed her lips in a hungry kiss.

  “So when can I see your dragon?” Sophie prompted a long time later as the two of them lay in each other’s arms on the length of one of the huge couches in the sitting room.

  Ranulf rolled over so that he was lying on top of her. “So that is it, you only want me for my body, hm?”

  “Well, I’m not going to say no…” She grinned before sobering. “But you should know I’ve also fallen very deeply in love with you.”

  Ranulf couldn’t seem to stop smiling and teasing Sephie. “Before you knew I was the carver Ranulf, or after?”

  “Hm, debatable.” She pretended to give the question some thought but could only maintain that stance for a few minutes before she burst out laughing.

  Ranulf was happy to wait for his answer. He was happy just to be with Sephie. He didn’t care what they were doing or saying.

  Although… “I love you too, Sephie,” he told her huskily. “I fell in love with you the first time I saw you, and I have been falling more and more in love with you every hour since then.”

  Sephie smiled. “And I’ve been in love with you for the same amount of time. I just didn’t think I had any sort of a chance with a man who was older and as out of reach as you always appeared to be. I also think I began to fall in love with you, but in a different way, from the moment I became so obsessed with your carvings. Something about them called to me. I realize now it was you.”

  Ranulf kissed her again, long and deeply, before asking, “Would you like to come outside and see my dragon now?”

  “Is this a dragon shifter’s way of asking if I would like to see your etchings?”

  He chuckled. “That could be arranged.”

  Sephie spluttered with laughter. “Can my parents come outside and see too?”

  “Of course.” Ranulf sat up before standing and then taking hold of Sephie’s hand to help her to her feet.

  It took a few minutes for the Malcolms to put their outer clothing back on, but the minute it was, they were all out the door and waiting for him at the front of the castle.

  “I just had a thought…” Sephie looked alarmed. “You aren’t going to strip off out here first, are you? Because things are likely to freeze and possibly drop off if you do that.”

  “And we do not want that, hm?”

  “Definitely not!”

  “Watch,” Ranulf invited softly.

  He had shifted into his dragon many, many times, and the magic of it never became old.

  His clothes simply disappeared the moment his dragon began to make his appearance. Ranulf’s body then lengthened and widened, silver scales covering every inch of his thirty-foot-tall body. Wings appeared from where his shoulder blades had been, the membrane as thin as gossamer but still able to lift and support his weight. His face elongated, the nostrils wide, his jaw sharp, with a double row of teeth top and bottom.

  The Malcolm family hadn’t moved a muscle through the process, all of them staring at him in rapt fascination.

  Ranulf believed he could detect pride in his mate’s tear-wet gaze.

  Her parents looked as if all of their dreams and fantasies had come alive in front of them, their eyes also wet with unshed tears.

  “You’re so beautiful,” Sephie breathed in awe.

  “So are you,” Ranulf’s alter ego answered, his beast’s voice lower and more gravelly than Ranulf’s normal tone.

  “You can talk,” Sephie gasped, clutching her mother’s arm.

  “When I need to. But once we are mated, we will share an inner dialogue that only we can hear,” he told her warmly.

  “You’re amazing,” Silvia choked.

  “A bloody miracle,” Tim agreed.

  Sephie stepped forward, her hand lifting and then freezing before she actually touched him. “Can I?” she asked.

  “I am yours to do with as you will, my Sephie,” he invited.

  “Oh my God, this is so exciting.” Silvia Malcolm couldn’t stop staring as Sephie stepped even closer and curled one of her arms about what was now one of his front legs.

  “Unbelievable.” Tim was still staring as if mesmerized.

  The four of them stayed out in the snow for some time, the older couple eventually brave enough to step forward and touch him too. Their genuine wonder and delight at being in the presence of a dragon soothed any of Ranulf’s last worries.

  They would all live close together, here or in one of their other homes, until it came time to say goodbye to Sephie’s parents, and then the two of them would go on, taking wonderful memories with them.

  To infinity.

  Sephie and Ranulf retreated into his cave in the mountain behind Drake Castle for the next forty-eight hours. Time that went by far too quickly as far as Sephie was concerned.

  The amount of jewels and gold collected inside the caves of the hollow mountain was too vast to take in. A veritable dragon’s hoard multiplied by three.

  But the best part of being alone with Ranulf in the privacy of his personal cave was their mating.

  The experience of being naked on her hands and knees while Ranulf bit the nape of her neck as he mounted and then entered her from behind far surpassed any intimacy Sephie could ever have imagined.

  “I love you, my mate.”

  It was the weirdest thing to hear Ranulf talking to her inside her head.

  “I love you too, my mate,” she replied, thrilled to be able to use that same mental link.

  They said those words time and time again as they mated, and kissed, and loved without end.

  Sephie and Ranulf had finally emerged from their intimate cocoon to rejoin her parents two days later. Ranulf then showing her how to shift into her dragon—one they should all have guessed would be a deep fuchsia pink!—had been wondrous. It had become even more so when Ranulf had surged into the air to fly beside her.

  But the time had come for them to make decisions. The main one being what they were to do with Edgar Wallis, still locked in the dungeon beneath the castle. The Malcolms had kept an eye on him during their absence.

  Once all three of the Drake brothers and their mates, plus Sephie’s parents because they had been hurt by Wallis too, were gathered in the Great Hall, Ranulf put forward Sephie’s idea. His brothers and their mates unanimously agreed that it was a fitting ending for a man who had cold-bloodedly murdered three people.

  Sephie’s parents had seen the logic in those actions once they were told of all Wallis’s previous deeds. They realized that, although the authorities might have believed them when they claimed he had kidnapped them and tried to extort money from the Drake family, it was far too long ago for the police to ever be able to prove that he had killed Zoey’s parents. Or more recently, that he had killed Ben McGregor by dropping him from his helicopter.

  They had found the helicopter in one of the caves near the river a mile away. They had taken great pleasure in destroying it and any trace of Wallis ever having been there.

  The fate of Wallis, as Ranulf had surmised, was carried out by Hunter and Zoey.

  They had decided he should be dropped in an area of the Scottish mountains where the snow wouldn’t melt until the spring, by which time the wild animals would have fed on the body they found. A fitting end for a man who had no respect for the lives of others.

  None of them had spoken of him again, nor would they.

  The fate of the journal had been a little more difficult to decide on. On the one hand, it was of great historical value, but on the other, the risks it posed by exposing the Drake brothers’ secret were too big.

  Belle had reminded them all of the other journals she had that had also been written by Sister Agnes when she lived in the convent. Journals that could be donated to a museum so that others might enjoy them. No one need ever know that there had been another journal, one that spoke of warrior dragons and being flown to England in the talons of one of them.

  So in the end, they had built a huge bonfire on the castle grounds, and then Belle had thrown the journal into the destruction of the red-hot flames. It burned until there were only ashes left.

  The fitting end of one legend and the beginning of another reality in which there were dragon shifters and their beloved mates.

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Carole Mortimer is a USA Today Bestselling Author and recipient of the RWA Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award 2015, RT Career Achievement Award 2017, RT Pioneer for Romance Award 2014. She was also recognized by Queen Elizabeth II in 2012 for her ‘outstanding service to literature’. Carole has written over 295 novels in Contemporary, Regency and paranormal romance genres.

  She is happily married to Peter. They have 6 sons, and live on the beautiful Isle of Man. She also loves to hear from Readers!

  OTHER BOOKS BY CAROLE MORTIMER

  Regency Spinsters Alliance series:

  Lily and the Duke (Regency Spinsters Alliance 1)

  Chloe and the Devil (Regency Spinsters Alliance 2)

  Georgiana and the Rogue (Regency Spinsters Alliance 3)

  Julia and the Rake (Regency Spinsters Alliance 4)

  More books to come in this series

  Wynter Hearts Series:

  RUFUS (Wynter Hearts 1)

  MAGNUS (Wynter Hearts 2)

  FERGUS (Wynter Hearts 3)

  DECLAN (Wynter Hearts 4)

  KNOX (Wynter Hearts 5)

  More books to come in this series

  Snow Dragons Hunting – dragon shifter romance

  LACHLAN (Snow Dragons Hunting 1)

  HUNTER (Snow Dragons Hunting 2)

  RANULF (Snow Dragons Hunting 3)

  Series complete

  Ruthless Regency Dukes:

  The Wager (Ruthless Regency Dukes 1)

  The Mistress (Ruthless Regency Dukes 2)

  The Widow (Ruthless Regency Dukes 3)

  The Guardian (Ruthless Regency Dukes 4)

  The Hero (Ruthless Regency Dukes 5)

  The Ghost (Ruthless Regency Dukes 6)

  Series complete

  Kingston Security:

  Kingston’s Ransom (Kingston Security 1)

  Kingston’s Captive (Kingston Security 2)

  Kingston’s Redemption (Kingston Security 3)

  Kingston’s Enigma (Kingston Security 4)

  Kingston’s Salvation (Kingston Security 5)

  Kingston’s Obsession (Kingston Security 6)

  Kingston’s Rival (Kingston’s Security 7)

  Series complete

  Regency Scandal:

  WANTON (Regency Scandal 1)

  WILD (Regency Scandal 2)

  WAYWARD (Regency Scandal 3)

  SINFUL (Regency Scandal 4)

  Series in now complete

  Russian Dragon Heat:

  VLADIMIR (Russian Dragon Heat 1)

  VAUGHN (Russian Dragon Heat 2)

  VIKTOR (Russian Dragon Heat 3)

  More books to come in this series.

  Regency Club Venus:

  Bastian’s Surrender (Regency Club Venus 1)

  Gabriel’s Torment (Regency Club Venus 2)

  Benedict’s Challenge (Regency Club Venus 3)

  Julius’s Passion (Regency Club Venus 4)

  James’s Lady (Regency Club Venus 5)

  Series now complete.

  Dance with the Devil Series:

  MATTEO (Dance with the Devil 1)

  LEON (Dance with the Devil 2)

  KILLIAN (Dance with the Devil 3)

  JERICHO (Dance with the Devil 4)

  KIERAN (Dance with the Devil 5)

  Series now complete

  Regency Men in Love M/M (Written as C A Mortimer)

  Hidden Lover (Regency Men in Love 1)

  Hidden Desire (Regency Men in Love 2)

  Hidden Passion (Regency Men in Love 3)

  More books to come in this series.

  Regency Lovers Series:

  INDECENT (Regency Lovers 1)

  OBSESSION (Regency Lovers 2)

  CRAVING (Regency Lovers 3)

  FORBIDDEN (Regency Lovers 4)

  SURRENDER (Regency Lovers 5)

  SCANDAL (Regency Lovers 6)

  Series complete

  Steele Protectors Series:

  LOGAN (Steele Protectors 1)

  ATTICUS (Steele Protectors 2)

  BRYCE (Steele Protectors 3)

  ROURKE (Steele Protectors 4)

  HAYDN (Steele Protectors 5) Author’s 250th book

  LUCAN (Steele Protectors 6)

  Series Complete

  Dragon Hearts – Contemporary paranormal

  Nathaniel (Dragon Hearts 1)

  Deryk (Dragon Hearts 2)

  Bryn (Dragon Hearts 3)

  Dylan (Dragon Hearts 4)

  Grigor (Dragon Hearts 5)

  Garrett (Dragon Hearts 6)

  Aeran & Rhys (Dragon Hearts 7)

  Dragon Reunion (Dragon Hearts 8)

  Series Complete

  Regency Sinners Series:

  Wicked Torment (Regency Sinners 1)

  Wicked Surrender (Regency Sinners 2)

  Wicked Scandal (Regency Sinners 3)

  Wicked Deception Regency Sinners 4)

  Wicked Captive (Regency Sinners 5)

  Wicked Temptation (Regency Sinners 6)

  Wicked Sinner (Regency Sinners 7)

  Wicked Christmas (Regency Sinners 8)

  Series now complete.