The Romanov brothers had not been so lucky.

  Not a single one of them had yet found their mate.

  Liar.

  Vladimir drew in a sharp breath upon hearing his dragon’s angry accusation. She is not worthy, he answered through their mental link.

  Then make her so.

  How do I do that?

  Tame her. Mate her. Breed her.

  And if she decides, if we should be so blessed, to turn on and kill our young?

  She will not.

  We don’t know that. She’s the daughter of parents she believes to have been killed by the Romanov dragons ten years ago.

  A false belief.

  Vladimir was well aware of that.

  The authorities had told the two Petrov children, then aged fifteen and ten, that their parents had been killed in one of the woods just outside St. Petersburg by a pack of the wolves still so prevalent in Russia. Which was no consolation at all to the two children placed in one of Russian’s notoriously merciless orphanages.

  Tanya had remained there for only a year before she was thrown back out onto the streets, at the young age of sixteen, to survive as best she could. She had survived for the next five years, for the sake of the brother she was determined to make a home for by the time Pyotr was also released back into the world, but it had been at the price of Tanya selling her body and dignity to whoever had the coin to make the purchase.

  Vladimir felt a warmth of admiration for her tenacity and loyalty to the only family she had left. It was the same loyalty Vladimir felt toward his own brothers, for whom he would also do whatever he had to in order to protect them.

  After the brother and sister had tried to kill Vaughn, Vladimir’s investigations into the deaths of the senior Petrovs had so far only revealed what he already knew: none of the Romanov brothers were responsible for killing them. Nor were the Pendragon brothers. Not only did they have no reason to kill the couple, but for one of the Pendragons to have done so would have meant them intruding on the Romanov territory, and Vladimir knew none of them had done that. This meant the senior Petrovs could not have been killed by the only dragon shifters in existence, Welsh and Russian.

  Unfortunately, journals had been kept by the mother in which either she or her husband had written down the movements of the Romanov brothers during the months the mother had worked inside the Mikhailov Palace and the father in the grounds. Detailed journals which had helped to convince the brother and sister of the Romanovs’ involvement in their deaths.

  Vladimir had read those same journals, and he could quite understand why the grieving Petrov children should have latched onto the idea that the Romanov dragons had killed their parents.

  Vladimir’s own investigations proved otherwise.

  Using his ability to cloak his presence, Vladimir had also entered the offices of the necessary authorities and read everything available on the attack made on the Petrovs ten years ago. The description of their wounds appeared to fit with them having been attacked by wild animals. In the eyes of the authorities, those animals had to be wolves. In the eyes of Tanya and Pyotr Petrov, they were dragons.

  Studying the photographs of those wounds revealed something else entirely to Vladimir. The wounds only looked like those caused from an attack by wild animals. There were other signs, precise incisions on both bodies, which indicated something far more sinister.

  But it was all only Vladimir’s conjecture ten years after the fact. Which meant it was only his word against what was written in the journals of Tanya and Pyotr’s parents. Journals which, if read time and time again, as Vladimir had, could be interpreted in two completely different ways.

  Vladimir doubted Tanya would wish to even contemplate the second conclusion he’d come to, although the fact she seemed to be his mate—

  She does not seem to be, she is our mate.

  The possibility Tanya was his mate only added veracity to Vladimir’s own conclusion for the senior Petrovs’ interest in the Romanov family.

  “I could kill her for you.” Vaughn’s angry rasp revealed he had not yet recovered from the humiliation of having allowed himself to be enticed into a position where the Petrovs were able to attack and almost kill him.

  Vladimir couldn’t say he was exactly pleased at the thought of Vaughn having intended to meet with Tanya the night he was attacked, with the sole intention of fucking her. “If you go anywhere near her again, for any reason, you will answer directly to me,” he warned harshly.

  He might not have told any of his brothers that Tanya, the woman who had tried to kill Vaughn, was his mate. But that didn’t mean he would ever allow any of them to so much as be alone with her.

  To his surprise, Vaughn gave one of the mischievous grins he was once so well known for, but which had happened so rarely since the attack. “She’s been imprisoned at our winter palace for three months now. If you aren’t going to kill her, then it really is time to either mate her or let her go.”

  Vladimir’s heart stopped at the thought of allowing Tanya to walk away from him and never seeing her again. It literally stopped. Before it started again, pounding loudly enough for both men to hear. He eyed Vaughn cautiously. “You seem very calm at the idea of my mating the woman who tried to separate your head from your body.”

  His brother rose to his feet to tower over the desk Vladimir sat behind. “I’m not calm at all, but time has helped me understand why Tanya felt she had to do what she did. I can even admire her for it. I’m also very aware,” he continued determinedly, “of the battle that’s been raging inside you for months.”

  “I have no idea—”

  “I saw your reaction to Tanya the night we all went to the Petrovs’ apartment to rescue Izzi.”

  “I—”

  “I saw, Vlad,” Vaughn insisted firmly. “You only had to see her to look as if you had been struck by lightning. And I have witnessed how you’ve suffered in the months since sending her away to our winter palace. You pace the halls here, day as well as night. You rarely sleep, and when you do, it doesn’t seem to have been a restful one. You’ve become silent and withdrawn. Admit it, Vladimir. Tanya is your mate.”

  His nostrils flared. “She is unworthy.”

  “In what way?” Vaughn challenged. “For five years, she did whatever she had to do to provide a home for her younger brother when he left the orphanage. Six months ago, she entrapped a dragon because she believed he was one of the shifters responsible for killing her parents. She tried to kill that dragon. She almost fucking succeeded because I was distracted by thoughts of seducing her— Ah,” he murmured in satisfaction at the sound of Vladimir growling low in his throat. “Jealousy. The final proof I needed that Tanya is indeed your mate.”

  “I cannot accept that,” Vladimir grated.

  “Because she had to sell her body on the streets of St. Petersburg in order to survive?” Vaughn made no effort to hide his disgust. Toward Vladimir.

  “No, of course not.” Vladimir stood. “I’ve been in existence for many centuries, and during that time, I have lost count of the number of women I’ve taken to my bed.” Those women had dwindled to none during the last two centuries. He no longer had the appetite to bed a woman who wasn’t his mate. “I have no intention of apologizing for them, so why should Tanya do so? She did what she had to do for the survival of her brother and herself. I would never judge her for that.”

  Vaughn looked puzzled as he gave a shake of his head. “Then why the fuck haven’t you mated her yet and given us all some damned hope we might one day find our own mate?”

  He stared at his brother in disbelief. “You really would accept her as your queen?”

  “Accept her and rejoice at your good fortune.”

  “Do our brothers feel the same way you do?”

  “Yes.”

  “You sound very sure of that.”

  “Because I am. At eight hundred years old, Aleksey is next in age to you, and he would very much appreciate it if you completed your mating and thus removed yourself from the mating market.”

  Vladimir snorted. “This is not some Regency novel where the eldest daughter must be married—or in this case, mated—before the next daughter can be considered for marriage.”

  “Well, of course not, because we’re all males,” Vaughn dismissed impatiently. “But it might just be that the rest of us won’t begin to find our mates until the brothers older than us have found theirs.”

  “I have no idea where you came by such logic, but that is not how it happened to the Pendragon brothers. Their matings were random and not by age.”

  Vaughn nodded. “Two of them even have the same mate. Nevertheless, that’s how Aleksey feels. Maksim, Rafail, Viktor, and Benedikt too.”

  “You all, without exception, believe and accept that Tanya Petrova is my mate and queen?” Vladimir asked slowly.

  “Yes.”

  He sighed heavily. “Even if I could persuade her into mating with me—and that is a big if when she considers us all nothing but vicious animals and murderers—how can I be sure she will not kill me one night as I sleep beside her?”

  “Deryk assures me the ecstasy of the mating is worth dying for,” Vaughn taunted.

  He scowled darkly. “I wish you would not associate with that male.”

  Vaughn shrugged. “As I said, he’s a badass.”

  “And a bad influence on you.”

  His brother grimaced. “At least he’s accepted and embraced his mate, even though she was under the protection of a Russian family of dragon shifters he initially wanted nothing to do with. You should find the same acceptance in regard to Tanya.”

  Vladimir turned to once again stare out the window at the freshly falling snow. “We will not talk of this anymore.”

  “Because you say we won’t?”

  “Because if I should decide to see Tanya again, it will not be because my baby brother told me to do so.”

  Vaughn snorted. “As I’ve been the youngest for two hundred years, and will always be so, that older brother crap ceased working on me a century ago.”

  Vladimir sighed. “Are you going to London to meet up with whichever Pendragon brother is already guarding the Ruscov ballet company, or must I send someone else in your place?”

  “I’ll go,” Vaughn accepted wearily.

  And Vladimir would go to the family’s winter palace.

  To confront the woman who was his mate and queen.

  Chapter Two

  Rapunzel!

  For months, Tanya had been trying to think of the heroine in the German fairy tale who had been locked away in a high turreted tower, without stairs or a door to enable her to escape.

  Tanya could be forgiven for not remembering sooner. It had been many years, and much had happened, since her mother read her the bedtime story of the girl locked away by a sorceress in a tower in the woods. Of how the girl’s golden hair had eventually grown until it was long enough for its length to drop from the window, and so allow the prince of her dreams to use it to climb up and visit with her.

  Not that Tanya’s hair was golden or grown down to her ankles as thick as a rope, but her dark locks had certainly grown longer during the months of being kept a prisoner in the turreted east tower of the Romanovs’ winter palace.

  Mainly because the two servants who brought her food and removed and returned her laundry every day had obviously also been instructed not to allow Tanya any sharp instruments. Her meals were always accompanied by plastic utensils rather than metal. Her request for scissors to cut her hair had also been ignored, no doubt in the belief she might try to use them to either harm someone or make her escape.

  Except she felt no inclination to hurt either of the couple that cared for her. And even if she did manage to escape, the possibility of her surviving the harshness of the Russian winter outside the warmth of the palace would be nil.

  She had been brought here three months ago straight from the apartment she shared with Pyotr, and so hadn’t brought any of her clothes or belongings with her. Consequently, she had no outer clothing, only the sweaters and jeans her captors had provided for her, and the snow was at least four or five feet thick on the ground in the woods and surrounding countryside. A countryside that echoed with the howls of wolves during the long nights.

  Similar wolves to the ones the authorities insisted had killed Tanya’s parents.

  Even knowing Romanov dragons were really the ones responsible hadn’t given Tanya any desire to venture out into those woods alone, day or night.

  Tanya would be lying to herself if she didn’t admit, having now met the Romanov brothers, that they were all devastatingly handsome. The eldest, Vladimir, was the epitome of tall, dark, and fiercely dangerous.

  And something about him stirred an inexplicable and unwanted heat inside Tanya. A reaction she shied away from acknowledging, even to herself. As much as she shied away from him.

  Consequently it was the youngest dragon-shifter brother, Vaughn, she had chosen as the target for the revenge of her parents’ deaths.

  Not only had Vaugh escaped Tanya’s knife, but he had quickly recovered from the wound she’d managed to inflict, and Tanya and Pyotr had been taken prisoner.

  Tanya had no idea where Pyotr was now, probably locked away in another of the Romanovs’ remote private residences, awaiting the same death sentence she was.

  The saddest part was that, without family or friends, neither of them would be missed, let alone searched for.

  Tanya stilled as the monotonous terrain of white outside the window was suddenly changed by the appearance of a black SUV being driven rapidly down the road that led only to this palace. The road was kept clear by the male servant after each snowfall, presumably so that he could make the drive out to collect food supplies once a week.

  She couldn’t see who was driving the black vehicle, but as there hadn’t been a single visitor here since she was incarcerated, surely it had to finally be one of the dragon shifter bastards?

  Strange… She had expected when one of the brothers did arrive, they would fly majestically across the sky in dragon form, if only so as to reawaken the fear inside Tanya. A fear she admitted had lessened slightly as the weeks and then months went by without a sighting of a single Romanov brother, neither in human nor dragon form.

  If it was one of the Romanov brothers behind the wheel of the SUV, then no doubt he had finally arrived to carry out the death sentence the family had decided was to be her fate.

  Tanya had been expecting this for months. More recently she’d even started to pray for it.

  Admittedly, her accommodation was more luxurious than the five-star hotel she’d worked in as a chambermaid the previous summer.

  The ceiling above her was painted with frescoes similar to those she’d seen in photographs of grand cathedrals. There was a seating area at one end of the bedroom, with a deep brown leather couch for relaxing on, the heavy furniture a deep mahogany. A beautiful four-poster bed with the same brocade drapes as those hung at the windows dominated the room. Thick and colorful Aubusson rugs covered the floor. The adjoining bathroom was almost as big as the apartment she and Pyotr had once shared, with a walk-in shower at one end and a sunken bath at the other. There was also a mirrored vanity, and on top of it, all the upmarket toiletries she could possibly need but had never been able to afford.

  Nevertheless, Tanya had become inured to these luxuries over the last three months.

  The two servants who brought her food refused to speak to her or answer any of her questions. Although the man’s likeness to Izzi Mikhailova indicated he might be one of her two older brothers who also worked for the Romanov family, as their children would after them.

  There was no television or other access to the outside world, her mobile phone having been taken from her before she was locked away in the tower.

  Tanya had read the dozen or so paperback thrillers on the small bookcase in the corner of the sitting area. Twice. And there was only so much time she could spend looking at the blinding snow scene outside the windows without going quietly out of her mind.

  None of that was helped by the fact she was still waiting for one or all of the Romanov dragons to arrive and drag her out into the pristine white snow before ripping her to pieces for their pleasure. In the same way they had killed her parents.

  She felt the now familiar itching on her arms as she rose to her feet to see better out of the window as the black vehicle came to a halt in front of the palace. She’d had this same reaction several times during her months of confinement. It felt as if bees buzzed beneath her skin and made her want to scratch at the discomfort.

  Her breath caught in her throat, heart pounding, itching forgotten, as the driver’s door was thrown open and a dark-haired man stepped out.

  Not just any man, but the coldly arrogant Vladimir, the eldest and, despite his urbane appearance, Tanya believed the most dangerous of the Romanov dragon shifters.

  Tanya’s heart began to pound, the blood coursing hotly through her veins and bringing back a return of that annoying itching sensation.

  Even in human form, Vladimir was imposing. Six and a half feet tall, with styled but overlong black hair, his handsome features were all patrician elegance: dark, piercing eyes, narrow nose between high, sculpted cheekbones, thin top lip and plumper bottom one above a hard and pointed jaw.

  He wore a black ankle-length duster that appeared as if it was made out of cashmere. Tanya had worked in an upmarket store two years ago and knew what cashmere looked like. As she had only ever seen Vladimir in tailored suits and silk shirts in the past, no doubt he was dressed that way today too beneath that long overcoat.

  Not that he needed an outer coat. According to the notes her mother had made in the journals, which Tanya had read from cover to cover many times, the Romanov dragon shifters were immune to the vagaries of the weather.