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.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Sephie stayed upstairs only long enough to ensure that her parents knew that their ordeal really was over and they were safe now.

  Because she had absolute confidence in Ranulf and his brothers to ensure that it was.

  “I wanted to kill that bastard with my bare hands,” Sephie’s father burst out vehemently, his fists clenched. “But instead, I had no choice but to remain tied to that damned chair and watch as he dragged my wife away to lock her in the cellar and then later hit my daughter.” He was sitting on the bed, his arm about his wife’s shoulders, his gaze fierce as he looked at the bruise on Sephie’s cheeks and her slightly swollen lip.

  “He hit you too. And I’m fine.” She gave her father a reassuring smile. “Really,” she comforted warmly when her parents both continued to look concerned.

  Her mother gave a shudder. “I was so relieved when he brought me up from the cellar so that I could be with the two of you. But then the nightmare became even more dire when he started setting dynamite around the place. I really thought he was going to blow the inn up and kill us all.”

  Sephie sat on the other side of her mother and gave both her parents a hug. “I think we all thought that for a while.” The sheer terror of living through those hours of constantly feeling in danger would take a long time to get over. If they ever did.

  Her father nodded. “I believe he would have done exactly that if the Drake brothers hadn’t stepped in and saved us.”

  Sephie had no intention of telling her parents that the situation wouldn’t have occurred at all if Edgar Wallis hadn’t convinced himself that the Drake brothers knew something about the existence of dragons, and because they did, they were hiding dragon treasure from him.

  She was still having difficulty making sense of that one herself!

  But, as she still had no explanation as to why she saw a castle and her parents saw a large house, she wasn’t going to question that too deeply right now. The only thing that mattered to her was that her parents were safe, she was safe, and that none of the Drake family had been hurt during their rescue.

  But she was still determined that the first thing Ranulf would do was share everything with her.

  Until, that was, when, on her way back to the kitchen, she’d glanced into a room that in medieval times would have been the Great Hall—it probably still was, because Sephie could definitely envisage the Drake brothers sitting at the long table beside a fire that would be lit in the huge fireplace, a pack of salivating Scottish deerhounds waiting for them to throw the bones once the men had stripped the meat off them—and saw something almost as unreal as being held prisoner for hours by a madman.

  “What is it?” Ranulf demanded as he rushed into the room. “Sephie?” Having obviously seen for himself that Sephie wasn’t being attacked by a group of marauding invaders—her imagination really was running riot today, but was that so surprising after the last sixteen hours?—Ranulf came to an abrupt halt just inside the Great Hall.

  Sephie turned from where she had been staring fixedly at one of the long, carved panels along one wall. Similar ones covered the length of the other three rough stone walls. “I have never seen any of these specific and beautifully carved panels by this carver anywhere else before.” And considering, until now, she had believed she’d seen all of the cataloged works by this particular master carver, that was surprising.

  Ranulf’s head tilted. “You recognize the carver?”

  “I do,” she confirmed, smiling slightly. “His work is unmistakable. I’ve studied all of them. The wooden frescoes, the furniture, the animals, wild and domesticated, and mythological creatures too. I can’t seem to stop studying them, even though his work isn’t part of the curriculum for my degree in European artists,” she admitted ruefully.

  His brows rose. “Why not?”

  Her gaze returned, as if magnetized, to the magnificent carvings of a battle. She had no idea which one, or if the scene was taken purely from the carver’s imagination. “Because I opted to study artists rather than artisans. I discovered his work quite by accident, after I saw one of them in a gallery while I was looking at some paintings by European artists. From the moment I first saw one of his carvings, I became obsessed. Everything he does is so intricate, as if each piece is carved with love.” Her fingers hovered above but didn’t quite touch the panel. “This is just magnificent. So lifelike, it’s as if each of the figures could step down from the panel and appear in front of us!”

  That was because Ranulf and his brothers had been involved in ensuring the correct side won in many battles over the centuries.

  And the reason the carvings looked as if they had been made with love was because they had been. A thousand years was a long time to be alive without having something to distract him.

  When Ranulf first started carving eight hundred years ago, he began with furniture. Until then, apart from those pieces in palaces and the homes of the very wealthy, furniture had been of the rough-and-ready kind.

  Ranulf and his brothers were all big, and dragons, and dragons didn’t do discomfort. Hence, over time, Ranulf had carved every piece of furniture in the castle, including the four-poster beds in their bedrooms.

  “All is well, brother?” Lachlan prompted through their link.

  “Perfect,” Ranulf assured.

  “Then we will retire for the night. But you have only to call, and we will come.”

  “Thank your mates from me. I could not have saved both Sephie and her parents without your help.”

  Hunter joined in the conversation. “We’re family.”

  “Good night and thank you, my brothers,” Ranulf told them sincerely.

  “I’ve studied or actually seen all of this carver’s work since that first one,” Sephie continued, unaware of the brothers’ mental conversation because she was so engrossed in the intricate panels. “I’ve only seen photographs of the majority of them, because most are kept in private collections and only put on display during special exhibitions.” Her grimace indicated what she thought of that practice.

  “That is a pity,” Ranulf agreed mildly.

  “But you can actually see a couple of his works in The National Gallery, the Victoria and Albert, and the Tate Modern, and several other galleries around the world,” Sephie told him. “I haven’t been able to see any of the ones out of England yet, but I live in hope that I will one day,” she added wistfully as she continued to stare at the carved panels on the roughly hewn walls. “These are absolutely magnificent!” She turned to look at him. “They must have cost you a fortune to buy.”

  Ranulf had carved each panel, inch by precious inch. A labor of love, each panel carefully depicting a period in the Drake brothers’ history. It was his way of honoring and remembering the many centuries they had all been alive and together.

  “I can’t stop looking at them,” Sephie continued to admire as she moved on to the next panel.

  She sounded as awed as Zoey had when she had first seen the carvings and then realized that Ranulf was the one who had carved them.

  Zoey had also told him about the vast number of books published over the years on his carvings. Of the mystery surrounding just who the carver could be.

  Sephie had just admitted to studying those same books. Had told him that she had become obsessed with the carvings after seeing the first one. That despite it not being a direct part of her studies, she had continued to study and love them.

  Could Sephie possibly have seen and recognized something in the carvings that appealed to her because they had originated from the man who was destined to be her future mate?

  Ranulf sincerely hoped that was the case. “Sephie⁠—”

  “Is everything all right down there?”

  A step out into the huge entrance hall showed Ranulf that Sephie’s father was now standing at the top of the stone staircase.

  The man’s hair was tousled, and he was wearing a different pair of striped pajamas that Ranulf was pretty sure had never belonged to him or any of his brothers. God knows where Belle and Zoey had found them.

  “My wife said she thought she heard Sephie call out,” he said.

  Sephie joined Ranulf in the doorway. Close enough that he could smell her unique strawberry scent. “I saw a spider.”

  The frown cleared from her father’s brow. “That would do it. You’ve always hated the little buggers,” he murmured affectionately. “No doubt Ranulf dealt with it for you,” he added with a warm glance in his direction.

  “He did,” Sephie said as she linked her arm through Ranulf’s. “Go back to bed, Dad, and you and Mum try to get a good night’s sleep, hm?”

  He nodded. “We will. It was…an ordeal, but we both feel safe here.”

  “I feel safe here too,” Sephie told Ranulf softly once her father had returned to the guest bedroom.

  Ranulf turned to look at her. Emotion swelled in his chest at how her steady blue gaze met his unflinchingly, her pink hair perfectly framing the beauty of her face. “You do?” He still answered her cautiously.

  “I do,” she confirmed huskily. “But I’m still going to need you to give me answers to a lot of questions.”

  “I will,” he promised.

  “When?”

  “Now, if you want me to.”

  She arched her brows. “I noticed there was no comment made earlier about a bedroom having been prepared for me?”

  Ranulf had noticed that too. “I think Belle and Zoey assumed you would be sharing my suite with me.”

  Her eyes widened. “Considering we only really met today, that’s a big assumption for them to have made.”

  Perhaps to Sephie, but Ranulf had been aware of and sought her out at every opportunity after first catching the scent of strawberries on the breeze some weeks ago.

  “We may only have just met officially,” Ranulf conceded. “But you admitted to knowing my routine of going to the shop each day.” It was a new habit that had only begun since Sephie came to stay at the inn with her parents. One that Sephie admitted being aware of, as well as looking out for him. “That sounds as if you’ve been as aware of my presence this past couple of weeks as I have yours.”

  Her cheeks colored with a becoming blush. “You have?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s…interesting.”

  “Very.” He nodded. “I suggest we go to my sitting room because it would give us more privacy for the conversation we need to have,” he encouraged huskily.

  “You have your own sitting room?”

  “We all have our own suite of rooms.”

  “Wow.”

  He grimaced. “Castle, remember?”

  “Something else we need to talk about.” She kept her hand on his arm as she turned fully to face him. “But first I want to know how you came to own those amazing frescoes that have never, to my knowledge, ever been shown to the public.” She gave a derisive shake of her head. “One of my tutors has a theory regarding the identity of the artist.”