Page 13 of Lachlan

“Would that be the building at the bottom of the mountain?”

He tilted his head. “Drake House,” he confirmed. “You’ve seen it?”

She nodded. “Yesterday, on my way up the mountain. It looks more like a castle than a family home.”

That’s probably because, many centuries ago, that’s exactly what it was. But several decades ago, the brothers decided that Drake Castle was too much of a curiosity to the tourists who had started to flock to the Highlands every year. Together, they had used their powers to redesign the castle to look more like a largemanse to the human eye. They had also changed its name to the more innocuous Drake House.

Private Property signs had been placed around the house and the grounds, with strategically placed security cameras installed, monitoring for intruders day and night.

People in the twenty-first century tended not to recognize other people’s boundaries, certainly that of property. A failing that would once have earned them time in the stocks or possibly death itself for having trespassed against another.

The fact Belle had been able to see the castle in its original glory was interesting. More than interesting.

And confirmation she was his mate?

If Lachlan had needed confirmation!

Which he didn’t.

He could feel their connection through their joined hands, telling him Belle could feel it too, even if she didn’t yet know why it existed. He could also sense some of her emotions through that physical link, most especially her puzzlement at that feeling of connection with a man she had just met.

For now, Lachlan had a more immediate matter to worry about. Specifically, whether or not he should take Belle through the opening looming ahead of them. The one that led into the main cavern.

Because that cavern contained the individual treasure hoards of the Drake brothers’ dragons and those left behind by their parents. Vast piles of gold and jewels, accumulated over centuries, more than any one human would have ever seen in one place before.

Lachlan could use his control of the elements to mask that hoard, of course.

That didn’t seem to have been too successful with Belle in regard to Drake Castle.

He could take Belle around the cave rather than through it.

But he could sense his dragon wasn’t happy with either of those ideas. Probably because he wanted to show off their extreme wealth to their mate as evidence that they would be able to care for her if she agreed to mate with them.

If.

Because Lachlan knowing instinctively that Belle was his mate didn’t mean, despite the connection between them, that she would accepthimas being hers.

Mainly because humans didn’t have mates. They fell in love and then chose, or did not choose, to have partners or wives and husbands.

Becoming a dragon’s mate was something stronger, far more intense, than those relationships. Once they had mated and shared the dragon bite, their bond would last for the whole of their very long lives together.

Lachlan knew from their parents that once a dragon took a mate, even if one of them was human, they would share the same longevity. When one died, so would the other.

Their mother and father had also told them that one of the couple could refuse to accept the mating. If that happened, the dragon who had been refused would live out the rest of his or her life in an emotionally barren wasteland, which would eventually drive them insane before they died.

Belle was human, so that fate would not befall her if she should refuse him.

She might feel, deep inside her, that something was missing from her life. But as she had no idea what that something was, she would dismiss that slight hollowness and live the life she had chosen.

If Belle didn’t accept and want Lachlan as a dragon as well as a man, then he would face centuries of emotional torment before going insane and dying.

Show her our treasure, his dragon encouraged.

Lachlan hadn’t known Belle for very long, but long enough to think she wasn’t the sort of lass who would be impressed by extreme wealth or rare jewels.

Her clothes and appearance said she was a woman of practicality, not greed or self-importance. The fact she didn’t drink alcohol or enjoy parties said she wasn’t a frivolous woman either. Nor was she wearing a single item of jewelry.

Lachlan’s dragon hoard was immense, as was the rest of his family’s. So much so, it took up the whole floor of the main cavern and almost reached the top of its vaulted ceiling.

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