Page 2 of Lachlan

They had also, illogically, believed that the virgin sacrifice would secure their own successful hunting for another season.

Lachlan had never understood the correlation between those two events.

Despite Hunter’s supposed nostalgia for those bygone days, the brothers had never eaten the virgin as dragons nor seduced her as the men they could shift into. Instead, they usually helped the girl find somewhere else she could live and flourish, knowing she couldn’t return to the village for fear of being slaughtered by the superstitious villagers, who would probably have thought she had returned from the dead.

The offering of a virgin sacrifice had, thankfully, died out as the centuries passed, along with the superstitious belief that dragons existed at all.

“Which girl is missing?” their brother Ranulf prompted, his voice gruff from lack of use.

Of the three Drake brothers, Ranulf was the one who had become more and more reclusive and less talkative as the decades and centuries passed and their humanity became less and less with each passing year. Lachlan feared that one day, his brother’s ability to shift into a man would disappear altogether.

After all, they were first and foremost dragons, not men.

Hunter shook his head. “I didn’t mean one of the girls who lives in the village is missing,” he assured once he’d finished chewing and swallowed his mouthful of apple. “This girl was a visitor.”

“Ah.” Ranulf gave a satisfied nod before returning to concentrate on whittling the piece of wood he held.

Ranulf was a master carver and had been for centuries. Initially, he had carved furniture for the wealthier households to buy, but as time passed, his realistic carvings of animals had become in great demand and nowadays sold for seven figure numbers. He still carved bespoke furniture, and he had carved the beautiful chessboard Lachlan was playing on.

“Was?” Lachlan was now the one to echo sharply.

Hunter shrugged. “She’s been missing since yesterday, and you know how low the temperature fell in the Highlands last night.”

Lachlan’s nostrils flared at his brother’s easy dismissal of a young girl’s life. Another part of having been alive for so long, unfortunately, was that the paltry years of a human lifetime hadtaken on less meaning. “If she isn’t a girl from the village, then who is she?”

“Her name is Belle, and she’s a friend of the youngest McGregor boy.”

“Belle?”

“It means beautiful.” Hunter nodded. “I wonder if she lives up to her name?” he speculated.

A speculation Lachlan didn’t like in the slightest. “Ben McGregor has a girlfriend?” It seemed only yesterday that the youngest McGregor bairn had been born.

Time really had lost all meaning if Ben was now old enough to have a girlfriend and possibly starting to think of having children of his own.

Hunter finished chewing another bite of his apple before speaking. “I don’t think she’s his girlfriend, as such. He invited a group of friends who share a house with him near the English university he’s attending, males as well as females, to spend an authentic Scottish Hogmanay with him and his family. This girl apparently went for a walk on her own yesterday morning, when everyone else in the household was still recovering from the excesses of the previous two days and nights. No one realized she was missing until Mrs. McGregor called them all together for dinner yesterday evening.”

Lachlan scowled at hearing this girl had now been missing for thirty-six hours. “Did they send out a search party?”

“No.” Hunter grimaced. “It had already been dark for several hours by the time they realized she was gone. Plus, they decided the fresh covering of snow that had fallen during the day wouldhave covered any tracks she might have left. Ben and his father went out to look for her first thing this morning.”

“As it’s now late afternoon, I’m guessing they didn’t find her?”

“No.” Hunter shrugged. “Which is why I used the past tense a few minutes ago when referring to her.”

Lachlan snorted his frustration, agitation churning inside him. “You don’t seem at all concerned that a young girl might have lost her life last night while the three of us were safe and warm inside this house.”

His brother shrugged. “She isn’t the first and she won’t be the last to perish in the severe winter weather conditions in the Scottish Highlands.”

“Which doesn’t make it right for this girl to be left to die too,” Lachlan snapped.

Hunter released a heavy sigh. “If you’re that concerned, then go and look for her yourself.”

Lachlan knew that his youngest brother wasn’t as callous as he sounded. It was just that they had seen so much death during their long lifetimes that, in some ways, they had become inured to the inevitable human plight.

The past couple of centuries had been hard on all of them.

They were now the only three remaining dragons of their clan. Their uncles and aunts had died without offspring. Their own parents had died six centuries ago. But not before they had both reached the age of three thousand years old.

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