Page 34 of Lachlan

But it had been only hours. Far too soon for Belle to even begin to return his feelings…

Lachlan’s thoughts ceased, his heart stuttering and then stopping when Belle lifted her hand to cradle one of his cheeks. Her fingers were a light caress against his silver scales.

“You aren’t frightened of me,” he realized.

“I was at first, obviously,” she admitted self-derisively. “But not anymore. Your dragon is beautiful, Lachlan. Magnificent beyond my wildest imaginings.” A strong emotion glowed in her shining blue eyes. “Although I’m still having difficulty believing you’re a beautiful dragon and that I’m your one true mate,” she added shakily.

“We knew it from the moment we set eyes on you,” he assured.

“We?” she echoed, her head tilted curiously. “Are you and your dragon separate entities, then?”

“It’s difficult to explain,” Lachlan mused. “We’re the same and yet not. As a man, I can use reason and act logically, but my dragon isn’t quite as reasonable,” he acknowledged ruefully. “My dragon is…more. He can also be feral. For instance, he’s been urging me to mate with you since the moment we scented you and followed that scent until we found you in the cave.”

“But I would be mated to both of you?”

He nodded. “You would mate with the man, but my dragon and I are one and the same. We would both be honored to have you as our beautiful true mate.”

“Then would you please show me all of you, the man and the dragon?” Belle pleaded with him. “I promise I won’t freak out on you like I did last time.”

Lachlan believed her. Because he knew, from the things Belle had told him about her life so far, that from being an orphaned child she had become a brave and resilient woman.

But finding herself in the presence of a thirty-foot-tall silver dragon with twenty-meter-wide wings would surely push that bravery and resilience to their limits.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Belle could hardly contain her excitement as she stood in the snow at the back of Drake House, waiting for Lachlan to shift into what she knew was going to be his beautiful silver dragon.

Hunter and Ranulf had offered to accompany them outside in case Belle became frightened, but she had assured them there was no need for that. It felt important that for this first shift, she had Lachlan completely to herself.

A calm had come over her the moment she stepped out of the house at his side. An inner unshakable certainty that she had been born for just this purpose.

That everything that had happened to her up to this point really had been leading her to here and now. To Lachlan. To being the one true mate of both the man and his dragon.

She’d always hated being emotionally alone after her parents died. But she now appreciated that if she’d had a family, it would have made it far more difficult for her to just disappear. As she surely must if she was to be the mate of a dragon shifter who had already lived for twelve hundred years.

The same went for having close friends who might question where she was.

Belle had neither.

What she’d always had during her childhood and her years at university was an absolute belief that dragons had once existed in the world.

It was the reason she had chosen to study mythology at university.

She now thought randomly finding—if it had been random—Sister Agnes’s journals at the bottom of the box of books had to have been meant to be too.

As had her having come to the Highlands in search of evidence that the dragons Sister Agnes claimed to have seen really had existed.

All those things, Belle now deeply believed, had happened to bring her to this man.

Her mate.

Her one true love.

“Ready?” Lachlan prompted hesitantly.

“Don’t you have to remove your clothes before shifting?” Her cheeks heated in what she knew would be a visible blush, her heart pounding at the realization she’d just asked Lachlan to strip in front of her.

In the freezing cold!

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