Page 33 of Lachlan

“We have to do so every fifty years or so,” Lachlan confirmed gently. “Our interaction with the people in the village is minimal, but it’s their belief different generations of the Drake family havelived in this house for centuries. If we don’t disappear, sooner or later someone would realize we aren’t aging.”

“I don’t want you to go.” Belle was surprised at how much even the thought of never seeing Lachlan again made her heart ache.

“We can’t go anywhere until after we’ve found the people who killed Ben and taken back Sister Agnes’s journal,” Hunter reasoned. “We also have to be prepared for the fallout in the village once Ben’s body is discovered. Which it will be, because I left it so that Hamish and the other men from the village could easily find him. I didn’t want to risk anyone else losing their life in this weather,” he explained.

“You did right, brother,” Lachlan assured him.

“Belle will need to bring herself down from the mountain too; otherwise, the villagers are going to keep searching for her or her body,” Hunter pointed out.

“Can you do that?” Lachlan looked at her searchingly.

“I can.” She had never been one for subterfuge. But keeping the identity of the Drake brothers as dragon shifters who were twelve hundred years old was far too important for her not to play her part in preserving that secret.

Besides, her responses to Lachlan, the way she felt as protective of him as he did of her, told her that Lachlan was her true mate just as much as she was his.

Lachlan nodded. “At least this way Hamish and Morag will think their son died a hero. Rather than as a thief, paid to betray and steal from the young woman he shared student accommodation with, and later brought to his family home under false pretenses.”

Belle placed a gently soothing hand on Lachlan’s forearm after hearing the displeased growl in his voice. “I rarely saw him, and I had my own bedroom.”

He bared his teeth. “You’ve still been sharing a house with the wee bastard?—”

“Lachlan,” Hunter warned softly.

Because Lachlan’s face was once again more that of a fierce dragon than a man.

Belle wasn’t alarmed or frightened this time. Instead, she was fascinated.

Lachlan’s eyes, normally a pale gray, once again gleamed silver beneath the heavy dragon brow. It was still recognizable as his face, but his sharp features were now covered in small silver scales that seemed to shimmer from the glow of the overhead light. His hands had become claws and were much bigger. The backs of them were also covered in scales. But the sharp talons at his fingertips remained sheathed rather than digging painfully into her flesh.

In a word, he was beautiful.

Belle’s thoughts had been racing these past few minutes, and she now had absolutely no doubt that Lachlan was alsohers.

That her life, such as it was, had all been leading her to this very moment.

To Lachlan.

There was no other way to explain her absolute certainty in believing dragons had once existed, despite having received ridicule all her life for it.

She now knew theystillexisted. That one of them, the magnificent Lachlan, the eldest brother of the Drake family, wanted her to be his true mate.

Belle wanted him to behertrue mate too.

She longed to see Lachlan when he was fully shifted. “How tall is your dragon?” she asked softly.

“As tall as this house,” he growled in answer.

Belle drew up every ounce of courage she possessed before speaking again. “Then can we go outside now and you can show me all of your dragon?”

Show our mate how magnificent we are, Lachlan’s dragon urged eagerly.

Lachlan was a little more reticent. The last thing he wanted was to completely shift and frighten Belle so much that she ran away screaming.

She is our one true mate, his dragon reminded.

Yes, that’s exactly what Belle was. As his true mate, she would need to see all of him. To love all of him. The dragon as well as the man.

Lachlan knew, from centuries of observing the couples in the village, that humans took much longer to fall in love. His own heart had been filled with love for Belle from the moment he saw her sitting in that cave halfway up the mountain. That love had only grown stronger in the hours since.

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