Page 35 of Lachlan

Although she had a feeling Lachlan and his brothers didn’t feel the cold like she did.

She’d pulled on her own coat and boots before stepping outside, but Lachlan still wore only the T-shirt, jeans, and boots he’d been wearing inside.

“I don’t,” he dryly answered her question. “My clothes evaporate as I shift into dragon and reappear when I shift back to a man.”

“That’s…magical.”

“It also saves on the clothing bill!”

“Did you just make a joke?”

He winced. “I am sorry that this situation with the dragon hunters has not allowed the opportunity for levity.”

“You have nothing to feel sorry for,” Belle reassured. “You aren’t responsible for the greed and inhumanity of those men.”

“Nevertheless, I wish we had met under different circumstances.”

Belle doubted there were any other circumstances under which they would ever have met.

“Are you ready to meet my dragon?”

She drew in a long breath before nodding. “I am.”

The shift happened in the blink of an eye. One second, Lachlan was standing in front of her as the six-and-a-half-foot-tall man who made her heart pound and her body tremble with arousal, and the next, there was a thirty-foot dragon in front of her, his silver scales shimmering from the reflective snow.

She would be lying if she didn’t admit to instinctively taking a step back from the ferocious-looking beast.

Silver eyes seemed to glow in a narrow and scaled face, the nostrils wide, two rows of long, thin teeth gleaming in the dragon’s maw. Its body was immense, almost as big as the house itself, and the spreading of wings revealed they stretched to at least sixty feet on either side of that massive body.

Belle didn’t doubt that the dragon could easily kill her with a single sweep of one of those powerful wings or the snapping of those razor-sharp teeth.

“I would never hurt you, true mate.”

“You can talk as a dragon!” Belle gasped, easily recognizing that deep voice as belonging to Lachlan.

The huge head lifted proudly. “I can. I will,” he added mischievously. “You are beautiful, our mate. You will be a fitting queen of dragons.”

“Qu-queen?”

“We are the last of the Drake dragons. I am their leader; therefore, you will be my queen.”

Belle realized now exactly what Lachlan had meant when he said his dragon wasmore. Lachlan would never have sounded so arrogant and proud. “Will I be able to shift too, once we’re mated?” It had never even occurred to her that might be possible. “Will I be able to fly?”

How wonderful would it be to have the ability to shift into a dragon in the blink of an eye, to take to the air and fly?

“Yes.”

Oh God…

Belle felt dizzy at the possibilities that opened up?—

“Oncewe’re mated?” Again, it was Lachlan who stood before her, dressed in the same black T-shirt, jeans, and boots, just as he’d said he would be. “Does that mean you’re seriously considering mating with me?” he prompted hopefully.

She nodded eagerly. “I want to mate with you and your dragon.” She frowned slightly. “But I also want you to know that I have absolutely no interest in your dragon treasure. I’m not, nor will I ever be, in the least materialistic. As such, gold and jewels hold no interest for me.”

“Youwill be my greatest treasure,” Lachlan assured her.

Tears stung her eyes. “That’s all I’ll ever want to be. I totally believe that the years I spent alone during my childhood, and then again at university, were all bringing me to here and now. To you.”

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