Page 23 of Seducing the Dragon
Bram looked over his shoulder. “Finn, is there anything else that absolutely must be discussed before dinner?”
“No, take care of your clan.” Finn moved to stand next to him and put out a hand. Once Bram shook and dropped it, the Scottish leader looked to Evie and Nikki. “And I look forward to talking with you bonny lasses tonight.”
Both females smiled at the other clan leader and Bram growled. Finn laughed at the sound before saying, “Right, I’m going.” He gave each of the females a smile and was gone.
Since Bram had various clan members keeping an eye on Finn—much as Finn said earlier, trust still needed to be earned—he stepped aside to allow Evie and Nikki into his cottage. Once he shut and locked the door, he said, “So what’s the emergency, Evie?”
The human female unzipped his huge coat surrounding her and then bit her bottom lip. It took everything he had to focus on her words and not her mouth when she released her lip and said, “I think Caitriona Belmont was murdered.”
He looked back up into her eyes. “Come again? Caitriona died in childbirth.”
Nikki took a step forward. “Listen to her, Bram. I think she’s on to something.”
Glancing back at Evie, he said, “Okay, then, explain how you reached that conclusion.”
Standing this close to the lass, he could hear her heartbeat thumping hard inside her chest. Yet level-headed human she was, she took a deep breath and carried on. “Well, part of the reason I was sent here by the DDA was to investigate Caitriona’s death since her autopsy was off.”
He nodded. “Melanie mentioned that to me. Go on.”
“This morning, I decided to pay Dr. Sid a visit.” Bram opened his mouth but she beat him to it. “I know the DDA won’t accept any report I write about Stonefire, but I wanted to find out the truth. Not only for me, but for you as well.”
His dragon decided to speak up.She cares for the clan.
Rather than think about that, he asked, “And what did you find out?”
“I brought a copy of Caitriona’s autopsy results with me and showed them to Dr. Sid. I knew high levels of dragon-shifter hormones in a human’s blood was bad, but I’m not a doctor.”
“Get to the point, lass.”
“Dr. Sid explained how the numbers were far too high. In order for any human to have that level of dragon-shifter hormone in her body, she’d have to be given shots or take medication. I guess much like humans have medications for things like thyroid hormone replacements, the dragon-shifters have something similar for the hormone that controls their ability to shift into a dragon.”
She looked to Nikki. “You fill him in on the rest.”
The young dragonwoman didn’t hesitate. “After Sid looked through the lists of dragon-shifters who needed the hormone, one name stuck out—Neil Westhaven.”
Neil had been the dragon-shifter assigned to the sacrifice, Caitriona. He’d made the poor lass’s life hell, primarily through verbal abuse, until Cait had turned into a depressed recluse. Only because Neil had hidden the female so well from others did Bram miss the human’s suffering.
Bram clenched a fist. “But that bastard was banished long before Cait gave birth.”
Evie stepped in. “That’s true, but Nikki and I did some talking, and we think we came up with an explanation.”
Bloody fantastic.The two of them working together would most definitely cause trouble for him in the future. “And that would be?”
“He must have someone here, still on the clan’s lands, working with him. Nikki thinks it could explain the increase of dragon hunter attacks too.”
Chapter Nine
Evie held her breath while she waited for Bram’s response. He had no reason to trust her, but she hoped Nikki’s support would convince him to take the possibility seriously.
The tall, muscled dragonman looked from her to Nikki and back again before he said, “Do you have any proof to back up these claims?”
Nikki moved to talk, but Evie put out a hand to stop the dragonwoman. “No, but my gut says it’s the right thing. Just think about it. How else would the dragon hunters know each and every weak point on your perimeter?”
Bram looked to Nikki and the dragonwoman squared her shoulders. “I didn’t tell her anything that wasn’t clan-wide knowledge. Since she’s going to be your mate, I reckoned it was okay to tell her that sort of information.”
“Fine, okay. Putting that aside, Cait pretty much always stayed in her cottage, and when she wasn’t confined there, she came to me, Melanie, or Sid. None of us would ever have harmed the lass.”
Nikki piped in. “But what about her food? Cait didn’t cook and most of her meals were brought to her.”
