Chapter 11

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The moment she set eyes on Hunter, as he stood in the middle of the kitchen with blood on his clothing, Belle knew that something terrible had happened.

His eyes no longer held a hint of their previous mischief as he threw whatever alcohol was in the glass he held to the back of his throat. He swallowed the fiery liquid before acknowledging the three of them had even entered the kitchen.

His expression was grim. "Far as I can tell, the bastards took the helicopter up to about ten thousand feet before throwing him out."

"Throwing who out?" Belle gasped in alarm.

But she knew. She knew, damn it.

"Young Ben McGregor," Hunter answered her. "He died on impact."

Belle was so shocked, she let out a keening cry.

She might have been angry with Ben, furious, in fact, but what Hunter was describing was a horrible way for anyone to die. Belle didn't even want to imagine the terror Ben must have felt as he dropped through the air, knowing he didn't have a parachute to aid with his landing.

But… "Wouldn't the deep snow have helped to soften his landing?" Ben would probably have still suffered multiple broken bones, but surely he might have survived.

"What are you trying to say, Belle?" Hunter challenged.

Yes, what was she trying to say?

Lachlan stepped forward so that he now stood partially in front of her.

As protection?

"Take a look at yourself, Hunter," he rasped. "You announced McGregor is dead, and your clothes are covered in his blood."

"Sorry." Hunter shot Belle an apologetic glance as he dropped onto one of the kitchen chairs around the table. "We watched that boy grow up, and finding him like that…" He sighed heavily before looking at Belle again. "To answer your question, yes, the snow might have softened his landing if they hadn't dropped him so that he hit and bounced off the side of the mountain several times before he hit the ground."

Belle winced at the horrible death given to Ben. No one deserved to die like that.

Hunter looked at his brothers. "I made the decision to clear up the places of impact and the spot where he finally landed before moving him to the bottom of a sheer drop on the other side of the mountain. It will explain the extent of his injuries. Hamish and several men from the village will find him there when they go up the mountain to look for him." He glanced at Belle. "They believe he went searching for you on his own."

She swallowed. "Which means they're going to hold me responsible for his having died while doing so. Probably because I am," she added achingly.

"You are nothing of the sort!" Lachlan reached out to grasp the tops of her arms. "You are not responsible for McGregor's greed in accepting money for stealing Sister Agnes's journals from you."

"But—"

"What happened to him after he entered into that agreement was entirely on him," Hunter agreed. "Is it sad that he's dead? Of course it is. His family will no doubt miss him terribly. But he made his own choices and brought about his own death through greed, along with a hearty dose of a lack of concern for the welfare of anyone else involved."

Lachlan nodded. "Considering he left Belle for dead on the mountain, I personally can't summon up a bit of sympathy for him. For Hamish and Morag for the loss of their son, yes, but not for the greedy young man who treated you so dishonorably and was then murdered by the same treasure hunters he had decided to do business with."

"How did they even know you had the journals, let alone what was in any of them?" the quiet Ranulf prompted.

Belle had wondered about that too, since she'd realized the journal was missing from her backpack.

The only explanation she'd been able to come up with was that the thieves must have been alerted by the searches she'd made online. They had been extensive, especially in regard to the location of the convent where Sister Agnes had lived and any connection she might have had to dragons or dragon shifters.

If the hunters had red-flagged certain words online, it would have been easy, once alerted to her searches, for any decent hacker to follow that digital trail back to her. Especially when she'd done most of her online searches at the library, which was an unsecured connection and so could be hacked. It would have been an easy step from there for the hunters to be able to learn her name and home address.

Which was probably where Ben had entered into their plans. Despite living in the same house, he and Belle weren't friends, and the temptation of the money the hunters had offered must have been too much to resist.

Besides, it had probably seemed like an easy task to Ben at the time: break into Belle's room, steal the journals, and then collect his money.

It had been some time since Belle had even looked at the other journals in the box at the bottom of her wardrobe. Now that she knew of Ben's involvement, she was even more convinced that he had stolen those journals from her room before Christmas.

Unfortunately for Ben, whoever was looking for dragon treasure would have quickly discovered that, although the journals were written by Sister Agnes, not one of them had anything written in them about the dragons Belle had so thoroughly researched online.

Which was how the treasure hunters must have realized there had to be another journal.

A journal Ben had found a way to steal after she joined him and his family for Hogmanay in the Highlands.

Lachlan was right. During none of those actions had Ben seemed to give her continued well-being a thought.

He certainly hadn't seemed in any hurry to tell anyone or rescue her once he realized she'd gone off on her own up the mountain.

She accepted Hunter and Lachlan were right, and Ben had been complicit in his own death.

"I'm sure you're right." Hunter nodded after Belle had shared her thoughts with the three brothers. "I took this from Ben's backpack." He held up a mangled laptop. "It's pretty damaged from the fall too, but if I can save the hard drive, it might give us a lead on who these treasure hunters are and how to find them."

The laptop looked pretty beaten up to Belle, but that didn't mean the hard drive wasn't salvageable.

Hunter huffed. "I doubt any of them realized that the dragons they were seeking live only a couple of miles from the village where Ben resides with his family."

Belle grimaced. "They might once they've translated and read that missing journal."

Ranulf nodded his agreement. "Which is why we will have to seriously consider bringing forward our need to disappear for five or six decades."

She gasped her alarm. "You're going away?"

"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 have lived 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 also hers.

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 they still existed. 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 be her true 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.

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.