Chapter 13
Nathaniel instinctively became dragon and remained standing in front of the entrance to the cave, protecting his mate, as he faced off against the two dragons standing on the ledge outside.
“We’re too late, I see,” Grigor snapped harshly, his red dragon both bigger and more powerful than Nathaniel’s green dragon.
“I said we would be,” Deryk’s sleek golden dragon derided. “But you insisted on coming anyway.”
Grigor ignored him, his gaze, so dark a brown his eyes were almost black, remaining fixed on Nathaniel. “What have you done?”
Nathaniel bared his teeth. “Chloe is mine.” The bite was immaterial to him. As far as he was concerned, Chloe had been his mate since the moment he broke into her apartment.
“Mating frenzy,” Deryk dismissed dryly.
Nathaniel’s gaze shifted briefly to his younger brother. “Fuck off.”
“Be glad to.” The shrug could be heard in Deryk’s voice. “But you know Grigor.”
“I thought I did.” Nathaniel’s tail swung forward and back in his agitation. He was still angry Grigor had decided to keep the truth of Rufus and Rebecca from them. “You owe us all an explanation, brother,” he stated formally.
The red dragon’s nostrils flared as evidence of Grigor’s own anger. “You should not have acted without sanction from the rest of us.”
His eyes narrowed in warning. “I don’t need your permission to be with my mate.”
“You need my permission to put yourself in danger!” Grigor’s voice boomed out across the mountainside. “If this woman—”
“Her name is Chloe!”
“There is every reason to believe you will die if this woman decides she doesn’t want you,” Grigor stated remorselessly.
Nathaniel spun round as he heard a gasp behind him and saw Chloe had come up to the entrance of the cave, against his specific instruction. “Go back inside,” he ordered harshly.
“But—”
“You will do as I say!” he thundered at her, knowing her defiance was only weakening his position with his eldest brother.
Chloe debated obeying him—for about two seconds. Then her sense of self reasserted itself, and instead of retreating back to the cave, she stepped to the side and in front of him and found herself looking up at two more dragons as stunningly beautiful—and as unbelievable—as Nathaniel’s.
She knew who they were, of course. Deryk was the golden dragon, Grigor the red. A shimmering gold and red that glinted in the last of the sun’s evening rays. She really had slept for almost twenty-four hours.
Deryk somehow managed to look mocking even in dragon form. But Grigor…Grigor was looking at her with cold, dark eyes that sent a shiver of apprehension down the length of her spine. He didn’t like her, and he was making no effort to hide that dislike. After the part of the brothers’ conversation Chloe had overheard, perhaps that wasn’t so surprising.
She narrowed her gaze on all of them. “Could you all do me the courtesy of changing—shifting, so that we can talk like reasonable human beings.”
“Which we’re not,” Deryk drawled, once again standing before her in his lethally attractive human form in the long black leather duster.
“Reasonable or human?” Chloe came back scathingly.
Nathaniel shook his head at her as he became his human self.
“Here.” Chloe thrust the gun into his hand before turning to give the last of the dragons a pointed glance. “I’m impressed, okay?” she drawled. “That means you can be human like the rest of us if you want to be included in this conversation,” she added as the huge red dragon glowered down at her.
Grigor continued to glower for several long seconds, then there was that shimmer in the air, red this time, and Chloe saw him in his human form for the first time.
Grigor the man was as imposing as his dragon. Dressed all in black, he was over six and a half feet of powerful muscles, with overlong dark hair and a face that looked as if it had been hewn from the same molten rock as this mountain. As expected, his eyes were so dark a brown, they were almost as black as jet, and as cold.
“As for you…” She turned to Nathaniel accusingly. “You forgot to mention you might die if this doesn’t work out between the two of us.”
The idea that if she and Nathaniel mated, she might kill him if she left him, only confirmed her decision not to complete the mating.
“Because I didn’t know that,” Nathaniel stated evenly.
“I do.” Grigor’s voice was low and deep.
Three pairs of eyes turned in his direction, telling Chloe that this was obviously news to Nathaniel and Deryk too.
“Well?” she prompted when he added nothing further.
Anger flashed in those dark eyes before it was brought back under Grigor’s control. “I suggest we all get off this windy ledge if we’re going to continue talking,” he bit out. “Why the hell you had to choose somewhere so bloody cold and remote for your nest is beyond me.” He turned that disapproving stare on Nathaniel.
“Maybe because it’s so cold and remote, none of you ever bothered me here. Until now,” Nathaniel added impatiently before turning to take Chloe’s hand possessively in his as the two of them preceded his brothers back into his cave.
He was far from happy about this situation. For one thing, every one of his protective instincts was on full alert. It didn’t matter that the other male dragons were two of his brothers, his dragon still perceived them as a threat to his mate.
He also didn’t like the fact Grigor’s remarks seemed to indicate there was yet more information his eldest brother had kept from the rest of them.
Grigor had always been arrogant, but this was unacceptable.
“Talk,” Nathaniel instructed tautly once they were all within the warmth of his cave.
Grigor’s nostrils flared. “I don’t care for your attitude—”
“And I don’t care for the fact you’ve been keeping information from the rest of us. For years, by the sound of it,” he challenged. “But it is what it is.”
“Perhaps you would like to take on the role of leader and see how easy you find it to make the decisions that affect all of us?”
Nathaniel met his brother’s gaze unblinkingly. “Perhaps I would.”
“Dragons have fiery tempers,” Deryk remarked casually to Chloe as she nervously watched the other two powerful men face off against each other.
Chloe briefly raised her eyes to the roof of the cave. “Now, isn’t that a surprise.”
Deryk grinned. “How was the sex? As good as I’m hoping it is?”
Chloe knew this sarcastic man well enough now to know that he was enjoying himself at her expense. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
His grin widened. “When I find my mate, I have every intention of doing so.”
Chloe gave a derisive snort. “You’ll have to find a woman who’s willing to put up with you first.” Her tone implied she doubted that would ever happen. Handsome as sin he might be, but his sarcasm and rudeness would be a lot for any woman to take on.
His humor faded. “Careful, little girl. Being Nathaniel’s mate doesn’t give you license to insult me without retribution.”
She reacted explosively to once again being called a little girl. “I am not Nathaniel’s mate!”
A tense silence suddenly fell over the cave as the fierceness of Chloe’s announcement reverberated off the walls, and she found herself the focus of three pairs of intense eyes. One amused. One critical. Nathaniel’s shocked and a little hurt.
But what had he expected? This was all new to her, and she was still trying to get her head around this whole mating thing, let alone having other people—namely his brothers—making assumptions about the two of them.
Okay, she accepted there was the complication that unbearable lust fever was eased only by the two of them having sex together. But the rest of it, the bite, this having to be together all the time or they lapsed back into that lust fever, was just too claustrophobic for someone who had lived on her own for the past six years.
She liked living alone. Like being answerable only to herself. Not having to explain herself to someone if she happened to be out working late. Or didn’t come home at all.
Besides, she very much doubted Nathaniel would leave Wales to live with her in London. And what was she supposed to do if she lived in Wales? She could maybe get a job working freelance for a local newspaper, but it was hardly going to be the cut and thrust of the newspapers she worked for in London.
She and Nathaniel were as compatible—out of bed—as night and day.
Nathaniel is a twenty out of ten, she reminded herself.
Well, yes, he is, but they couldn’t spend all their time in bed together—
Yes, they could.
No!
She had to look at the whole picture, not just part of it, and she seriously didn’t see how a long-term—lifetime?—relationship was going to work between herself and Nathaniel. Not one that allowed for the thoroughly independent twenty-first century woman she was and the sixth century man he still was at heart.
Maybe she could visit on weekends.
A booty call? Really?
Okay, maybe not. Nathaniel had that whole sixth-century thing going on that would never accept the woman in his life only being in his life on weekends, and only for the sex, at that. It had been okay for men of his time to go off to battles and crusades, but their women were expected to stay put and tend the livestock and look after the kids.
And while Chloe had been lost in her own thoughts, the three men were still staring at her with those different, but equally censorious, gazes.
“Stop looking at me like that.” Her brow furrowed. “You’ve all known what you are all your lives. I’ve only known dragons exist for a couple of days, and then only because one of them is trying to claim me as his mate.”
“I’m not trying, Chloe,” Nathaniel stated quietly. “You are my mate.”
“Your woman seems to have some doubt on the matter,” Grigor growled.
“You know, I’m really starting to dislike you,” Chloe snapped.
To her surprise the stern-faced Grigor stared at her for several tense seconds and then gave a bark of laughter. A flash of humor that transformed that rock-hewn face into something both startlingly and mesmerizingly handsome. His eyes were no longer a glittering black but a warm chocolate brown. There were grooves in his chiseled cheeks, his sculptured lips pulled back over straight white teeth.
Then it was gone, and the scowl once again darkened his lowered brow. “Give yourself time to get to know me better, and then you really won’t like me.”
It was Chloe’s turned to laugh. “Now I’m starting to like you.”
“When the two of you have quite finished…?” Nathaniel interrupted coldly. “You were about to tell us how you know I’ll die if the mating is broken?” he reminded his brother.
Grigor glanced at Chloe. “We will wait until it is just family.”
“That’s it.” Chloe stepped up until she was standing only inches in front of Grigor, deliberately crowding his space. “In the past five days, I have been kidnapped, imprisoned in a dungeon, escaped only to be in an agony of lust fever for days and nights on end, been flown to Iceland in the arms of a dragon, had sex with said dragon, and now you have the unmitigated gall to treat me like some fucking interloper. Well, let me tell you, buddy.” She poked Grigor in the chest, hurting her finger in the process on the rock-solid muscle, “I’m now as much a part of this as any of you are. As such, I don’t appreciate—”
Nathaniel made a grab for her arm before she could poke his brother in the chest again. “Chloe—”
“No.” She kept her gaze firmly fixed on Grigor as she shook off Nathaniel’s hold. “I don’t care who you are or what you are, you are going to tell all of us what you know, and you are going to do it now.”
Grigor glanced at Nathaniel. “You have chosen your mate well, brother. She will defend you and your dragonlings if the need should ever arrive.”
“I’m going to give you a hefty kick in the balls if you don’t start talking right now!” Chloe warned with a flash of deep blue eyes.
Deryk looked at her admiringly. “I wish I had seen you first.”
Nathaniel growled as Deryk reached out and ran a caressing finger down Chloe’s cheek.
He needn’t have worried. His feisty mate slapped his brother’s hand away at the same time as she stomped on one of his booted feet before moving to stand close by Nathaniel’s side.
“You ever touch me again,” she warned Deryk, “and I’ll take your own sword down off the castle wall and stab you with it.”
Grigor gave her an admiring glance as Deryk backed off. “You should claim your mate as quickly as possible,” he informed Nathaniel.
Chloe gave Nathaniel an exasperated glance. “You didn’t tell me Grigor is a windbag who likes the sound of his own voice.”
Nathaniel’s gaze remained on his brother. “I believe it’s called deflection.”
“Ah.” She nodded, her expression hardening as she turned to Grigor. “Talk.”
His brother thrust his hands into the back pockets of his jeans as he began to pace the cave, his movements restless. “About eighteen months ago, I met one of the Russian dragons—”
“I thought you said there were no other dragons?” Chloe accused.
“Chloe,” Nathaniel rebuked gently. He would rather Grigor finished his explanation without further interruption.
Besides, as far as he was aware, there were no other dragons, but China and Russia had always been difficult areas for them to search. The political climate had made it almost impossible for them to enter those countries.
“This dragon was black as night and as fearsome a warrior as I have ever met. We were well matched.” There was a note of admiration in Grigor’s voice. “When the battle was over and no victor emerged, we talked.” He ignored Chloe’s snort of disgust. “This dragon, Vladimir—”
“Vlad the Russian?” Chloe choked. “Really?”
Grigor gave her a silencing scowl. “Vladimir is the leader of the Russian clan, yes. There are seven of them. All male. They were all born to the same mated pair.”
“The mated pair are still alive?” Deryk frowned.
Grigor shook his head. “The father was killed in battle during the war against Napoleon. The mother died three weeks later.”
“I don’t think I like where this is going,” Chloe said slowly.
“How old were the parents when they died?” Nathaniel prompted.
“The father was fifteen hundred years old and the mother twelve hundred.”
“Both dragon?”
Grigor’s mouth thinned. “Not quite.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Chloe snapped.
“The mother was aging as a human when she met her mate. Their mating…allowed her to live as long as her mate did.”
Chloe was starting to find it hard to breathe. “You’re saying that if I mate with Nathaniel, it would make me immortal too?” That other woman had lived to be twelve hundred years old!
Grigor gave a slight nod of his head.
“Will I be able to fly too?”
“Not that I am aware, no.”
“But there is more, isn’t there,” she said shrewdly.
“You’re very astute,” he drawled.
“Save your compliments and get on with it,” Chloe snapped.
His jaw tightened. “For the past two hundred years, Vladimir and his brothers have been looking for their mates. One of them, the eighth brother, was lucky or unlucky enough to find his mate fifty years ago. Except she would have nothing to do with him once she discovered what he was. Even the promise she would become immortal if they mated held no sway with her. She began to…weaken, and within three weeks she had died. The brother who had found his mate died three weeks after she did.”
Three weeks.
It was always three fucking weeks.
There was only one chair in the cave, and Chloe dropped into it, her legs feeling too weak to support her, her previous thoughts all for nothing, right down to that unlikely booty call.
Rufus’s mate had died three weeks after he did.
The mother of the Russian dragons died three weeks after her mate.
The Russian brother, whose mate had refused him, had died three weeks after she did.
If Chloe refused to complete her mating to Nathaniel, then he was going to die in three weeks.
And she would follow him three weeks after that.