Page 1

CHAPTER ONE

Tregarthen House, Cornwall

Early January

Hunter watched through narrowed lids as a bright red Mini, with a white stripe down the center of it, from the bonnet to the trunk, was driven down the long driveway toward Tregarthen House.

He had been watching this three-storied gray stone house, perched alone on a cliff above the churning of the turbulent Celtic Sea, for two days and nights now.

After only a fraction of that time, and in his biased opinion, he had decided Cornwall was nowhere near as beautiful as his own home in the Scottish Highlands. But he could appreciate how this stark beauty would appeal to the many who flocked here for their summer holidays every year.

There was no snow on the ground here, not even a dusting of it, but the cold Cornish winter wind would no doubt still cut through any number of layers of clothing worn by a human.

It couldn’t penetrate the skin of a twelve-hundred-year-old dragon shifter, though, which Hunter and his two brothers were. Despite the fact they looked to only be aged in their early to mid-thirties in their human form.

But whether as man or dragon, all their senses were heightened, especially sight and smell. If it became necessary, they also had the power to control the elements of earth, wind, fire, and water.

Something Edgar Wallis, the owner of this gray stone home named Tregarthen House, was shortly going to be made aware of.

But not until after Hunter had retrieved the journal he believed was now in Edgar Wallis’s possession and in which it was stated that dragon shifters existed.

Or, at the very least, that they had done so eight hundred years ago.

The retrieval of that journal was paramount to the continued anonymity and safety of the three dragon-shifter Drake brothers.

For the moment, Hunter had settled for merely observing the comings and goings of the household, Edgar Wallis, as well as the workers in this remote house. He had done so mainly because when he did confront Wallis, he wanted there to be no surprises. For Hunter, at least.

Hunter now knew there were only two full-time members of staff who had their own apartments inside the house, a cook/housekeeper and the butler/manservant.

Other people working in the house were the three people who arrived at seven o’clock every morning and left again at four in the afternoon.

One of them was a young man, whom Hunter assumed assisted the butler during the day.

The other two were middle-aged ladies. Hunter believed they were here to light the fires, the smoke of which Hunter could clearly see coming from two of the chimneys shortly after they arrived, before the two of them then cleaned and tidied the rest of the large house.

There was also an elderly gardener and a younger one, probably an apprentice, working in the extensive grounds surrounding the house.

This time of year, the two men mostly spent the mornings gathering the fallen branches and leaves from the storms that blew in regularly across the churning sea before battering the house and trees.

In the afternoons, the two men had been burning the debris in specially designed metal bins.

The younger gardener seemed to especially enjoy that part of the proceedings.

There were stables at the back of the large house, but they mainly seemed to be used for storage because there were no horses inside nor grooms employed to care for them.

Wallis, a wealthy man aged in his fifties, liked to think of himself as something of a historian. Hunter had a much harsher name to describe him.

There was a covered helicopter sitting on the private helipad within those grounds, but Wallis hadn’t left the house in the two days since Hunter had begun observing the man’s remote residence. Nor had there been a single visitor.

Until now.

Which brought Hunter’s attention back to the red Mini now being parked directly in front of the house.

He watched as the driver opened the car door and climbed out in a flash of bright colors before bending to reach back inside to take a black garment from the back of the vehicle.

The coat, when pulled on, covered the young woman from shoulder to ankle once she had straightened to her full, but diminutive, height.

The brisk wind immediately whipped her long red hair into a frenzy of straight russet, gold, and cinnamon-colored tresses that, when not being tossed about by the wind, reached to the middle of her back. At the moment, they were preventing Hunter from being able to see her face.

But the fact that Hunter was able to see all of those colors was something of a revelation when his ability to see and appreciate the vividness of colors had slowly been diminishing over the past couple of centuries.

Oh, he still saw colors, but not with the same vibrancy he once had.

Or in the way he was now seeing various shades in this woman’s hair and the multitude hues of her clothing before it was covered by the warm coat.

Hunter’s nostrils flared as the delicious scent of Lily of the Valley was carried to him on the breeze, hitting and then invading his acute senses with the force of a wrecking ball.

Mate , his dragon immediately growled.

Mate? Hunter’s shocked thoughts echoed.

Mate , his dragon repeated triumphantly.

Zoey appreciated being able to stretch her legs and breathe in the crisp, clean Cornish air after an early start and then the long drive here from London. Even so, she hurried inside the house before the cold wind could penetrate the thickness of the coat she’d wrapped around herself.

“Miss Zoey,” Penrose, the butler of Tregarthen House, greeted her warmly the moment she entered the cavernous wood-paneled hallway. “Mr. Wallis made no mention of you being here today,” he added with a frown.

She grimaced. “That’s because he doesn’t know yet.”

“I hope you will be here for luncheon, at least?” the butler encouraged. “Mrs. Chenoweth will be so pleased and is sure to make your favorite meal of shepherd’s pie.”

Zoey laughed for what felt like the first time in forever, the bleakness of the past ten days having not been conducive to humor. “That would be lovely, thank you, Penrose. Pass on my best wishes to Mrs. Chenoweth, please,” she requested as she took off her coat and handed it to him.

“I will.” The butler smiled warmly.

“I’ll probably stay overnight,” she added, knowing that by doing so, it would guarantee another one of her favorite meals being cooked for dinner, and probably breakfast too.

“Mr. Willis is in his study, Miss Zoey,” Penrose informed her before leaving to put her coat away.

Of course Edgar was in his study. He was nothing if not predictable.

But perhaps she needed that predictability after the recent traumatic events in Scotland? Something had definitely compelled her to come to Cornwall.

Being invited to spend Hogmanay in the Scottish Highlands, with the family of a fellow student and housemate, was supposed to have been a fun time.

And it had been, until it ended in disaster.

Ben McGregor was one of the people she shared a house with in London. There were three girls and three guys, but none of them were romantically involved. They shared the house out of financial necessity.

Ben had gone home to Scotland before Christmas, but the other five of them had traveled up by train before the New Year after spending Christmas with their own families.

Except Belle. She was another one of the six students staying in the London house, and because she didn’t have any family, she had decided to remain at the shared house on her own.

Zoey had thought about inviting Belle to spend Christmas with her in Cornwall, but Edgar wasn’t the most hospitable of people at the best of times.

Having a third person in the house, someone he didn’t know, would probably have sent him into a spiral of behaving even more rudely than he usually did.

Goodness knows, Zoey had been relieved to make her own escape from his company the day after Boxing Day.

The Hogmanay celebrations in the Highlands had been everything Ben had told them they would be, with lots of the people in the Scottish village enjoying copious amounts of food and drink over two days and nights rather than just New Year’s Eve.

But all that revelry had come to an abrupt end on the third day when Ben had fallen to his death off one of the mountains near his home.

Ben, like several other local men, had been searching for Belle after she had gone for a walk and then become lost in the majestic mountains surrounding the village.

Belle had been located, safe and sound inside the cave where she had taken shelter, thank God, by another one of the locals shortly after Ben’s broken body had been found.

It hadn’t felt right to continue staying with the McGregor family after Ben’s death, but the nearest place to stay was ten miles away, in a nearby town.

As none of them had hired a car and there was still snow on the ground, it had been encouraged by Ben’s family, after they had announced that Ben’s funeral would be very small and private, for Zoey and the other remaining housemates to immediately travel back to London by train.

Belle had decided to stay in Scotland a little longer so that she could fully recover from her ordeal. She had accepted the invitation to stay in the home of the Drake brothers. One of whom was responsible for finding and rescuing her.

Not that Zoey could blame Belle for choosing that option.

The Drake brothers were something else. Well…

the two Zoey had met when she said her goodbyes to Belle were.

The impressive Lachlan and Ranulf Drake had been present that day, flanking Belle like two huge, impenetrable and protective sentinels.