with those intense dark eyes.
To gaze at her pointedly.
As if— No, he couldn’t be saying—implying—
“My greatest treasure is no longer gold or jewels. It is you,” he confirmed huskily.
He was.
He really was saying Tanya was his mate.
“No!” She pushed her chair back noisily as she stood abruptly and stepped away from the table. And, more importantly, from Vladimir. “You told me the human mates of the Pendragon brothers all had traces of dragon DNA show up in their blood which they must have inherited from one of their ancestors.”
Vladimir continued to look at her calmly. “Yes.”
She gave a fierce shake of her head. “I don’t have any dragon DNA.”
“I believe you do, but we would need Dylan Pendragon to carry out the appropriate blood tests to know for certain, one way or the other,” he attempted to soothe.
“But for that to be true, one of my parents would have to have had that same trace of dragon DNA in their blood, and they didn’t. I don’t!” Tanya added vehemently before turning on her heel and running from the room.
Chapter Five
Vladimir’s conversation with Tanya had gone as well as he had expected it might. Which meant, not at all.
Oh, she had seemed interested, no doubt against her will, and listened avidly as he talked of the Pendragon and Romanov dragons.
Knowing Tanya, she had probably stored that information away with the idea of using the knowledge against one or more of the dragon shifters sometime in the future. Vladimir would not rule that out.
Her interest in his dragon hoard had gone as expected too. Jewels and coins were acceptable dragon treasure, but learning she was his mate, and therefore valued by him far above any jewels or gold, had sent Tanya running from him.
Vladimir might have been fighting against the mating for the past three months, but he also had absolutely no doubts that’s what Tanya was to him. Just as he was sure dragon DNA would be found in her blood. No human woman who did not possess dragon DNA would be able to withstand the physical fierceness of a dragon mating. Vladimir didn’t believe fate would be cruel enough to do that to him or his mate.
When Tanya ran from the dining room—as if a dragon were at her heels!—Vladimir had followed far enough into the hallway to ensure she had gone back up the stairs to the east turret, rather than throwing open the front door and running out into the snow in order to escape him.
Since that time, he had gone to the library and drunk several glasses of brandy as he sat in a chair beside the fire. Not that it was helping, because dragon shifters didn’t react to alcohol, but the warmth of the dark liquid was inwardly melting some of the ice that had settled about his heart after Tanya ran from him.
After his mate ran away from him.
He was now more convinced than ever that’s what Tanya was. His dragon had literally purred just spending time with her, and Vladimir had felt that same overwhelming admiration and need for his mate as he studied her while they ate and talked.
Tanya was an extremely beautiful woman. But it was an inner beauty as well as a surface one. Despite all that Tanya had endured in her life, she had retained an inner innocence that was totally captivating. She was also—
Vladimir frowned across the room as Dimitri entered after the briefest of knocks. One look at the other man’s face was enough to tell him that something was seriously wrong.
Tanya could feel the cold permeating every part of her as the snow continued to fall, wetting her hair and jacket. She waded desperately through the thigh-high snow that had soaked through the material of her jeans within minutes of her having left the palace. She didn’t have any gloves either, and her hands were already frozen as she used her own weight and the movement of her arms and hands to help her keep her balance.
Her escape had only been possible at all because neither Vladimir nor the Mikhailovs had come to relock the door to her suite of rooms after she’d returned upstairs.
Still in shock from the things Vladimir had told her and from calling her his mate, it had taken Tanya some time to realize the door to the suite wasn’t locked as it usually was.
Once she’d realized, she had still hesitated. The thought of going outside at night, with the hungry wolves prowling