allowed the dragon aggression to run its course, they had returned to their human form and talked instead of fighting.
It had been a revelation to both men to hear of each other’s dragon clan, one in Wales, the other in Russia, and to learn of their similarities and differences. The Pendragons were all males too, but the remaining eight brothers were all fifteen hundred years old and dragon made, initially from ten different mothers and one father. The Romanov brothers, on the other hand, were all dragon born, starting with Vladimir a thousand years ago and followed by his seven brothers, and all to a single mated couple.
Unfortunately, the conversation had also revealed the Pendragon brothers had been no more successful in finding their mates than the Romanovs had.
Not then, at least.
Grigor and Vladimir had decided, until they knew more, to keep their meeting to themselves, but to keep each other apprised of any changes that might occur in their mating status.
Months later, Grigor had contacted Vladimir to report that his brother Nathaniel had met his mate, and she was, to all intents and purposes, human. Blood tests had later revealed Grace had a trace of dragon in her DNA, no doubt from some long-forgotten ancestor having either joined or mated with a dragon shifter.
News of the mating had caused both hope and despair in the remaining Pendragon and Romanov dragon shifters.
Hope, because it meant there might be other human women out there who also carried that rare gene in their DNA.
Despair, because after all these years of being alone, none of them had any idea if they would meet the woman destined for them before it was their turn to die.
The Pendragon brothers, having been made rather than born, would eventually become feral without their mate. This would result in their remaining in dragon form during one of their shifts and having to be destroyed by their brothers before they turned the fierceness of their anger on the human population, thus revealing their existence.
The Romanovs didn’t have that particular sword of Damocles hanging over their head. Their longevity was simply that of normal aging for a dragon shifter. But without a mate to love and to be loved by in return, that longevity could and did seem very long indeed before they would eventually die, alone and unmated.
Miraculously, Nathaniel Pendragon’s mating had only been the first and was followed by the seven remaining Pendragon brothers all meeting their mates during the following months. All, on the surface, to human women, but blood tests revealed all those women also carried that same rare gene in their DNA that allowed them to survive the fierceness of a dragon mating.
The Romanov brothers had not been so lucky.
Not a single one of them had yet found their mate.
Liar.
Vladimir drew in a sharp breath upon hearing his dragon’s angry accusation. She is not worthy, he answered through their mental link.
Then make her so.
How do I do that?
Tame her. Mate her. Breed her.
And if she decides, if we should be so blessed, to turn on and kill our young?
She will not.
We don’t know that. She’s the daughter of parents she believes to have been killed by the Romanov dragons ten years ago.
A false belief.
Vladimir was well aware of that.
The authorities had told the two Petrov children, then aged fifteen and ten, that their parents had been killed in one of the woods just outside St. Petersburg by a pack of the wolves still so prevalent in Russia. Which was no consolation at all to the two children placed in one of Russian’s notoriously merciless orphanages.
Tanya had remained there for only a year before she was thrown back out onto the streets, at the young age of sixteen, to survive as best she could. She had survived for the next five years, for the sake of the brother she was determined to make a home for by the time Pyotr was also released back into the world, but it had been at the price of Tanya selling her body and dignity to whoever had the coin to make the purchase.
Vladimir felt a warmth of admiration for her tenacity and loyalty to the only family she had left. It was the same loyalty Vladimir felt toward his own brothers, for whom he would also do whatever he had to in order to protect them.
After the brother and sister had tried to kill Vaughn, Vladimir’s investigations into the deaths of the senior Petrovs had so far only revealed