somehow less than because of the desperate measures she’d gone to in order to ensure he wasn’t bullied or neglected in the orphanage and was able to finish his education.
“You are nothing more than a sniveling, ungrateful little worm.” Vladimir snarled at Pyotr’s scornful attitude. “One who feels absolutely no guilt or need to apologize for the way in which your sister ensured your life was made far more comfortable than her own ever was.”
“She’s a fucking whore,” Pyotr insulted.
“Once a whore, always a whore,” one of the other men agreed.
“You see?” Pyotr snapped angrily. “Tanya might have tried to put the past behind her when I left the orphanage, but it was too late by then. I’ve had to live with other people knowing of her past all my adult life.”
“Tanya is my mate and my queen!” Vladimir’s voice roared with all the fury of his dragon, and he sounded as if he was on the point of shifting.
“Is?” Pyotr repeated warily.
“Is,” Tanya repeated firmly as, having managed to stagger back onto her feet, she now walked slowly down the stairs.
Her head was held high and her gaze burned with challenge as it swept over each of the three intruders in turn. She added a special edge of contempt as her gaze rested briefly on a still defiantly scornful Pyotr. The two men he was with appeared to be twenty or so years older than him.
Her brother didn’t look in the least pleased to see her.
Lastly, she gazed at Vladimir. She instantly felt bathed in the heat and approval of his gaze. It caused a warmth to form in her chest before it spread out to the rest of her body.
“What are you doing?” Pyotr demanded when Tanya walked across the room to stand beside Vladimir.
She looked at her brother coldly, wondering if she’d ever really known him after she left the orphanage. She certainly didn’t recognize the zealot he’d become.
Her chin rose. “I’m standing beside the man who has shown me nothing but kindness and care and consideration, despite having every reason not to after we attempted to kill his brother.”
“He’s enchanted you,” Pyotr scoffed.
“On the contrary,” Vladimir drawled, his hand curling warmly about one of hers. “Tanya is the one who has enchanted me.”
“Lovely as this all is,” the first man dismissed scathingly, “our purpose, Ivan’s and mine, has only ever been to lay hands on the two remaining members of the tainted Petrov family.”
“Two?” Pyotr repeated in a puzzled voice. “And what do you mean, tainted?” His voice rose indignantly.
A hard gray gaze swept over him mercilessly. “My father was your family’s doctor in St. Petersburg,” one of the two bigger man drawled. “Being a dutiful son, I had, of course, followed in his footsteps and also became a doctor. Ten years ago, he became absolutely fascinated by the anomaly he had discovered in the blood of one of his patients. It was something he’d never seen before and, if correct, indicated the existence of a totally different species.” His gaze swept scornfully over Tanya and Pyotr. “As it turns out, dragons.”
“Why are you both looking at me like that?” Pyotr asked the two men nervously.
“Because you’re one of them, idiot,” Ivan derided.
“It was in your mother’s blood where my father found the anomaly,” the first man explained. “Your father was perfectly normal, but your mother, and you and your sister, all showed the same strange DNA.”
“That’s a lie,” Pyotr shouted.
Tanya glanced at Vladimir while her brother continued to protest, knowing by the apology in Vladimir’s expression that, having read her mother’s journals, he had guessed some of it, at least. He had hinted as much when he explained she was his mate, Tanya was the one who’d refused to accept either of her parents could possibly have had the dragon DNA too.
On the positive side, they no longer needed Dylan Pendragon to test her blood to confirm traces of that same dragon DNA!
“Is that why you killed them?” Pyotr turned to accuse Vladimir. “So that they couldn’t expose you for the unnatural monsters you are?”
Several things had fallen into place for Tanya in the last few minutes. One of them was the hatred and disgust directed at her by the two men who had arrived with her brother. A disgust and hatred they were now making no effort to disguise they also felt toward Pyotr. She was also now totally convinced that neither Vladimir nor any of his brothers had been involved in the killing