Vaughn learned a new respect for the other man in that moment as Nikolai told him, without words, that he would fight to the death to protect his wife and children. It also explained why the Pendragon brothers had so readily accepted Nikolai into their confidence. Nikolai’s devotion and priorities were more dragon shifter than many humans.
Nikolai drew him to one side as his wife kissed their children goodbye. “I did as you requested last night,” he spoke softly. “The person you mentioned to me is now a guest at one of the Markovic facilities waiting to be questioned. Do you want to do that or shall I?”
Vaughn would have loved to go with Nikolai to question the person he believed to be Anastasia stalker, and whom Nikolai had had his men apprehend the night before at Vaughn’s request. But until Vaughn knew for certain they had the right person, he needed to remain here to protect his mate.
With Anastasia still sleeping Vaughn had waited until Nikolai left with the children before asking Daisy for the brown cotton and a needle. When she saw what he intended doing she’d offered to do it for him, but Vaugh had declined. Until Viktor had confirmed Anastasia would survive their mating, this was all he could think to do to show her his love.
Viktor gave his shoulder a tight squeeze. “I am truly happy for you, brother.” Viktor was six hundred years old and looked more like Vladimir than he did Vaughn. He had the same dark hair and equally dark eyes, but his body was much more muscular than Vladimir’s slenderness that looked so elegant in the bespoke suits he favored.
Vaughn knew his smile was strained. “And I’ll happily accept your congratulations once I can be sure the mating won’t kill the woman I love.”
His brother nodded. “Does Anastasia know of your other form or do you need time to explain to her why I need to do the blood tests?”
He gave a rueful laugh. “Hell of a thing, but it seems Chloe Pendragon writes dragon shifter books as Chloe Evans, and Anastasia reads them. They’re apparently…pretty descriptive in detail regarding a dragon shifter mating. Vladimir is going to be absolutely thrilled when his story, including the mating, is published next month!” He laughed openly at the mental image he had of Vladimir’s rage when his private life, his mating, appeared in graphic detail inside a book anyone could read.
“Doesn’t that put us all in danger of discovery by humans?” Viktor’s scowl said he remembered the witch hunts of the past.
He shrugged. “Anastasia says not because no one actually believes those stories could possibly be based on truth.”
Viktor looked less than convinced. “What’s your opinion on that?”
“I think it’s too late to worry about it. Also, we really don’t want to make enemies of the only allies we have in the Pendragon brothers by demanding Chloe cease and desist writing those books.”
“Vaughn— Ah.” Anastasia came to an abrupt halt in the conservatory doorway when she saw Vaughn wasn’t alone. “You must be Viktor?” She held out her hand in greeting as she stepped farther into the glass enclosure.
“Is that because I look so much like Vaughn?” Viktor Romanov glanced at his blond-haired and green-eyed brother as he gently shook her hand before releasing it.
Anastasia’s gaze didn’t waver from meeting his. “No, it’s because you give off the same ‘don’t annoy the dragon’ vibe.”
Viktor looked stunned for several seconds, and then he gave a genuine chuckle as he slapped his younger brother on the back. “She’s everything you said she was, and more. A mate to be proud of.”
“We aren’t mated yet,” she reminded. “But with your help, we soon will be?”
Viktor eyed her from between narrowed lids. “Reading about something in books is one thing, Anastasia, but reality can be very different. Also, as there is no divorce in the dragon world, our mating is for centuries, if not millennia.”
“What the fuck, Viktor—”
“It’s okay, Vaughn.” Anastasia put a reassuring hand on his arm to calm his anger with his brother, her gaze remaining firmly fixed on Viktor. “I’m sure your brother is only being cautious on your behalf.” She raised her chin. “Yes, I read dragon shifter novels, and I enjoy them, but I love Vaughn, and I believe he loves me— Oh my God, did you mend Bear?” She stared at the now-intact brown bear lying on the coffee table beside the chair Vaughn had obviously been sitting in.
A reddish hue ran the length of his high cheekbones. “You were so upset when we found him in pieces last night that I… Yes, I spent the morning fixing him for you,” he acknowledged huskily when Anastasia just continued to stare at him.
“Thank you!” She launched herself into his arms. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” She interspersed every word of gratitude with kisses on his cheeks, jaw, and finally his mouth.
It was as if no time had passed since last night as the desire between them instantly roared back into life, everything else ceasing to exist, Vaughn’s arms like steel bands about her waist as they kissed hungrily and deeply.
“I guess you did know what you were doing after all, brother.”
Anastasia kept her arms entwined about Vaughn’s neck as she broke the kiss to turn and look at Viktor. “Now I know with absolute certainty that he loves me.” No man, especially a proud and arrogant dragon shifter, would ever have sewn her childhood bear back together if he wasn’t in love with her. If she wasn’t his mate.
“I believe you’re right,” Viktor drawled. “So, shall we go ahead with the blood tests, and then the two of you—”
“Bloody hell, there’s yet another dragon shifter in my house!”
They all turned to look at Nikolai as he strode forcefully into the conservatory, the humor in his pale blue eyes belying his scathing remark.
“You must be Viktor Romanov.” He shook the other man’s hand.
“I thought you were…busy this morning?” Vaughn scowled.
“I was,” Nikolai confirmed. “But I’d barely begun to question Anastasia’s stalker before he confessed to everything,” he stated with obvious disgust, leading Anastasia to wonder exactly what sort of “questioning” he was referring to. “Although his reasons for doing so probably aren’t the ones you might have supposed,” he added with a frown.
“Once I’d realized it was him, I supposed his motive to be that Anastasia would become so upset she couldn’t dance and his girlfriend could take over the role of prima ballerina for the rest of the European tour,” Vaughn grated.
“Lev?” Anastasia gasped incredulously. “Are you saying Lev is my stalker?”
Chapter Twelve
“But… We’ve known each other for years.” There was a sob in Anastasia’s voice. “I thought we were friends.”
Vaughn’s arms tightened about Anastasia as he heard her disbelief and hurt. “I’m guessing in Lev’s case, lust was stronger than your friendship.”
“It became a perk rather than his original intent,” Nikolai corrected. “Apparently, Lev’s older brother is a dragon hunter, but he suddenly disappeared two weeks ago.”
Anastasia gasped. “Was that the family crisis that caused Lev to be off sick for a couple of days?”
Nikolai nodded. “Lev seems to have been a little skeptical of his brother’s belief in dragon shifters, but when the other man disappeared in Russia so mysteriously a couple of weeks ago, he decided to do what his brother had asked him to do. That was to check out the rumors he had heard about the Pendragon brothers, some of them recent guests of the Romanov family, as also being dragon shifters. Until his brother disappeared, Lev doesn’t seem to have been too keen on fulfilling that promise, probably because he was more interested in replacing Anastasia with his hopefully grateful girlfriend. But when Antipov announced he had decided to call in outside help with Anastasia’s stalker, Lev told his roommate, Sergei, about the Pendragon Security Company, and Sergei then passed that information on to his lover, Antipov. Lev did it with the expectation one of the Pendragon brothers would come to investigate, and he could then pass that information along to
his brother. Then the brother disappeared, which I’m presuming one of you might have had a hand in?” He gave Vaughn a pointed glance.
“If it’s the same man, and the timing implies it might be,” Viktor answered, “then he and two of his associates went to the family dacha and attempted to kill Vladimir and his mate.”
“Ah.” Nikolai nodded his understanding of exactly what their fate would have been in those circumstances. “I think when Antipov approached Pendragon Security for help with this situation, the last thing Lev expected to happen was that one of the Romanov brothers themselves would arrive from Russia, because the Pendragon brothers were all busy with other assignments. He went slightly over the top and destroyed Anastasia’s things once he knew who Vaughn was.”
“Where’s Lev now?” Anastasia questioned softly.
“At a warehouse near the docks,” Nikolai answered her. “Mainly unharmed,” he reassured. “As I said, he started singing like a canary once I told him who I was.”
Vaughn would imagine part of the reason for that was because the dancer had been held at the warehouse overnight, without knowing what his fate would be. Being questioned the following morning by Nikolai Volkov, the man known as The Wolf, would have been enough to put the fear of God into him.
“Do you believe what he told you?” Anastasia pressed.
Nikolai nodded. “I do, yes.”
“Then you must allow him to go free. Please, Vaughn.” She turned in his arms as she obviously felt his increased tension. “It’s enough that Lev will never know what happened to his brother. At least, I presume that he won’t?”
“No,” he confirmed, knowing the bodies of all three of the fanatical hunters of dragon shifters had been dealt with.
Could he allow Lev to go free, as Anastasia requested?
What did the dancer really know?
Only that his brother was missing after having made extremely unlikely accusations regarding both the Pendragon and Romanov brothers. Outrageous accusations no legal authority was likely to believe. Accusations he seriously doubted even Lev believed.
But what of Lev’s attempts to frighten Anastasia so that the understudy, his girlfriend, could take over the role of Odette?
Much as it would gall Vaughn to do so, he knew that he could leave Antipov, once he was told the truth of the situation, to discipline one of his dancers for terrorizing Anastasia.
More importantly, he knew from his mate’s expression that it was her hope that would be the outcome.
“Where did that come from?”
Vaughn frowned at both the harshness of Nikolai’s tone and the other man’s shocked expression.
He followed Nikolai’s icy-blue gaze to find it was fixed on the brown teddy bear Vaughn had spent part of the morning mending. “Do you mean the bear?” He frowned.
“Yes, I meant the fucking bear,” Nikolai bit out between gritted teeth as he stepped forward, one of his hands reaching for the worn and still slightly battered stuffed toy. There was only so much Vaughn could do. Age had taken care of the rest.
“It’s mine!” Anastasia pulled out of Vaughn’s arms to snatch back the bear, holding him protectively to her chest as she glared at Nikolai. “I didn’t steal it from one of your children, if that’s what you think. I’ve had him all my life.” Her chin was raised in challenge as she faced off against him.
Something was seriously wrong, Vaughn realized as Nikolai now stared at Anastasia rather than the bear, an expression of complete disbelief on his face.
“Where did you get it?” Nikolai demanded.
Anastasia flinched at the cold anger in her host’s tone. “I told you, I’ve had Bear all my life.”
Nikolai drew in a controlling breath. “Who gave it to you?”
“My mother.”
“Who was…?”
“I have no idea.”
A nerve pulsed in Nikolai’s strong jaw. “Why not?”
“Because she left me and Bear outside an orphanage in St. Petersburg when I was only a few hours old!” Anastasia answered defensively.
Nikolai closed his eyes for several seconds, as if he were mentally counting to ten to calm himself before he opened them again. “Could I have a closer look at him?” he finally requested softly.
Anastasia’s arms tightened protectively. Bear had already been destroyed once in the past twenty-four hours, and then lovingly mended by Vaughn. She wasn’t about to let him be damaged again.
“I promise you no harm shall come to him,” Nikolai cajoled as he obviously saw her continued reluctance to part with Bear.
She glanced at Vaughn, receiving a slight but encouraging nod from him. “Okay.” She turned back to Nikolai. “But if you even look as if you might harm him, I’m going to set my dragon on you.”
There were several seconds silence before Viktor burst out laughing. “Hey, it was funny,” he teased Vaughn’s scowling countenance.
“I meant it in a positive way, Vaughn,” Anastasia assured him.
“Please give me the bear, Anastasia,” Nikolai encouraged.
She really had no idea why he would want to look at her old and tattered bear when he could probably afford to buy his children any toy they wanted.
“For what it’s worth,” Viktor put in lightly, “can I just say that genetics don’t lie.”
“What the hell…?” Vaughn glared at his brother. “We haven’t even done the blood tests yet.”
Viktor shrugged. “Some things don’t require blood tests.”
Vaughn’s jaw tightened. “I’m not risking Anastasia’s life until we know for certain she has the dragon DNA in her blood.”
His brother shook his head. “I wasn’t referring to your mating.”
“Then what the hell are you talking about?” Vaughn lost all patience with his sibling.
“Look at the two of them, Vaughn,” Viktor encouraged huskily. “The unusually light hair color. The pale eyes. The distinctive cheekbones. The slight bend in the little finger of the left hand. I noticed those likenesses the moment Nikolai arrived home.” He turned back to the pale-haired man. “What is it that troubles you about the bear, Nikolai?” he prompted gently.
The other man’s throat moved as he swallowed before answering. “I had a younger sister once, born when I was only six. She didn’t even have a name, was taken from my mother shortly after she gave birth.” His voice shook with emotion. “The madam of the brothel said she would place the child in an orphanage, that having one little bastard about the place was more than enough.” When he looked up, there were tears glittering in the pale eyes of the man who, until this moment, had only shown that depth of love and caring to his wife and children. “The only thing I had was my bear, and so I gave that to my sister to take with her, so that one day she would know someone had once loved her.”
Anastasia glanced down at the stuffed bear in her arms. “You think this is the same bear?”
“Yes.”
“But— I’m far too young to be the sister you lost.”
Nikolai’s thoughts turned inward. “I went back to Russian to look for her when I was old enough and had the money to offer bribes for information. But trying to find a child placed in an orphanage sixteen years previously, one who had no given name, was like searching for that proverbial needle in a haystack. I followed false lead after false lead, until in the end I had no choice but to return to England and accept my sister was lost to me.” His expression was bleak when he looked up.
Anastasia quickly crossed the room to place a hand on the hardness of his forearm. “That you did look for her is commendable. I only wish someone had done the same for me,” she added wistfully.
“Show Nikolai the bear, Anastasia,” Vaughn encouraged when she and Nikolai continued to stare at each other.
Her fingers tightened on the restored bear for several seconds before she slowly released him and placed him in Nikolai’s waiting hands. “He’s old and well loved,” she excused his battered state.
“Has
he always had this same imperfection in his right eye?” Nikolai’s voice was gruff. “A slight difference in the coloration of the iris?”
She smiled. “It only made me love him more, to know that we were both rejects.”
“Not anymore. Never again,” Vaughn growled as he stepped forward to place a possessive arm about her shoulders. “You belong with me now, Anastasia. I know it as deeply as I know I will draw my next breath for the sole purpose of remaining at your side, always.”
He also suspected, and he believed Viktor did too, that the annoying bastard that was Nikolai Volkov was somehow related to Anastasia by blood.
He hoped to God Nikolai, during that visit to Russia twenty years ago looking for his sister, hadn’t managed to impregnate a woman he spent the night with and by doing so produced Anastasia.
The thought of having Nikolai as his father-in-law was worse than the seven layers of hell!
Chapter Thirteen
“Definitely a family connection,” Viktor announced when he finally looked up from the results of the tests he’d been conducting most of the day and evening. “Not close enough to be father and daughter—”
“You think I went to Russia twenty years ago to look for my sister and got some random woman pregnant while I was there?” Nikolai cut in icily.
“The connection, in the circumstances, is probably that of uncle and niece,” Viktor continued unabashed. “Which would fit in with Anastasia’s mother giving the same bear, that once belonged to Nikolai, to her own child she abandoned to an orphanage twenty years ago. Or perhaps someone else did that,” he added after Nikolai gave a low growl. “After the mother had died in childbirth. It will be difficult after all this time to confirm either way—”
“Give up trying to sugarcoat it, Viktor,” Vaughn advised dryly when Nikolai gave another growl.
The four of them had spent most of the day in the makeshift laboratory Viktor had set up for himself in the Volkovs’ small family sitting room. Daisy had arrived home with the children shortly after four o’clock, Nikolai had spent a couple of hours with his family, feeding and bathing the children and putting them to bed, before he rejoined them. Then they had all taken a short break to eat the dinner Daisy had prepared before returning to check on the results of Viktor’s tests.
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