Sacrificed to the Dragon (14 page)

He fought the urge to smile, but couldn’t resist. He shook his head. “You might be a good foot shorter than I, and quite a few stone lighter, but somehow I think you’d find a way to accomplish that if you put your mind to it.”

Melanie raised her chin. “Of course I would. Everyone told me I wouldn’t be able to save my brother, that my odds of qualifying to be a sacrifice would be too great. Yet here I am, while Oliver is finally healthy and out of the hospital.”

He couldn’t help but tease her. “So through sheer force of will you made your DNA compatible? Somehow I doubt it.”

Melanie gave a shy smile and his dragon crooned at the same time his heart skipped a beat. He’d always found her attractive, but the shy smile made her look pretty and vulnerable at the same time. That made him want to haul her against him and protect her all the more.

But he didn’t have time for that right now. He motioned with his head toward the cottage. “Come, let’s catch Arabella before she disappears.”

She nodded and walked the short distance in silence. Apparently, the human could listen to something he said if she wanted to.

Once they arrived at the cottage, Tristan motioned for Melanie to stand off to the side. Then he took a deep breath and knocked on the door. He only hoped Arabella hadn’t already fled out the back.

~~~

Melanie stood a few feet off to the side of the door and tried not to be selfish and wish Arabella wasn’t home. She did truly want to meet Tristan’s sister, but a part of her wanted to see if she could get the dragonman to tease her again, as he’d done a minute ago.

Her intuition that the version of Tristan she’d seen with the children was the true one had all but been validated. He could be decent when he tried.

The question was, could he act that way all the time around her? And why did she want to try to find out if he could?

To be honest, she didn’t know. Or, rather, deep down she knew why she wanted him to act like that around her, but she wasn’t about to get her hopes up. Caitriona had admitted to being that way once, and Melanie didn’t want to end up the same way. True, she could never be as reclusive or shy as Cait, but it would be all too easy to lock her heart against any other dragon-shifter, especially since she had yet to meet one who compared with Tristan MacLeod’s ability to sear her skin with a touch, or make her instantly wet with a kiss. The man did things to her body she’d never dreamt could be possible outside of a book.

As Tristan knocked on his sister’s door, Melanie put her hopes and wishes aside. She didn’t think Tristan had exaggerated his sister’s pain, and if there was a way to help ease it, she would find it. Somehow, she knew winning over Arabella MacLeod would determine how her future would play out with Tristan.

After knocking for about twenty seconds, the door opened a crack. Melanie couldn’t see anything from where she was standing, but Tristan leaned toward the crack and whispered something she couldn’t hear. Then the door slammed shut and Tristan ran a hand through his hair. Melanie was about to ask what had happened, but he put up a hand for her to remain silent.

This time, Tristan didn’t bother to knock. He merely shouted at the door. “Arabella Kathleen MacLeod, open this door or I’ll break it down. The mother of your niece or nephew isn’t feeling well. Are you really going to make her stand out here in the wind and quickly chilling air? I might even scent a storm on the rise.”

Wow. As she glanced up at the cloudless sky, she realized that Tristan knew how to lay it on thick.

At first, she thought it wouldn’t work. But then she heard the lock click. Tristan turned the doorknob and slowly opened the door.

He took one step inside and said something in that language she couldn’t understand. However, it didn’t irritate her this time. For all Melanie knew, Arabella might hate English because of the dragon hunters who’d harmed her all those years ago.

The musical syllables of the dragon language stopped and Tristan turned back to her and said in English, “Can you come to the door but not enter quite yet? Ara wants to assess you before letting you into her house. I told her you were one of the good humans, but she is unconvinced.”

Her heart skipped a beat at his words. After all, Tristan had just admitted she was one of the good humans.

Before Melanie could reply, a woman’s soft yet sharp voice said in English from behind the door, “Belittling my judgment isn’t going to help you, Tristan MacLeod.”

Mel bit back a smile and decided it was best to approach the door without saying anything. Tristan still blocked the doorway, so she stopped beside him and waited. He reached out a hand as if to touch her, but then he lowered it before he could make contact with her arm. He stepped aside and Mel decided not to let his almost-touch bother her.

She took a deep breath and moved into the doorway. At first, all she saw was the outline of a tall, thin woman. But then the tall, thin woman moved into the light and Mel was careful to keep a faint smile pasted on her face as she got her first glimpse of Arabella MacLeod.

The dragonwoman was nearly as tall as Tristan, probably about six feet, and had the same dark hair and brown eyes. But that was where their similarities ended.

A thick, jagged scar ran from Arabella’s right temple, down across the bridge of her nose, and ended near the bottom of her left ear. The right side of her neck was covered in skin that had recovered from a very bad burn; the pink, crinkled skin told her that whatever had happened to Tristan’s sister had been painful both at the time and during the long recovery.

But it was Arabella’s eyes that Mel noticed most. A mixture of hatred, fear, shame, and sadness shown in them, as if Arabella MacLeod didn’t believe anything good would ever happen to her again.

She was on the verge of losing hope.

Tears started to prickle her eyes, but Mel took a second to fight them before she held out a hand and said, “I’m Melanie Hall, Mel to my friends. It’s nice to meet you.”

Arabella gingerly took her hand, but rather than shake it, the dragonwoman raised it to her nose and inhaled. As soon as she had, she dropped Mel’s hand as if it had burned her and looked at Tristan. “The human female is carrying your child. That is the only reason I will let her in here. But if her behavior makes me suspicious, you will leave. Those are my terms.”

Mel glanced over at Tristan, and he nodded at his sister before giving Mel a reassuring look, as if to tell her she’d done well so far.

She had no proper training when it came to dealing with survivors of tragedies, so she decided to fall back on her anthropology training. She would observe Arabella and her surroundings to find out what she could without talking to the dragonwoman directly. At least, until she could figure out how to deal with the woman’s less than cheerful past and her hatred of humans.

Tristan’s sister melted into the darkness of the corridor.

Standing her ground, Mel waited until Tristan placed a hand on her lower back and said, “Come. Let’s go inside.”

Mel nodded. Without realizing it, she leaned a little against Tristan’s side as the dragonman led her into the cottage. The contact reminded her that if she could deal with Tristan-the-asshole, she could very well deal with his sister. She just needed to figure out the best way to do it.

Chapter Three

As Tristan guided Melanie into his sister’s cottage, he breathed a sigh of relief. His argument for his sister to simply scent the human’s skin to find out if he was telling the truth or not had worked.

Unfortunately, his sister’s sense of smell was as keen as his own, and she had scented Melanie’s momentary sadness as she’d stared into Arabella’s eyes. Knowing what he did of the human, he didn’t think it had been pity. Rather, he believed it had been sadness at what had been done to his sister all those years ago.

Arabella, however, would think the worst of Melanie unless she found a way to change his sister’s mind. Not that he should be surprised. Tristan had acted the same way, and a very small part of him was starting to feel slightly guilty about it.

Melanie leaned against him as they made their way to the living room, and his dragon surprised him by crooning. His beast was usually quiet around Arabella. While his inner dragon had never told him why, he had a feeling it was in sympathy of his sister’s circumstances. After all, her inner beast had been silent since she had escaped from the dragon hunters ten years ago. After arriving on Stonefire’s land and shifting into her human-form, Arabella had never again shifted into a dragon.

He had debated telling Melanie that little detail, but had decided against it. Knowing Arabella had all but lost her dragon-half might make the human act in a way counterproductive to Arabella’s acceptance. If Melanie knew about his sister’s fear of shifting, she would probably push and ask why. The few times Tristan had brought up the topic with his sister, it hadn’t ended well. Ara put up with it from him, but would never tolerate it from a human. If anything, it would cause her to hate Melanie more, and he didn’t want that to happen.

And yes, as he tightened his grip on the human female at his side, he wanted his sister to accept Melanie. It wasn’t just fulfilling his dragon’s wishes; Tristan, too, wanted to get to know the mother of his child. She’d spoken fondly of her brother, and while he vaguely remembered his vial of dragon’s blood had gone to heal him, he hadn’t bothered to find out what had ailed Melanie’s brother.

First her brother, then Caitriona, and now maybe even his sister. It seemed that Melanie Hall had a knack of taking care of everyone but herself. Tristan hoped to fix that, especially since his dragon would revel in protecting and taking care of Melanie. Hopefully that would distract his inner beast from wanting to fuck her every ten seconds.

Then he remembered they were in his sister’s house and no fucking would be taking place here. He waited for his dragon to protest, but he kept silent. It seemed even his beast had some sense of decorum.

They arrived in the living room and Tristan guided Melanie to the couch. His sister sat in a plush chair on the far side of the room, one of her laptops in front of her. From the corner of his eye, he noticed the human staring at Ara’s wall of photos. Before he could explain them, Melanie said, “Arabella, why do you have hundreds of pictures of different doors?”

Ara glanced from her computer screen and stared at the human. Tristan kept his silence and was rewarded with Arabella saying, “Because I like them.”

His sister went back to working on her computer, but Melanie pretended as if she hadn’t seen his sister’s cue that the discussion was over. Instead, she got up off the couch and went to the wall covered in pictures of doors. She looked from one to the other until she stopped in front of one that was crooked and a faded blue. “Where did you take this blue, crooked one?”

Ara looked up from her computer again, but this time at Tristan. He crossed arms over his chest and shook his head. No, he wasn’t going to answer for her.

She frowned and he wondered if Ara would actually talk to the human.

Then his sister went back to working on her computer, answering his question.

Glancing at Melanie, he wondered what the human female would do next. Giving up was the last thing he expected from her, so he waited to see what would happen.

~~~

Melanie heard the clicking of keys and knew Arabella had gone back to typing on her laptop. She knew this wasn’t going to be easy, but not even asking about something that clearly interested Arabella was getting the dragonwoman to talk with her. She was going to have to try a different approach.

Turning around, she found Tristan on the far side of the room with his arms crossed over his chest. He gave her an inquiring look, but she ignored it and turned back to Arabella. Her dealings with Tristan gave her an idea. Maybe the siblings were more alike than either had acted at first.

Mel went over to where Tristan’s sister was sitting, stopped next to her, crossed her arms, and waited.

It wasn’t long before Arabella stopped typing and frowned up at her. “Why are you staring at me? If my actions weren’t clear enough, I can say it now: I don’t want you here.”

Melanie took a fortifying inhale and let loose. “I don’t like passive-aggressive behavior. If you’re going to dislike me, I want you to tell me straight to my face, because as of right now, I have done nothing to warrant such hatred.”

Arabella’s eyes flashed. “How dare you talk to me like that in my own home. You humans are all the same—you think we dragon-shifters owe you everything.” She slammed her laptop closed and stood up. “You’re the reason we even have to bring in humans like you to breed. You killed our kind to near extinction, and if that weren’t enough, you now use us as magical blood fountains.” Arabella narrowed her eyes. “I despise all of you.”

Mel raised her chin. “If you’re going to tell me that dragon-shifters are purity and innocence incarnate, I’ll start laughing right now.” She poked Arabella in the arm. “Violence and wars take two sides to complete. Dragon-shifters have fucked up, just as humans have, but blaming each other for what a small minority has done throughout history is a waste of time. After all, we can’t change history. We can only create our own.”

The pupils of Arabella’s eyes flashed to slits and back. “Thanks to your kind, I have no future to look forward to.”