Page 1 of Hunter

CHAPTER ONE

Tregarthen House,Cornwall

Early January

Hunter watchedthrough narrowed lids as a bright red Mini, with a white stripe down the center of it, from the bonnet to the trunk, was driven down the long driveway toward Tregarthen House.

He had been watching this three-storied gray stone house, perched alone on a cliff above the churning of the turbulent Celtic Sea, for two days and nights now.

After only a fraction of that time, and in his biased opinion, he had decided Cornwall was nowhere near as beautiful as his own home in the Scottish Highlands. But he could appreciate how this stark beauty would appeal to the many who flocked here for their summer holidays every year.

There was no snow on the ground here, not even a dusting of it, but the cold Cornish winter wind would no doubt still cut through any number of layers of clothing worn by a human.

It couldn’t penetrate the skin of a twelve-hundred-year-old dragon shifter, though, which Hunter and his two brothers were. Despite the fact they looked to only be aged in their early to mid-thirties in their human form.

But whether as man or dragon, all their senses were heightened, especially sight and smell. If it became necessary, they also had the power to control the elements of earth, wind, fire, and water.

Something Edgar Wallis, the owner of this gray stone home named Tregarthen House, was shortly going to be made aware of.

But not until after Hunter had retrieved the journal he believed was now in Edgar Wallis’s possession and in which it was stated that dragon shifters existed. Or, at the very least, that they had done so eight hundred years ago. The retrieval of that journal was paramount to the continued anonymity and safety of the three dragon-shifter Drake brothers.

For the moment, Hunter had settled for merely observing the comings and goings of the household, Edgar Wallis, as well as the workers in this remote house. He had done so mainly because when he did confront Wallis, he wanted there to be no surprises. For Hunter, at least.

Hunter now knew there were only two full-time members of staff who had their own apartments inside the house, a cook/housekeeper and the butler/manservant.

Other people working in the house were the three people who arrived at seven o’clock every morning and left again at four in the afternoon.

One of them was a young man, whom Hunter assumed assisted the butler during the day.

The other two were middle-aged ladies. Hunter believed they were here to light the fires, the smoke of which Hunter could clearly see coming from two of the chimneys shortly after they arrived, before the two of them then cleaned and tidied the rest of the large house.

There was also an elderly gardener and a younger one, probably an apprentice, working in the extensive grounds surrounding the house. This time of year, the two men mostly spent the mornings gathering the fallen branches and leaves from the storms that blew in regularly across the churning sea before battering the house and trees. In the afternoons, the two men had been burning the debris in specially designed metal bins. The younger gardener seemed to especially enjoy that part of the proceedings.

There were stables at the back of the large house, but they mainly seemed to be used for storage because there were no horses inside nor grooms employed to care for them.

Wallis, a wealthy man aged in his fifties, liked to think of himself as something of a historian. Hunter had a much harsher name to describe him.

There was a covered helicopter sitting on the private helipad within those grounds, but Wallis hadn’t left the house in the two days since Hunter had begun observing the man’s remote residence. Nor had there been a single visitor.

Until now.

Which brought Hunter’s attention back to the red Mini now being parked directly in front of the house. He watched as the driver opened the car door and climbed out in a flash of bright colors before bending to reach back inside to take a blackgarment from the back of the vehicle. The coat, when pulled on, covered the young woman from shoulder to ankle once she had straightened to her full, but diminutive, height.

The brisk wind immediately whipped her long red hair into a frenzy of straight russet, gold, and cinnamon-colored tresses that, when not being tossed about by the wind, reached to the middle of her back. At the moment, they were preventing Hunter from being able to see her face.

But the fact that Hunter was able to see all of those colors was something of a revelation when his ability to see and appreciate the vividness of colors had slowly been diminishing over the past couple of centuries. Oh, he still saw colors, but not with the same vibrancy he once had. Or in the way he was now seeing various shades in this woman’s hair and the multitude hues of her clothing before it was covered by the warm coat.

Hunter’s nostrils flared as the delicious scent of Lily of the Valley was carried to him on the breeze, hitting and then invading his acute senses with the force of a wrecking ball.

Mate, his dragon immediately growled.

Mate? Hunter’s shocked thoughts echoed.

Mate, his dragon repeated triumphantly.

Zoey appreciated beingable to stretch her legs and breathe in the crisp, clean Cornish air after an early start and then the long drive here from London. Even so, she hurried inside the house before the cold wind could penetrate the thickness of the coat she’d wrapped around herself.

“Miss Zoey,” Penrose, the butler of Tregarthen House, greeted her warmly the moment she entered the cavernous wood-paneled hallway. “Mr. Wallis made no mention of you being here today,” he added with a frown.

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