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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.
ChapterThirteen
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.
