Treasure Lane Dragons: Complete Series (BBW Paranormal Dragon Shapeshifter Romance) (43 page)

“Oh my god, it’s spectacular,” Jade murmured as they went down the mountain roads and she got her first glance of the Goldplains’ private oasis.

“Thank you. We think so too,” Alexander chuckled, expertly handling the large white SUV they’d picked up at the airport.

Jade was nestled in the passenger seat, being allowed the courtesy of the best possible view. And it was certainly worth it. The wheat was just about ready to be harvested, heavy heads bowing the long stems and the intense golden color of the fields giving the whole valley a gorgeous glow.

The river that ran down along its center came from high up in the mountains, bubbling down in a happy blur and spreading out amongst the fields.

“The river, aptly named Goldsnake, used to be flush with gold. We still wash gold out of it to this day, but not as much as we used to,” Apollo said, sounding a bit wistful as he leant over the backrests of the front seats.

Apollo pointed out a few nooks in the river with sand washing mills. His arm brushed against her, and her heart jumped a little.

Oh god, don’t get any closer. If he does, I might just stop looking at the valley completely and just sink into his eyes,
Jade thought, squirming a bit in her seat.

Apollo flashed her a smile, and Alexander chuckled a private laugh. When she cocked a brow, curious as to what was so funny, Alexander and Apollo just shared one of their ‘twin looks’ and didn’t explain themselves at all – typical men, keeping her guessing.

And that was exactly what they were doing to her now. As soon as they’d got on the airplane for the short flight from New Mexico to Colorado, Jade had started shooting questions and guesses at them. The Goldplains brothers seemed to take some pleasure in teasing her, letting her concoct ever more preposterous assumptions as to where and how they were going to be hiding out in Colorado for a week, and why she had had to come along.

Not that she minded, hell no. She’d found herself rattling off questions and just talking through the flight to distract herself from the fact that she was staring at two of the hottest men in existence, and damn if it wasn’t driving her a little bit batty.

  “After the gold started waning, we figured it was time to diversify. So that’s where the wheat came in. You might not know this, but the Goldplains happen to be one of the foremost wheat kings in the country,” Alexander said, obviously pleased with what his family had built.

“I’d never pegged dragons for farmer types,” Jade noted with a snort.

“Oh, we’re not. But we’re great at managing,” Alexander said, grinning. “A few generations ago, one of our forefathers, Atlas, put down the first fields right here in Gold Way. Centerville, the little town in the middle, used to be a gold town, but now it’s a gold and wheat kind of place. We’ve been expanding since Atlas’s time.”

“Hell, we own half of Kansas at this point, I think,” Apollo added with a leisurely shrug.

“And North Dakota,” Alexander finished.

Jade watched the brothers share another satisfied look amongst themselves, the men practically beaming with self-satisfaction. She smiled to herself. It shouldn’t have surprised her to find that dragons took their wealth very seriously. They were dragons, after all.

“Ares seems to be in a hurry,” Apollo said, looking out through the windshield.

Jade looked in the direction of his gaze and gasped, seeing a large, golden-white dragon take flight off the roof of the mansion down in the valley. The sun glinted and gleamed off of him, throwing rays of pure gold around him as he sped up into the cloudless skies, powerful wings carrying him upward.

Unlike the Blackscales, he didn’t have a thin, arrowed tail, but instead sported something more akin to a bulky mallet of thick scales and muscle at the end of the long appendage. His creamy white underbelly looked almost the color of the whitest clouds as he started disappearing from sight, letting out a last, parting roar that made the skies tremble around him.

“Wow,” Jade muttered, her heart pounding quickly in her chest.

The gold dragon was spectacular. While the black dragons she’d seen had made her stomach knot and twist with fear, this one just made her stop in awe. Funny how big the difference was. She knew that she’d have nothing to fear from a dragon like that – an emotion that she certainly didn’t feel when she saw the deadly Blackscales.

“That’s our younger brother, Ares. It was his turn to guard the hoard,” Alexander explained.

“The… hoard?”

“We’re dragons, green eyes. There
has
to be a hoard,” Apollo said, giving her a wolfish grin.

“Oh. Is that… Is that how dragons usually do it? Round-robin guarding it?”

Alexander shrugged, making the car careen around another sharp curve before finally hitting the flatlands. Within moments, the car had disappeared into a sea of tall, bowed wheat. It was relaxing. It almost felt like home to Jade, who had spent much of her childhood in North Dakota.

“Depends. Most don’t. Dragon families have pretty rigid hierarchies. Usually, it’s the elder’s task to guard the main treasure. But, as I am the official elder, at least until the triad is complete, and I can’t really stay here much, we alternate with our younger brothers. They’ve been surprisingly okay about it, though, as you can see, they take every opportunity to take a break from it.”

Alexander pointed at the tiny golden speck in the sky that was Ares flying away. Something else caught Jade’s attention, though.

“Triad?”

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll explain everything in due time,” Apollo rushed to add, and then he distracted her just as swiftly with a tale about how the great Atlas had gone from being a gold hoarder to a wheat hoarder.

What’s with all the secrecy…

Jade had plenty of time to ponder that as the brothers drove her through Gold Way, telling her tales and joking the whole way through. They just nicked past Centerville, the town in the heart of the fields, before speeding on towards the looming castle of a mansion they called home. It was tucked away close to the pocket of mountains that closed the north side of the valley, and once again, Jade’s breath was knocked right out of her chest.

There was no other way to put it, the house was huge.

“Don’t you guys do
anything
small?” Jade asked with some exasperation in her voice.

“Nope,” Apollo confirmed quickly.

The car rolled to a stop in front of the pristine whitewashed mansion, a circular driveway lined by well-kept hedges leading up to it. The mansion had three floors and, for the most part, a slanted roof, except for about a third of it that Ares had used as a takeoff site. The windowsills and covers were painted gold and the door was a heavy, golden behemoth. Jade wasn’t entirely convinced that it wasn’t pure gold – wouldn’t have surprised her, though.

Alexander and Apollo jumped out, and Apollo opened the door for her as well, helping her out of the car. Touching his hand as she climbed down made her skin heat up, and without noticing, she was biting her lip again.

Apollo leant in to her, just a tad too close to be considered friendly, and whispered in her ear, “Welcome home.”

If she was going to be there with the Goldplains, hell yeah she could call it home. Jade smiled a little as Apollo pulled away, moving to help Alexander take out the suitcases and their gear from the back of the full-sized SUV.

The heavy door was flung open, and Jade spun around quickly to make out the excitable figure of a woman running to hug both the brothers. A twinge of jealousy went through Jade, an emotion that hit her completely out of the blue and made her feel off kilter for a moment. The woman was tall and elegant, her hair in a short, wheaten blond pixie cut and her hazel eyes dazzling with happiness as she embraced both of the men individually.

“You should have called that you were coming! I almost fell off my seat when Ares said he sensed you two nearing!”

“Sorry, Ria, things are a bit hectic right now. We didn’t want to draw too much attention on us,” Alexander said, smiling broadly.

Jade wasn’t sure how that was supposed to be possible. Wherever the Goldplains brothers went, excitement followed. The two towering, strapping men were hard enough to miss amongst other rock gods, but in a small town in Colorado, they
had
to be a spectacle. At least that’s what Jade would have guessed.

“And who is this?” Ria asked, turning her warm gaze to Jade and making her feel woefully unprepared again.

What was she supposed to say? ‘Hi, I’m the willing captive of these two gold dragons, pleasure to meet you!’ Actually, that would probably have worked.

“I’m Jade. I’m the new bassist for the Gold Dragons,” Jade said, extending her hand to Ria and getting a hug instead.

“Pleasure to meet you, Jade! Any friend of the Goldplains is a friend of mine,” Ria said, her hug impossibly warm and safe.

It seemed everything around the Goldplains was like that. The woman stepped back from Jade and gave her a curious look-over. Jade almost felt like having to twirl, as if being inspected, before Ria gave a knowing look to the Goldplains.

“Is she…?”

She didn’t finish her sentence, but Jade noticed the way both Alexander and Apollo nodded slightly and then shared a hidden smile with her. Those bastards, couldn’t they just
tell
her what they were plotting!?

“Am I what?”

“Our very special guest for as long as we stay here,” Apollo finished smoothly, slinging Jade’s bass over his shoulder. “Now come on. I’ll show you to your room and then we can go grab some dinner. I’m absolutely famished.”

Deflected as usual. Jade stared after him with her mouth open as Apollo grabbed a few suitcases along the way and marched into the house, chatting away happily with Ria. Okay, now that was just being impossible. She scowled slightly, but Alexander’s hand sliding around her shoulders and giving her a gentle push forward made that glowering look turn into a smile.

“Go on. We’ll explain everything soon. I promise.”

“Promise?” she asked, not sure whether she actually needed the confirmation or she just wanted to keep the conversation going.

“Promise,” Alexander confirmed, looking like a man she would be a fool to mistrust.

Okay then, on with the mystery.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Jade

Jade was starting to feel a bit awkward. They were sitting in a small restaurant in the middle of Centerville – just her, Alexander and Apollo at the table – but the whole attention of the restaurant seemed to be squarely on her. At first, she’d thought it must have been Alexander and Apollo everybody was staring at, because she was sure as hell that that’s exactly what she would have been doing in their position. But, the longer she sat there, twiddling the fancy menu between her fingers, the more she felt like it was her that was the main course instead of the Goldplains brothers.

That feeling had prevailed in her for most of the day. Ria wasn’t the only one of the Goldplains servants (mostly lizard shifters that had been loyal to the family for ages, as Alexander had explained), who gave Jade looks like they knew something she didn’t and were more than glad for it.

Everywhere they went, the Goldplains were welcomed with open arms and happy greetings. And Jade? Well, they seemed even happier to see her.

Jade couldn’t even count all the happy, welcoming hugs she had got. And never in her life had she been told that she was pretty and looked like a ‘nice girl’ by so many strangers. She was half-expecting a throne to show up somewhere and the locals to carry her up to it, making her queen supreme of Gold Way. It was odd, to say the least.

“Can either of you two explain to me why they’re all looking at me like that?” Jade asked finally, peeking over the top of her menu and getting a friendly wave and a smile from an elderly man across the restaurant.

“Like what?” Alexander queried nonchalantly, sipping on his rum and coke.

“Like… that!” Jade said, making a sweeping motion across the patrons, ducking back down behind the menu when she got more waves.

“We don’t get a lot of outsiders here. They must just be curious,” Alexander said lightly.