The Dragon Marshal's Treasure (U.S. Marshal Shifters 1)

“What if Tiffani had come in and had a heart attack?”

“Tiffani’s only forty-three,

for one thing, and she’s in better shape than I am... and you’ve already texted. I like Gretchen, please don’t make her hate me.”

He obediently sent a follow-up text that said, Jillian thinks it was funny, though.

Jillian relieved him of his phone and slid it back into his pocket, using the same gesture to push herself up on her toes and kiss him. Her mouth tasted as sweet as honey.

“Upstairs,” she said. “I’ll pick something out from my old bedroom. I’m sure there’ll be some embarrassing Backstreet Boys jpeg print-out in a treasure box or something equally nineties that will work as a token, something nobody has packed yet. I’ll take that and then you can seize my assets again. If the combined impact of my teenaged possessions hasn’t driven you away.”

“Remember,” Theo said, “I was home-schooled in a family commune with a superiority complex. There is nothing you could turn up that would be more embarrassing than that.”

“You say that now.”

She opened the bedroom door. To Theo’s relief, there actually were still a few lingering items that had yet to be packed: a beribboned bulletin board on the wall, a couple of stacked picture frames painted in streaky colors, some kind of vase filled with colored sand.

Whatever it was Jillian saw first seemed to dismay her, because she groaned and said, “Just stand in the middle of the room with your eyes closed and try not to form any unfavorable judgments. Remember, I’m your mate and you’re stuck with me.”

He did close his eyes, because he liked the feeling of her moving around him in the dark like a firefly, liked listening to her pick things up and put them down. Sometimes she would drift by him and her hair would tickle his nose. Sometimes she would skim her hand across his back, making him shiver.

His phone buzzed.

He slid it out of his pocket. “Can I look at the text or do you want to read it to me?”

Jillian pressed her lips against his again. “I’ll tell you who it is and then you can tell me if it’s confidential,” she said. She turned the phone over in his hand. “Gretchen.”

Theo snorted. “Here, I’ll unlock it.” He pressed his thumb against the screen. “Okay, read. I can’t want to hear her rationale for the great nutcracker caper.”

Jillian read: “‘I didn’t unpack any of the nutcrackers, so I can’t take credit for that. The guys must have just not gotten around to it.’ They didn’t get around to that but they got around to everything else? They must have been tripping over them the whole time—no, but they were unpacked, remember? Is she still kidding?”

Theo opened his eyes. In his mind, his dragon’s wings rustled.

“No,” he said slowly. “She wouldn’t do that, she knows when to stop. And it wouldn’t make any sense as a joke from anyone else. I think we need to get out of—”

Then the room around them erupted into sound and fire.

9

Jillian

All she knew at first was the noise. It sounded perversely like someone tearing up a carpet: this long, thick ripping sound. She felt the boom more than she heard it. It knocked her down to her hands and knees.

Theo. I have to help Theo.

It was only then that she realized that Theo was holding her. He had shifted in what must have been the blink of an eye and he had wrapped her in his wings. All the light that came through them was dim and red as blood, except for a few patches where the thin, flexible tissue of his wings had been torn by flying debris. One wing, still curved around her, was sagging inwards in the middle where one of the bones had snapped. It looked like a broken umbrella spoke.

Thinking that made a sob well up in her throat.

She said his name out loud, but she couldn’t hear her own voice. She realized the word had come out as a squeak. She was still too scared to talk.

So she pressed herself against his belly instead. It was armored—weren’t dragons always invincible, except to some arrow in exactly the right unshielded spot? But Theo didn’t look invincible, unfortunately. His poor wing!—and the only part of him that was cool to the touch. It felt like plates of metal. But she knew he could feel her because he brought his immense head down and blinked at her with those eyes that were his eyes, no matter what head they were in.

Or what the pupils looked like. Right now they were as narrow as a cat’s.

That wasn’t just the shift. She breathed in, only now getting the scent of smoke, thick and oily. Fire. His pupils were constricted from the additional light.

Jillian put her hands on either side of his head, trying to make him focus.