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

*

When they were several miles outside the city, Jillian pulled off at a rest stop and chose the parking spot furthest from the other cars.

She tried to wipe the blood off his face and realized it was even worse than she could have guessed. His skin was cold. It hadn’t just been the hard armor of his dragon’s belly after all. His normally burning-hot body was clammy.

“You’re cold,” she said, rubbing little circles into his back, her hands careful wherever she could feel torn shirt or wet blood. “Are you burned? Can you get burnt?”

“No burns. When I’m shifted, I’m fireproof. Even when I’m human, I’m a little more resistant than most people. This is all from flying debris and—the sound, it hurt my head. My ears are more sensitive as a dragon, my eyes are more sensitive to light. My wings were torn. The damage doesn’t go away just because the biology changed. It’s all somewhere.”

She thought of him like some kind of red-and-gold piece of embossed origami, folded into a dragon shape and then brutally snipped with scissors. The cuts would stay even if the paper was folded in a way that hid them.

“You’re not invulnerable but you wrapped yourself around me? Why would you do that?”

“I can’t let anything happen to you,” Theo said. He didn’t say he meant to be romantic, only like it was a statement of fact, like “I can’t live without air.” He slumped against her, burying his face in her hair. Every breath he took against her ear felt like the most reassuring kind of miracle.

All she could do was hold him.

He said, “I’m sorry we couldn’t get your token.”

“Never mind my token! I don’t need it. I can’t believe you got hurt because I was worried I’d turn into my dad. It’s all my fault.”

He touched his hand to her cheek. Some of the fuzziness was leaving him, at least. “It’s the fault of whoever left the bomb. No one else’s. I want you to have what you need.”

“You’ll have scars,” Jillian said. “That’ll be enough of a consequence of greed, trust me. Whoever did this was after my dad—this is what that gets you.”

“Red and gold,” Theo said.

Jillian stroked his hair. In the dark, she couldn’t see the red and gold there, and suddenly, that was the only way she wanted to see the colors at all. She consoled herself by unbuttoning his shirt a little so she could see the swirl of his tattoo. His skin was still warm there, at least. She didn’t know why.

She started to ask him, but then she stopped herself. She wanted to believe that it wouldn’t matter if she held back a question or two. They would have their whole lives to ask each other things and answer them.

Instead, she just kissed him again. Then she got them back on the road. All she could really do for him was break a few speed limits on her way to his hometown.

*

Theo had finally fallen asleep. That left Jillian with nothing to do but think about what he’d said about not knowing if the attack had been meant for her. Somehow she didn’t think so. If someone hated her—and she could understand why they would, as much as she wanted to argue with it—they could have just taken a shot at her on the street. Why damage the house? The house was the best chance her dad’s victims had for getting back even a percentage of their life savings.

Maybe whoever had planted the bomb didn’t know that. Maybe when the news had been explaining that particular detail of asset forfeiture, they’d zoned out. It could happen.

But something was needling at her.

The nutcrackers.

Maybe the bomber hadn’t been driven by anger or the desire for justice. Maybe the bomber didn’t want to hurt the Marcuses.

They didn’t want to kill anyone, but they didn’t have a problem making sure poor, swindled people wouldn’t recover what they’d lost.

Maybe the bomber was someone who would rather destroy his hoard than lose it.

r /> Someone who, she realized now, had unpacked the nutcrackers, as conspicuous as that was, because he’d wanted one particular one. A favorite, to save from the fire.

“Oh, Dad,” she said. She blinked tears out of her eyes. “All this just so I’d finally take one of your cars?”

10

Jillian

Theo’s final instructions on how to get into Riell had been a little foggy. Jillian couldn’t blame him, not with him rapidly losing blood and consciousness, but all the same, here she was, stuck on the side of the road with no obvious magical portal.