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

Drive until the GPS says it’s recalculating, Theo had said, and then stop by the white tree.

Done and done. But he’d left her with the impression that someone would materialize to fetch her into Dragon Valley, and so far, no one had. And they were going on half an hour now in the same spot.

Under other circumstances, this could have been romantic. There was no traffic. No light pollution to stifle the starriness of the night sky. The weather was warm, the breeze cool. Jillian could smell the heady sweet perfume of wildflowers, zinnias and poppies and black-eyed susans. Occasionally an owl would give a soft and lonesome call. It would have been a perfect place to sit and think. To sit and hold Theo’s hand. But there was the problem.

It wasn’t that she was running out of patience. It was that Theo was running out of time.

She couldn’t wake him up. She’d tried three times already, her blood running colder at each attempt, but she hadn’t gotten anywhere.

If it was not good asking him what to do next, she still had to do something. Doing something was what she did, wasn’t it? It didn’t matter if the newfound love of her life was out frighteningly cold in the blood-soaked passenger seat, it didn’t matter if she suspected her dad had been the one to put him there. She needed to be the person she’d spent her whole life becoming. Needed to do instead of be done to and done for.

No one was coming to rescue her. So she would have to buckle down.

What did she know about dragons? If she were a whole community of dragons and she had to hide her valley from a bunch of violent, know-nothing humans, what would she do? And what would be the way around whatever she did?

Dragons could hide themselves if they wanted to. But Theo had said they could hide themselves from humans—he hadn’t mentioned anything about them hiding from other shifters. So maybe Colby or Martin could see Riell? She put that thought in her back pocket for now. The drive from Sterling was such that she didn’t know that she could afford to wait.

Besides, dragons might or might not trust other shifters. The only people she knew for sure they trusted were other dragons.

So maybe only a dragon could help her see Dragon Valley.

She’d been standing on Theo’s side of the car with the door open, keeping an eye on him at the same time as she kept an eye on the horizon, and now, her heart in her throat, she reached down and clasped his hand in hers, bare skin against bare skin.

No magical vista revealed itself.

Right. Of course, she’d touched him before she’d even gotten out of the car. Stupid. Besides, that was no way to protect against hostiles. Anybody, maybe, could grab a passed-out dragon and make skin-to-skin contact.

If it were her, she would make the password into Riell something no dragon would give up without a fight. Something personal.

Gold.

She could feel Theo’s rings against her fingers. In the pale glow of the dome light, she found which ones were gold and tried to work one off him.

After everything, that was what made him stir. That gave her some hope. All he did was pull back, curling his hands into fists, and it didn’t last long, but still, his instinctive response to protect his hoard had been so powerful it had snapped him out of what was almost a coma.

“I’m sorry,” Jillian said. She wrested one gold band free. It had looked like plain gold, but it seemed heavier than that. She could feel the finest, thinnest engravings in it under the pad of her fingers. “I wouldn’t be robbing you if I didn’t think I needed to. Some second date, right?”

She slid the ring on. Nothing happened.

Fuck.

Then, bizarre as it was, she thought about Theo’s slightly antiquated way of talking, the habit he couldn’t quite shake. Whatever culture had taught him to intermittently sound like a nineteenth-century gentleman was one that would value pronouncements. And then if this didn’t work, she would call Martin back. Or even drive Theo to the nearest hospital and take her chances.

Tears stung her eyes. She held her hand up towards the silvery-white tree. Even in the moonlight, it had a kind of ethereal gleam to it.

“This ring is from the hoard of Theo St. Vincent. He’s a citizen of Riell and he’s hurt. I am his mate, wearing his gold, and I ask for entry.”

There was a faint creaking sound. At first she thought it was just the wind blowing the tree branches around. But then she saw it.

The white tree was splitting apart from its highest branches down to its roots, its bark and wood peeling away to both sides like leaves coming off a stem. In between was a light so bright it almost blinded her. It fell on her and Theo and bleached them out, making them look like they were caught in some kind of nuclear blast, and then she saw that it was caught particularly on the ring—on Theo’s ring on her finger. It looked like she was wearing a band of starlight.

Then all at once, the light went out. She was just standing beside the road, beside her own parked car, on a peaceful summer night.

Only now there was another road. This one led straight into the woods and seemed to be dipping downwards. The valley. Riell.

She didn’t have time to be thankful. She got back in the car and gunned it.

Riell came into view slowly. Even as distracted as she was, it was breathtaking.