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

“You’re a doctor?”

She nodded. “Sonia Mendoza. Is that a yes on the ride, or would you prefer to take your chances elsewhere?”

One dragon ride more or less wouldn’t alter the strangeness of the last day or so. Jillian nodded.

Dr. Mendoza shimmered into dragonskin. Her coloring was much more golden than Theo’s, her only real touches of red being some russet-colored scales at her tail and ruff. There was a smooth, narrow place on her back that seemed like the only available spot, so Jillian eased Theo up. She was able to cradle him back against her.

He was so cold. She pressed her face against his shoulder. Was this the shoulder with that curve of flame-colored tattoo? Was it her imagination, or did it feel a little hotter, a little more normal, than the other one?

She wrapped her arms around him.

“You saved me,” she said to him, holding him more tightly as they lifted up into the air. “Now heal up and save me from losing you.”

11

Theo

That taste hadn’t touched his lips in years. Scorched roses, bitter chocolate, dark cherries, and the lingering clarity of flame: dragonfire wine, the rarest and most potent in the world. He could feel it on his tongue, cool except for the lick of fire at its heart, but he couldn’t wake up enough to swallow it properly.

It was like he was down at the bottom of a dark well.

“Should he shift again?” That was Jillian’s voice, its usual warm huskiness strained thin with concern.

“No.” He recognized that voice too, but he couldn’t place it. “I could have treated him in that form if he’d stayed that way, but the damage is already done. The strain of shifting back and forth will only worsen things. It’s best to give his wings time to heal on their own in the hoard-space.”

“Hoard-space?”

“When dragons shift, we take our clothes with us, and whatever we have on us—purses, wallets, sacks of gold.”

“Sure,” Jillian said. He could distantly feel her hand tightening on his. “Those sacks of gold people are always carrying around.”

“Laugh if you must. It goes somewhere, but it isn’t like you see it on the dragon. And when you shift back, there it is again. So we call it hoard-space, the place where your other form resides between shifts.”

Jillian’s thumb ran over his knuckles. “What do we do for him, then?”

“Now that I’ve bandaged the wounds we can see? There’s nothing to do but wait for him to wake.”

I’m awake.

But was he? He couldn’t seem to get himself to open his eyes. He couldn’t even seem to care about opening his eyes. It was like all his feelings were locked in a box somewhere deep down inside him. They weren’t in danger. Jillian was safe. Why should he try to open the box? Right now, he was as numb as if he were resting in a snowbank. He wasn’t troubling them with his pain. He was still and cold and perfect.

But... hadn’t he decided that that wasn’t what he wanted? It certainly wasn’t what Jillian or his friends wanted. The more he pretended he didn’t need anything from them, the more distance he put between them.

Dragons hoarded everything: their gold, their secrets, their words. The reflex to keep himself withheld and hidden was strong. But he was as much a man as he was a dragon, and that had to mean something.

You always blame me for your own shortcomings, his dragon said. You may have been taught to have no one, but that is not us. We should hold our love closer than anything else. Why should we hide ourselves from our own treasure?

I need to be someone she can value, Theo said. He was aware that he was making an argument he was no longer supposed to believe in. I can’t earn her love if I’m hurt.

You have her love. Have a dragon’s greed for once and wake to claim as much of it as you can for as long as you can.

He’d rebelled by running away from home. Even as an adult, it hadn’t occurred to him that as flawed as his home was, it might not actually be the problem.

If he had learned the wrong lessons when he’d grown up, he could learn the right ones now. He could embrace what the valley had to offer him, what his dragon had to offer him: confidence, pride, daring, and a love of beauty.

He could believe that not only was Jillian his treasure, but that he was hers. By waiting in this safe numbness, he was stealing himself away from her.

She was his key. She unlocked him and set him free.