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

There was a brief shimmer of tears in her eyes, like clouds threatening rain, but then she blinked and it was gone. While he’d been healing, she’d been hardening enough to accept this as the truth. He wondered when she had realized it.

“He broke into the house. He unpacked the fucking nutcrackers so he could take his favorite one. He planted the bomb. He probably didn’t make it, he never knew how to actually do anything, but he put it there.” She saw something in his face. “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

“Only just now,” Theo said. “Martin thought it was a possibility. You were way ahead of me.”

“I’ve been on this case for years,” Jillian said.

He couldn’t stand the sadness of her smile and he wanted to kiss it away, but he had the feeling that he would only be hiding it. She would kiss him back, because she loved him and because more red hot sex would be a distraction from what she was feeling, but it wouldn’t make her pain go away. It wouldn’t change anything. This was something she would have to feel until she was done feeling it, and all he could do was be there. And take her to a ball. The princess and her dragon.

*

At first, Theo thought the evening was going well.

Dr. Mendoza had rustled up a gown for Jillian. It was deep azure silk with a plunging neckline that exposed the flawless tops of her breasts and a gold underskirt that would pick up the candlelight and complement the touches of gold in her hair. Jillian had protested all the way through the dressing process, her back to the mirror, saying she would look ridiculous, but when Theo turned her around to face her own reflection, her breath caught in her throat.

“That’s me?” she said.

He kissed the delicate shell of her ear. “That’s you.”

“Never mind water parks,” Jillian said. “We’re going to have to stay here forever so I can wear high fashion. I don’t even care if I get snubbed by everyone.”

He still bristled reflexively at the thought of anyone being less than courteous to her, but he knew it was happening. Especially early on, she’d had to spend time alone while he’d been healing, and so he hadn’t been there to glare daggers at anyone who dared to treat her like anything less than the woman she was. Tonight, he could fix that. He was hardly Riell’s most eligible bachelor and he was sure that they had all long since marked him as eccentric at best and a traitor at worse for choosing to leave, but he was still a dragon. No one would dare be rude to his mate in his presence.

Maybe that would force people to actually listen to Jillian.

“One more thing,” he said, and fastened a heavy ruby necklace around Jillian’s throat. “This doesn’t count as the first gift I’m giving you—I’ll need to think more about that. But it’s traditional to always wear a little red and a little gold, minimum, unless there are special circumstances—a wedding, a debut, a funeral.”

“It doesn’t go with the blue.”

“It doesn’t have to. No one will even notice it—it’s like... brushing your teeth. If you do it, it’s invisible; they’ll only pay attention if you don’t.”

“Minty fresh rubies,” Jillian said, touching the stones with her fingertips. “These probably cost more than I make in a year. Are they yours? Or Dr. Mendoza’s?”

He laughed. “No dragon with her wits about her would ever be able to let someone else borrow a piece this significant from her hoard. No, it’s mine. It came to me from my grandmother’s inheritance.” He slid one finger between her warm skin and the cold gold chain. “I know in some ways it’s a waste to have all this wealth that do

es nothing. But to us, everything in our hoard has a history: it’s family, legacy, honor. Beauty. I only feel like I wasted it by not having it on you—by not already knowing you so I can bedeck you in gold and gemstones that your beauty would put to shame.”

She tilted her head back until her dark brown eyes were looking up at him and her curly auburn mane of hair was against his chest. She said, “I promise not to think any of it’s wasted as long as I get to bedeck you too.”

It was tradition, in fact, that they seal their mate-bond—their marriage—by combining their hoards, and it was a quieter, more ancient tradition that this be done in bed. He wanted that: to feel the rings he had put on her hands and the rings she had put on his clink together as they grasped each other.

“It’s a deal,” he said quietly.

So they had certainly entered the ball in the best of moods.

Theo tried to find a balance between the two of them staying in company he knew would be agreeable—people who were at least curious enough about humans to be polite—and risking Jillian’s sense of ease to possibly change some hearts and minds. As he watched her glow with the high of the dragonfire and listened to her laugh at a slightly risqué joke, he started to think that he didn’t give a damn about hearts and minds. They could change on their own. All he wanted was for her to have a little happiness to make up for the last few days and for the trouble that would still be waiting for them when they left Riell. At the moment, all that seemed to matter was the steps of the waltz.

The laugh stopped in Jillian’s throat. She had stopped dancing and had a look on her face that made it seem hard to believe she’d ever been dancing, even as her dress was still coming to rest from its twirl: she’d gone pale and somehow adamantine. If she were a dragon, she would have shifted.

Theo didn’t ask her what was wrong. She didn’t look like she’d be able to get herself to talk. He followed her gaze instead.

She was staring at Izzie—Isabelle, he corrected himself—who was making her shy, self-conscious debut in the signature all-white of a newly adult dragon first coming into society. Her gown was embroidered from bodice to train with diamonds and seed pearls. Theo knew from awkward first-hand experience that it would be almost impossible for her to move in it, as weighed down as she was: he’d come within an inch of spilling an entire glass of wine on himself when his time had come, given how heavy the sleeve of his doublet had been. He didn’t intend to ever reveal that to anyone except perhaps Jillian—didn’t even intend to ever reveal that he’d worn a doublet at all, as archaic as he now knew they were in the rest of the world.

He couldn’t see anything that might have alarmed Jillian except—

Oh, of course. Drowning in white silk and satin and velvet and crystalline jewels, Izzie looked like a princess... but she also looked like a seventeen year-old someone was shoving up to the altar.

“There’s no surprise wedding, don’t worry,” Theo said in a low, reassuring voice. He didn’t want anyone nearby to overhear and laugh at Jillian’s misconception, especially since he was sure they’d neither know nor care that it was a perfectly reasonable one. “She’s making her debut. Everyone here dresses like that the first time they appear at a social event as an adult. Now everyone will know to pay her special attention.”