“I’m polite,” Theo said.
We are dignified, his dragon said, decorously inspecting his claws. It would be beneath us to be anything other than courteous to a fallen enemy.
He tried to focus on what mattered. “I thought the Marcuses were warned ahead of time about when the seizure would go into effect.”
“They were. They decided to stay. Or, more accurately, Tiffani, the wife, decided to stay, and Jillian, the daughter, decided to come back home. Your guess is as good as mine as to why.”
“It spoils the fun.”
“I’m sure if you tell them that they’ll go away.”
Perhaps as a followup to his seizure of the Marcus assets, he could join the hunt for Gordon Marcus himself. Who would leave his family to shoulder all the consequences for his actions? Theo was sure all the country clubs had closed their gates by now. Most of the so-called friends would have disappeared, as well. It wouldn’t matter to most that there was no proof whatsoever of either woman being involved. All that mattered was avoiding scandal like it was the plague.
As much as it confused him, he respected Jillian and Tiffani for taking on the weight that Gordon Marcus had refused.
You would have stayed, his dragon said. Why should you run as though you were ashamed, merely because a thief tried to steal your honor along with another’s gold?
Theo squared his shoulders. “I can handle it.”
*
His partner for the day was Gretchen, one of the team’s few non-shifters. Gretchen came from a family of lynx shifters and had that same watchful slink and dangerous playfulness, but she was, as she put it, stuck on two feet. Growing up the odd one out had made her attuned to any change in the mood around her, which Theo found staggeringly useful in a US Marshal and staggeringly disconcerting in a friend.
Today it meant that she listened attentively to his explanation of the Marcus case and then said, “Something’s bothering you.”
He couldn’t admit to her that it bewildered him that Martin had all but told him he had value independent of whatever treasure he brought in. By Riell’s terms, he owed Martin his fealty, and Martin’s opinion of him would have depended almost entirely on what Theo brought to the table, whatever literal gold or intangible expertise he had to offer. A superior might show respect or courtesy, of course. A well-bred dragon would never show poor manners.
But Martin had trusted him.
No one but a dragon could understand how strange that realization was.
So he said, “I was looking forward to rolling around in treasure. Like that cartoon with the duck swimming in the gold coins. It’s a little awkward with the family there.”
“Theo, don’t think you can distract me with your adorably awkward pop culture explanations.” She made the turn that would take them out into the expansive—and expensive—countryside around Sterling, where each enormous house seemed to come with its own walled garden and two swimming pools. She pointed at one. “Where you come from, does everything look like this?”
“Ah, no.” He looked out the window, heat rising in his face. He didn’t know how to delicately express his distaste for them. “These would be considered small. And lacking in history.”
“Old money snob,” Gretchen said fondly. “And I’m not buying that it’s just the Marcuses that have you looking like someone turned the world upside-down on you, but I can appreciate it if you don’t want to talk. I usually don’t.”
He wouldn’t have guessed that, and it made him look over at her with a new curiosity. Gretchen was talkative, easygoing—the first friend he had made on the team and the first human friend he had ever made at all. But he hadn’t known that there were secrets locked up in her golden-brown eyes.
“So,” Gretchen said, ignor
ing his stare, “I’ll just opt for reckless speculation.”
“Do your worst.”
“You met your mate.”
Theo laughed. “The culmination of a lifelong dream.”
He had told all of them before that he had never been raised to expect a true, destined mate. Dragons kept to themselves so thoroughly that only a handful of people Theo had known in the valley were mated pairs. Most contented themselves with ordinary, companionable marriages and usually they seemed happy enough. He had sometimes hoped for the more intoxicating, incandescent joy that seemed to come from those who found their mates, but only in the same way he had daydreamed of coming across the Hope Diamond. Some things were too rare to waste your time wanting them.
He had to admit that when he’d broken with centuries of tradition and gone out into the world, the subject had sometimes crossed his mind. In Riell, it had been considered the height of rudeness not to make eye contact with a stranger, lest you miss identifying your mate, and so Theo had assiduously met everyone’s eyes as he passed them on the street until he had realized people in cities considered a direct gaze an unwanted encroachment on their privacy. Or until, as Colby, the team’s resident werewolf and voice of reason, had put it, he realized it made him look weird. But during those days, he would sometimes think, Maybe it’s her. Maybe she’s the one.
Despite all that evidently untoward eye contact, however, his dragon had never given anything more than the laziest flick of his tail, as if this wasn’t worth Theo waking him up. So the fixation had turned out to be mercifully brief.
Gretchen said, “Your skepticism is noted. Okay, guess number two: you’re molting.”