“No. And until yesterday morning, I wouldn’t have thought that mattered. Like I said, dragons keep to themselves, they don’t socialize as much with the rest of the world or even with other shifters—it can get pretty ugly at times. Trust me, if there’s a stereotype about a kind of shifter, I know it. So everyone I knew either found their mate where we grew up or they didn’t find them at all, and that meant that most of them didn’t. It all seemed... fine. You could see the difference between the ones who had their true mate and the ones who didn’t, though. I don’t know how to describe it.”
“There’s a lot of room between ‘fine’ and ‘happy,’” Jillian said.
“Yes, that. But we weren’t raised to be happy, so we didn’t think it mattered.”
She had never been raised to be anything but happy, never raised to do anything but make money and pursue her own pleasure without regard for the world around her. She didn’t know why their families had run to such extremes.
“It matters to me that you’re happy,” she said.
He leaned over and kissed her. “It matters to me that you’re happy, too.”
“And I want to meet your friends.”
“I am honored to introduce them to my mate,” Theo said, bowing his head slightly.
Mate, Jillian thought. It was the second time he had used that word specifically, and she decided now that she liked it. Girlfriend would have felt both too simple and too weak for what she could already feel between them. And she liked how primal mate sounded, no matter how decorous his voice was when he said it. It didn’t hurt that it made her immediately think about the way people always said mate for life.
That kind of reliability—she had never thought she would find it in a partner.
Although it was possible that if his coworkers—all shifters, hadn’t he said? Or mostly all?—hated her, he might start to rethink that whole destined to be together forever thing. As they walked into Sterling’s courthouse, far duller and more presentable than The Steeplechase, she tried to remember that she had met and liked Gretchen.
“Wait!” She grabbed his elbow just as he started to open the frosted glass door that announced the US Marshals Office. “You said they were all... like you, right?”
“Not exactly like me,” Theo said, lowering his voice as well. “But most of them all shifters.” He said the last word so softly it was almost more breath than speech and despite the chilly courthouse hallway and her own nerves, a warm and pleasant tingling spread across Jillian’s body.
“Is Gretchen?”
“No, Gretchen’s human. She’s from a family of lynx shifters, but every so often, the gene doesn’t present itself.”
“That must be hard.”
And being a lynx would suit Gretchen, she thought: she had that same compact muscularity and ease of movement.
Being a dragon suited Theo too, whether he thought it did or not. Whether his family thought it did or not, for that matter. He knew what had worth and he carried the feel of a fairy tale with him wherever he went. And he didn’t even need to breathe fire to be able to scorch everything within a hundred foot radius. All he needed for that was that pair of emerald eyes.
Theo said, “Gretchen likes you. They’ll all like you.” They’d better, his tone somehow managed to imply.
She nodded. Time to slay the dragon’s coworkers with her wit and charm.
They stepped into the office. To Jillian’s great relief, no matter how full it was with people who could turn into animals or mythological creatures, it still looked and felt like every other office she had been in, from the burbling water cooler to the mixed scent of toner and slightly stale coffee. It was the kind of place she usually visited to give speeches urging people to consider some of her kids as summer interns. She might associate it with a little bit of disappointment, but at least she no longer felt nervous.
The closest marshal to them was a leanly muscular man in his thirties, with thick black hair and a little bit of stubble. His eyes were the darkest blue Jillian had ever seen. In a building full of people in ties and suit jackets, he was wearing a battered olive Army jacket.
“Jillian, this is Colby,” Theo said. “Colby, this is Jillian Marcus. Gretchen probably told you, but—Jillian is my mate.”
Colby gave Jillian what she thought might be the most wistful smile she’d ever seen, something totally belied by the cheerful openness of his voice as he called out, “Hey, everybody! Theo and his mate are here!”
“Subtle,” Theo said.
“Subtlety’s only necessary when we have strangers around, Your Highness.” He held his hand out to Jillian. “Pleased to meet you. From what Gretchen told us about you, I would have liked you anyway, but anyone who’s perfect for Theo must be pretty close to perfect in general.”
Theo looked startled by that and then laughed as if it had been a joke, though it hadn’t sounded like one. He said to Jillian, “Colby’s a werewolf.”
She liked that she now lived in a world where this information could be delivered as casually as “Colby’s an accountant.”
“Theo said you guys get all the press,” Jillian said.
“Yes,” Colby said, “because no one has ever heard of dragons, obviously. Anyway, silver allergy yes, full moon no, but my kind can sometimes turn humans into shifters with a bite, which his can’t.” He was talking quickly, like he had to outpace the look in his eyes. Before she could even try to think about how to ask if something was wrong, though, Gretchen had joined them.