Chapter One
It was a muggy, suffocatinglyhot day. All Iz Benoit was thinking about was a tall glass of mint lemonade.
She was in her last two weeks of U.S. Marshal basic training. There were twenty-one and a half weeks in total, and that time could melt away a lot of cadets, especially since everything happened at a center in Georgia. The outdoor physical training was grueling in the heat, and their dormitories were plastered with reminders to stay hydrated. Out in the mud, on a ten-mile run or with her hands sinking elbow-deep into the muck as she did push-ups, Iz drank any water she could get her hands on, the same as everybody else. But when the day’s training was over and she got back to her dorm, she liked to have something special.
She walked into her room wanting nothing more than a cold shower and an even colder drink. But someone was already there waiting for her.
“Cooper!”
When she had first met him, years ago now, Cooper Dawes had been a fugitive, gaunt and wounded and hunted. Prison had left a mark on him. But his goodness and courage and innocence had all shone through, and thankfully Gretchen Miller—the marshal assigned to drive him to yet another cell—had recognized it. Soon, the two of them had even recognized each other as mates.
Gretchen had helped prove Cooper’s innocence, and now he headed up his own U.S. Marshal team.
It was the perfect happy ending for everybody. By now, not even the sharpest observer could look at Cooper and tell how bleak his life had once been. Happiness—a woman he adored, a tight-knit circle of family and friends, and a return to the career he was meant for—had chased away all those old shadows.
Seeing him always delighted her, but she refrained from launching herself across the room in an enthusiastic hug. She wasn’t in college anymore, after all.
Instead, she channeled her mother, who had always been the best hostess any dragon village could ask for.
“It’s wonderful to see you. I was just going to get a glass of mint lemonade. Would you like some?”
Cooper grinned. “Is this how you always react when someone breaks into your dorm room?”
“I don’t know,” Iz said truthfully. “It’s never happened before. But probably not. If they were a stranger and they looked like trouble, I’d probably just break one of their arms.”
“Good move.”
It was good to be around someone who automatically believed she was capable of things. Her classmates here still looked baffled when she out-fought them, even after months of seeing her in action. Some of it, she guessed, was because they didn’t know she had a dragon shifter’s strength to help her out. But not all of her skills were a genetic gift. She had trained long and hard to try to be worthy of being a marshal like her cousin Theo.
Iz poured the lemonade, and Cooper took the glass with thanks.
He sipped it, complimented her on the taste, and then said, “I came here to offer you a job.”
“I accept,” Iz said instantly.
This was everything she could have ever hoped for. As nice as it would’ve been to work with Theo, no one on his team would ever see her as an adult. She’d always be little Izzie.
Cooper was different. She’d actually been able tohelphim the first time they’d met, and she knew he didn’t see her as a child.
“I had to snatch you up before someone else did,” he said. “I’m supposed to get my pick of any shifter cadets, but you’re top of your class. I didn’t want to give anyone the chance to bend the rules and recruit you first.”
“I’m now officially reserved,” Iz said solemnly. “And if you want me to start right away, I’m sure the instructors here would let me leave early. I can live without a graduation ceremony.”
She tried to make it sound like it was a grand sacrifice, but Cooper saw right through her.
“It’s the humidity, isn’t it?” he said.
Iz sighed. “And the push-ups.”
“Theo said dragons hate humidity.”
“We do. And I hate push-ups. I can do them, but I still hate them.”
“Well, we take assignments all over the country—wherever anything shifter-related pops up—so I don’t know what I can do about the humidity, but I think I can promise you a life free of push-ups.”
He studied her, probably taking in her training gear—shapeless sweatpants, muddy and sweat-soaked T-shirt—and her hair that was frizzing in the Georgia humidity. All the mint lemonade in the world couldn’t make her look cool, dignified, and draconian right now.
Cooper took pity on her: “I’ll talk to the training coordinators and see if I can sneak you out the back door a little early.”