That morning’s dawn came without dragon weather skies.  That was fine with Theo, who watched the sun come up from the half-moon attic window.  He’d already gotten everything he wanted.

He’d even gotten out of the brass band of a bed without waking Jillian, which made her the deepest sleeper he’d ever known.  Maybe this was the one time she got to be completely selfish, completely self-indulgent.

It certainly felt selfish and self-indulgent of him to look at her like that.  She was still naked from their lovemaking, her bare skin a dusky peach against the ivory sheets, her lightly freckled shoulders exposed where the covers had fallen down.  The sheet was gossamer thin and clung to her body, highlighting the curves of her hips and belly and hinting at the dark rose of her nipples.  He could still remember the taste of her there, so slightly but distinctly different from the taste of her mouth or her skin.  Somehow the taste of her nipples and their texture against his lips and tongue had foreshadowed the sweetness between her legs.

She looked like a priceless Pre-Raphaelite painting, all tumbled red hair and rounded arms.

My mate.  I found my mate.

Even if he hadn’t been a shifter, he would have known soon enough that they were meant for each other.  It wasn’t just her laugh or her unruly hair.  It was how she cared about duty and honor, how she dove into hard but necessary work, and how she kept on being kind and selfless despite everything she saw from life.  He wanted to spend his day getting to know her.  He wanted to spend his life getting to know her.

He checked his phone.  He had roughly a hundred “I told you so” texts from Gretchen.  The last one said: I had to explain what’s going on to the team.  So you just have the harder job now of explaining what’s going on to HER.  She’s a smart woman.  She’ll know it’s good news.

But was it good news for her?  It wasn’t like she didn’t already have enough upheaval going on in her life.  Maybe she hadn’t been looking for sudden, destined love.

He knew their connection meant something to her, even if, being human, she couldn’t perceive it immediately.  She hadn’t taken him into her bed casually.  That had been plain enough in her eyes, which were too expressive to hide tenderness, and just as plain again in her lovemaking, which had been too enthusiastic to deny passion.

Maybe she would be pleased.

Of course she will be pleased, his dragon said.  We are her treasure just as she is ours.

No one did smugness quite like a self-satisfied dragon.

Well, it was earned satisfaction, Theo supposed.  His dragon had always looked askance at his human half’s assurance that the mate bond didn’t really matter and that they could be perfectly happy without it.

All those years of formless longing had been leading to this woman and her incredibly noisy bed, so the years had been worth it.  He was sure the worry of the next few hours would be worth it, too.

It occurred to him that the gentlemanly thing to do would be to go down and face Tiffani, who had undoubtedly been able to hear every last squeak and thump last night.  The least he could do was make her breakfast to compensate for the awkwardness.

“I’ll make you French toast,” he said to Jillian, his voice quiet.  “Or anything you like.”

He bent down and kissed her hair.  She made a pleasant crooning sound before burrowing further down into the pillow.

He went downstairs to be Emily Post.

Tiffani was sitting in the kitchen, wearing a peacock silk robe over plaid flannel pajamas.  The outfit clashed in a way Theo admired: a veneer of sophistication on top of very practical comfort.  Human inside, dragon outside.

“Good morning, Deputy Theo.”  She raised a cup of coffee to her mouth, but it didn’t hide her smile.  “How did you sleep?”

“I think the better question is how you slept.  I’m hoping deeply and thoroughly.  And quickly.”

“Sweetheart, there wouldn’t have been enough deep and thorough and quick in the world.  Coffee?”

“I’ll get it, please don’t get up.”  At least fetching it let him turn away to the wall until his blush subsided.  “I wanted to make breakfast for you and Jillian, if I could.”

“My kitchen is your kitchen,” Tiffani said.  “Actually, as of nine AM sharp yesterday, it’s more yours than mine.  Do with it as you will.  I even did an early morning shopping run, since I imagine the two of you burned plenty of calories and will want a four-square breakfast.”

The blush refused to subside.  He was guessing she knew it.  He could hear the smile in her voice when she spoke again, even though what she was saying didn’t sound much worth smiling over.

“Gretchen emailed me the list of what Jillian and I get to keep.  It’s not long, but it covers what I care about.  I can’t speak for Jilly, of course, but at least she took her most beloved things out of here years ago.  All in all, Deputy Theo, I think it’s fairly generous, so, like I said, breakfast’s on me.  And at least that’s mine to give.”

“It was never our intention to leave you with nothing.”

That was true.  Even if the Marshals made a habit of stripping families to the bone to pay for one person’s sins—and Theo wouldn’t work for them if they did—he would still have made sure Jillian and Tiffani were taken care of.  Jillian was his mate.  Her love for Tiffani made Tiffani his family, too.

“I know,” Tiffani said.  For a moment, he thought she was responding to that last thought.  That they were family.

He turned to look at her, no longer caring if his face was red.

Yesterday, she’d been frazzled and worn, with runny mascara and smeared eyeliner.  This morning, her eyes were dry and she looked tired but not exhausted.

“I know,” she said again.  “No man who offers to cook breakfast is going to screw up a woman’s life.  Not when he looks at her like you look at Jilly.  I don’t know if that’s true, but it should be.  Make breakfast for my girl, Theo.  She deserves the best.  I loved Gordon, but Jilly is the only part of him I still want to keep.”

*

Jillian came downstairs an hour later as if tugged there by the smell of French toast.  Her sleep-tousled hair was loose around her shoulders and her long legs were bare and mostly exposed by a pair of soft cotton sleeping shorts.

She smiled at him cautiously.  “Good morning.  I was worried you were gone.”

Shit.  He should have never have left her alone upstairs without a note.  It hadn’t occurred to him that since she was used to people vanishing on her, she might think he’d regretted their night together.  It hadn’t occurred to him because it seemed so self-evidently wrong.

He abandoned his spatula and went over to kiss her.

“I got up,” he said, his lips still close to hers, “so I could make you breakfast.  Otherwise no power in the universe could have taken me out of your bed.”

Her smile gained confidence.  “That’s acceptable.”

“Once you’ve tried my famous French toast, you’ll admit it’s better than ‘acceptable.’  You’ll never let me sleep past six again.”

He had spoke of their future together without meaning to, remembering too late that she wouldn’t have the same rock-solid belief in it.  He girded himself for her to draw back from him.

But instead, she flushed with pleasure.  She looked almost the way she had last night after her first climax, when her cheeks were still pink and her fingers were still tangled in his hair.  She’d said his name like it was music.

Now she said, “Famous, huh?”

“World-famous.”  He pulled her slightly closer to him.  Her body was so soft.  All he wanted to do was to sink into her, to bury himself in her sweet, yielding curves and never come up for air again.

Jillian put her mouth against his ear and said, in a seductive purr, “Your French toast is burning.”

“That’s your fault,” Theo said, turning quickly to move it off the stove.  He sadly surveyed the damage done and decided that he couldn’t subject his mate, the one and only love of his life, to a scorched breakfast.  He started prepping another batch.  “You sabotaged me.  Like Mata Hari.”

“I think Mata Hari only did pancakes and waffles.”

“You’re ambitious.”

She stood beside him as he mixed the batter.  He loved the obvious pleasure she took in breathing in the scent of cinnamon and vanilla extract.  He knew it was a sign of trust that she was given him this early morning version of herself, rumpled and indulgent.  They both took too much care weighing the impressions they made and trying to prove what they were and weren’t: relaxation wouldn’t come easily.  But here she was.

In the soft light through the window, she was unguarded and more beautiful than ever.

She stuck her finger in the batter and then licked it clean.  It was a distracting sight.

“Tiffani left?”

“I offered to cook for her, too, but I think she wanted to leave us alone.  Last night wasn’t exactly subtle.”

“I don’t think you’ll rake in much cash selling that bed.”

“You’re joking.  I’d never let that go.  If it comes up for auction, I intend to outbid all comers.”

He drew his thumb across her lower lip.  She drew him into her mouth like he was even sweeter than the vanilla.  Blood abruptly left his brain.

“Careful,” Jillian said with an adorably wicked grin.  “I don’t know how many batches of French toast we can go through before this turns slapstick.”

“Three.  This is only batch two, so we have plenty of time.”

“I bet you say that to all the estranged daughters of white collar criminals.”

Theo pulled back just a little.  “I don’t, you know.”

“Shh.  Breakfast.”

He returned his gaze to the bowl and skillet, but his attention remained entirely on her.  He dipped slices of bread, watching as they soaked up the golden-white batter.  He wanted to give her the best of everything, and all his instincts as a dragon told him to load her down with jewels and finery.  But truly excellent French toast would do if that were all he had on hand.

But he had the feeling that what she wanted from him was something else.  Not things.  Her father had given her things.

What she wanted and deserved was the truth.  It didn’t matter how much he was afraid of it, he couldn’t go any further with her until he’d cleared things up.

“Jillian, what happened last night... for me, it wasn’t casual.  Not at all.”

“No.”  Her voice was low, but without the huskiness it had when she was happy.  She was holding back.  “You’re a smart guy.  I don’t think you would go around sleeping with people tied to your cases just for kicks.  I’m glad.  I’m not good with casual.”

There was some comfort there, enough that in that moment, he would have happily given up all his shifter heritage to just be one ordinary man whose biggest worry was how to tell the woman he had fallen in love with that he already couldn’t imagine living without her.

In a way, though, that was the least of his secrets.  He was probably giving that away to her with every look and every word.

“There’s something I have to tell you.”

To his surprise, she covered his hand with hers.  Her large, cocoa-brown eyes looked at him, making him think of a puppy waiting to be kicked.  She’d been disappointed so many times.

But she was tough, too.  She would never settle for a lie or for a relationship without honor.  He could see that even now she was running through all the things he could possibly be hiding and deciding, one by one, if they were dealbreakers.

Theo had never, ever told someone who didn’t know about shifters that he was a dragon.  No human friends he had made between the all-dragon enclave of Riell and the almost all-shifter workplace of Sterling’s US Marshals Office had ever gotten close enough for him to want to give himself away.  He didn’t know how to do this.

Impress her, his dragon suggested.

How am I supposed to impress her?

Dragons are impressive.

Theo eyed the size of the kitchen.  He was lucky to be in a house with so much floor space.  Most kitchens wouldn’t accommodate the sudden addition of a dragon.

He tallied up what remained of the cooking supplies he’d laid out.  Could he risk that second batch, as promised, on further slapstick?  He thought he could.

He speared one of the battered slices of bread with a fork.  Then, thinking better of it, he instead impaled it on a skewer with a heat-resistant handle.

“I think you might be making French toast wrong,” Jillian said.  “Just one woman’s opinion.”

He made sure he was turned well away from the curtains and, for that matter, well away from her.  That made it easier as well as safer: he could only see her in his peripheral vision.

He said, “This is what I need to tell you.”

In a way, a shifter would have been more impressed, or at least more specifically impressed, than a human.  Not many dragons, after all, could do what Theo did next.

Being able to control how he shifted had never been good for much besides party tricks, but he was grateful for it now.  It would have been nice enough to be able to change slowly—just so she wasn’t suddenly confronted with a fifteen foot long dragon in her kitchen—but better still was that he could start the change from the inside out.

He inhaled deeply, feeling his body change imperceptibly below the surface.  His breath grew hot inside his chest.  He imagined banked coals stacked inside his throat.  His body accommodated his imagination.  Fire ran through his blood, flickered through his veins, burned in his heart.

He parted his lips and blew out a puff of coppery-green dragon flame.

It made for very unconventional French toast.

Jillian stood perfectly still.  Then she said, “You can breathe fire.”

Theo slid back into full humanity.  “I know it sounds ridiculous.  But I’m a dragon.  There are some people who are shifters, who can turn from humans into animals—”

“Werewolves.”

“Werewolves,” Theo said dismissively.  “Werewolves get all the press.  They don’t have any subtlety.  —Please don’t tell Colby I said that.  —And please ignore what I’m saying right now, because it’s completely irrelevant.”

“You’re a were-dragon.”

“We just say dragon.”

“So dragons,” Jillian said, “are real.”

She looked dazed, but that didn’t stop her from taking the skewer from his hand.  She took a tentative bite of the French toast.

“This isn’t bad, do you know that?  Are unicorns real?”

“I’ve never met a unicorn,” Theo said, determining that was the more important question.  “Pegasi, though, winged horses, they’re real.  My boss is a pegasus shifter.  My office tends toward what you might call special hires, so no one has to make any difficult explanations.  I mean, that’s why he’s a pegasus shifter and I’m a dragon.  Well, no, that’s biology, properly, but... that’s why we’re both in the same office, not just by coincidence.  Shifters don’t congregate in this area in unusually high numbers or anything like that.  I’m sorry I keep rambling, I’ve never had to tell anyone before.”

“You’ve never had to tell anyone that you’re a dragon,” Jillian said.

“Never.  Only you.”

“Can I see you?”

She wasn’t afraid of him?

She wasn’t afraid of him.  She was a little stunned and she was certainly surprised, but she wasn’t running away.  In fact, she was still eating the French toast, so he had successfully provided both truth and breakfast.

There was a spark of excitement in her eyes.

Theo concentrated.  He was very thankful that he, unlike some of his colleagues, could shift without losing his clothes.  There was something inherently unglamorous and undignified about undressing in the middle of a kitchen, and a dragon, of course, was never undignified.  He let everything on him pass into the in-between world, the twilight place that only dragons knew, the one that had protected them for so long and that acted as everything from a moat around their homes to, effectively, a coatrack.

He could always feel the crimson and gold of his scales inside his soul.  He had always been raised to think of himself as a dragon, and his shifting took the form of remembering that.  He remembered what he was and came home to it.

His vision of her had changed.  When he was shifted, his sight was much sharper, made to spot prey from miles above the ground.  He could see Jillian perfectly, down to the last and faintest freckle, and she was so gorgeous.

Treasure.

“Can I touch you?” Jillian whispered.

Theo inclined his head.  Then, overcoming a lifetime of etiquette training on how to be gracious even in dragon form, he gave up subtlety and nodded decisively.  He didn’t want her to have any doubt that she was welcome to this part of his life.

Jillian put her hand down very gently against his forehead.  It had been years since he had felt what she was feeling now: he hadn’t touched another dragon with his human hands since his parents had died.  But he could still remember the sensation of it.  Dragonskin was cool—cooler than his always three-degrees-above-normal human skin, in fact—and dry.  It looked as hard as steel but felt more delicate, like napped velvet.  Dragons defended themselves with their fire, flight, and claws, not with any natural armor.  To their eternal chagrin, they were as mortal and vulnerable as any other creature.

He didn’t know how much of that she could know or guess.  He didn’t know what this meant to her.

“You’re so beautiful,” Jillian said.  There was a little catch in her voice.  “You look like fireworks.  Like fire turned into art.”

He lowered himself until he was lying at her feet.  A dragon pledging complete devotion and loyalty to his mate.

Then he wanted to give her the same thing with words.  He came back to the other half of himself, to the man who could hold the woman he loved in his arms.  Human again, he stood and kissed her.

Jillian suddenly struggled away from him and he let her go with a start.  The last thing he wanted was to keep her where she didn’t want to be, but he’d thought—

“That’s why you’re always so hot!”  She looked delighted to have put it together.  “All dragons must run just a little hotter than the usual ninety-eight point six, right?”

“One hundred and one,” Theo said.  “On average.”

“You’re a dragon.  You’re a dragon and—you told me?  You just met me!  I hope you don’t go around telling your secret to everyone.  ‘Hi, I’m Theo and I’m a dragon.’  I hope that isn’t you.  Maybe you were raised in a nice little all-dragon community, but out here, people are vicious!  People like my dad are vicious!  And they’ll hurt you, Theo, they’ll—they’ll try to sell you or exhibit you or experiment on you—”

Her automatic response was to protect him.  Maybe he loved knights in shining armor more than he’d thought.

“Hi,” he said, taking her in his arms and pressing a kiss to her forehead.  “I’m Theo and I’m a dragon.”

Jillian laughed against his shoulder.  The laugh sounded a little frantic.

He ran his fingers through her soft, silky hair.  “I don’t go around telling everyone that I’m a dragon.  Humans can’t see us when we shift unless we want them to.  As I said, you’re the first entirely human person I’ve told.”

She looked up at him through her long, dark eyelashes, suddenly shy again.  “Why me?”

He had showed her both his selves.  Now all he had to do was show her his heart.

“With shifters, when you find the person who’s right for you, you know.  All at once.  You’re surer of it than you’ve ever been of anything.  It’s like you’re the lock and they’re the key.  Jillian, you’re my key.”