SOLVED - PNR Dragon shifter H, human h

The book is Tempted by Fire: Dragons of Bloodfire 1 by Erin Kellison.

The heroine is not human; like the H, she is Bloodkin — a dragon shifter. But since she was orphaned at an early age, and left with her mother’s human friend, then passed into foster care at age 7, she grows up thinking herself human. And she doesn’t initially believe in dragons (“There was a big difference, however, between a person shifting into an animal that actually existed — like a wolf, bear, or panther — and one that is entirely mythological.”)

Young, female Bloodkin are rare, and to be protected. So the consequence of her having checked the box on her college financial aid form about possibly having shifter or part shifter ancestry only meant to her a free ride through school and a job with a posh salary when she graduated. Then she’s sent out to act as a mediator in a dispute between two Bloodkin families. Neither party is prepared to deal with her when “Emerson” — a family name from the thought-to-be extinct Emmerich Red dragons — shows up.

“They sent a mediator to deal with me?” (…is the H’s initial reaction)

“Send the mediator to me when he comes.”

“What are you going to do?”

Matthew knew him so well.

Thane would handle this the old way. “I’m going to eat him”

This book had some great lines. I particularly liked the notion that dragons have an early inclination to start hoards of items they like — in the H’s case it was river stones. For the h it was cookies and chocolate.

When I first read the query post it drove me nuts that I couldn’t remember title and author, even though I remembered lots of story details — like the fact that the h’s nickname used by her Wolfkin foster brother is “Ember”. A very good dragon shifter book, but not by one of the “big name” authors you usually hear about for this genre, and hence hard to hunt down.