The Hellhound’s UnChristmas Miracle

by Chant, Zoe

  Caine didn’t back away. Fleance felt his hellhound’s frustration: it wanted to hunt, to chase. It couldn’t chase someone who wouldn’t run.

  He’s our alpha! Fleance yelled inside his head. Stop this!

  Closer—harder to find, her human mind not burning like the hellhounds’ did but shining like the moon, with two precious lights in close orbit around it—his alpha’s mate. Meaghan. Caine swore under his breath.

  They’re too small to hunt, Fleance’s hellhound snarled. Too small to protect themselves. If the alpha won’t, the pack must—MAKE HIM STOP! WE WON’T LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN!

  Caine shot Fleance a look that came close to dangerous, took the cash out of his pocket and tossed it back at the safe. Without his hellhound magic, it bounced off the door and fell to the floor. He swore—out loud this time—and ducked to pick it up.

  Fleance relaxed as his alpha pushed the stolen bills back into the safe. There, he told his hellhound. Happy now?

  Acceptable. Goosebumps prickled on the back of Fleance’s neck. His hellhound sank back on its haunches, out of its threatening stance. If he doesn’t do it again.

  “This is not good,” Caine remarked. He didn’t sound upset. More… resigned. He rubbed his forehead, exhaustion pulling at the corners of his mouth. “If I could control you, that would be one thing, but… It’s been getting worse since Christmas, you said? And Meaghan’s due at the end of the month. We’ll have to—damn.” His voice lowered. “I wish this shit came with a manual.”

  Fleance shifted back. He managed to pull his clothes back with him, but they were torn and ragged.

  “No,” he said, panting. “This is what I needed. I know what’s wrong with my hellhound now.”

  Caine shot him a sharp look and Fleance swallowed.

  “It’s Parker,” he said.

  It all made sense now. His hellhound wasn’t attacking ‘criminals’ for no reason—it was still reacting against everything that had happened under its previous alpha. All those years of being forced to hurt people for his alpha’s profit had broken something inside him.

  Caine fixed him with a serious look. “Parker’s gone. I cut him loose. He’s not here and he’s not a part of this pack. No one here is in any danger from him.”

  Not true! Not true! His hellhound wasn’t growling now. It was whimpering. Desperate.

  Fleance was used to keeping his thoughts off his face. He didn’t let Caine see anything of the dread that pooled in his veins.

  Parker might be gone, but the danger wasn’t. No wonder his hellhound was so frantic.

  Sure, Caine had cut Angus Parker off. The former alpha was no longer a part of the Guinness pack. But he hadn’t stopped him. Fleance felt sick. Caine had taken over the pack and banished Parker from ever returning to Pine Valley, but that didn’t prevent him from doing to other people what he’d done to Fleance and the others.

  No wonder his hellhound was going mad. Ever since he’d been turned, Fleance had hated being under his uncle’s control. And now that he was free, he’d done nothing to save other people from the same fate. Meaghan announcing her pregnancy must have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. Even if the chances of Parker returning to Pine Valley and fighting Caine for leadership of the pack were close to nil, the risk was too high.

  Besides, Fleance knew Parker. Banishment wouldn’t keep him away forever. He’d find a way to come back, and he’d make it hurt. Fleance knew that better than anyone, because Parker was more than just Fleance’s former alpha. He was his uncle. Pack was different to family… but not completely. Not enough that Fleance could trust that he wasn’t the weak link in the Guinnesses’ pack.

  And until he knew there was no chance that Parker would come back and take advantage of that connection, Fleance’s hellhound wouldn’t rest.

  Fleance had a horrible feeling he knew what he needed to do.

  His hellhound wanted to hunt. And Parker was the prey it had been seeking all along.

  * * *

  A week later, Rhys and Manu caught him sneaking out of town.

  It was midnight. The air was cool and fresh, heavy with summer, the moonlight just enough for Fleance to see by. He was walking through the forest, a pack on his back and his passport burning a hole in his pocket.

  The other hellhounds slipped out from between the trees like wraiths. Manu, so tall and broad-shouldered he looked more like a bear shifter than a hound, and Rhys, who somehow managed to still look half-transparent even when he’d shed his hellhound invisibility. Except for—

  “What the hell is that?” Fleance barked, wheeling around.

  Rhys fidgeted with the heavy collar around his neck. “An experiment.”

  “What sort of experiment requires a shock collar?” Fleance’s hellhound snarled inside him, teeth bared. His eyes blazed with hellfire. Even Parker had never—

  “Hey, easy, easy. Hold your horses.” Manu stepped between them, hands raised palms-out. “Genius here wanted to see if he could make his hellhound replicate your symptoms. The collar—I can’t believe I’m the one saying this. Rhys, you tell him, it’s your bloody idea.”

  Rhys cleared his throat. “It’s a failsafe. Since Caine isn’t here, if I lose control, I’ll need something to stop my hellhound.”

  “Your hellhound could phase right through that!” Fleance retorted.

  Behind Rhys, Manu groaned and mouthed That’s what I told him! Rhys pursed his lips. “I was working on the hypothesis that if I didn’t actively acknowledge that fact, my hellhound wouldn’t think to do it.”

  “And you thought that would work?” Fleance’s jaw hurt. If he’d known his packmates would pull something like this, he never would have told them about his hellhound’s problems.

  Rhys’s eyes glinted in the moonlight, behind his thick glasses. “We’re all experienced at controlling what we let ourselves think,” he remarked lightly.

  Fleance grimaced. He couldn’t argue with that. When they’d been under Parker’s control, the alpha had raked through their thoughts like leaves. “And you waited for Caine and Meaghan to be out of town before you started your little experiment?”

  “It’s not like I’m breaking any rules. You’d have let me know if I was,” Rhys drawled. “Since I’m not a torn heap of bloody pieces on the ground, I assume I’m morally in the clear. Anyway, you’re the one running away.”

  “He’s got you there,” Manu pointed out.

  “I’m not—” Fleance groaned, exasperated. “Caine will understand.”

  “When he finds out? Which means you haven’t told him. And you haven’t torn yourself into tiny pieces, either, so we have to assume you’re as morally in the clear as I am.” Rhys grinned, his smile as narrow and sharp as his face. “Did you leave a note on your pillow? That’s traditional, isn’t it, when you’re running away from home?”

  Fleance turned away. “I don’t have time for this.”

  “You’re going after him, aren’t you?” Rhys didn’t need to say who he was talking about.

  Fleance paused. Manu’s psychic voice brushed against his mind. *He’s the reason your hellhound keeps going psycho-cop.*

  *I couldn’t replicate the symptoms. But I never fought Parker as hard as you did. My hellhound must not have been affected in the same way…* Rhys pulled out a notebook and jotted something down in it. Fleance tensed automatically.

  Rhys had been trying to find a way out of Parker’s power ever since their former alpha first turned him. He’d been convinced there was a logical basis to their hellhound magic. Parker had taken great pleasure in disproving more than one of his theories.

  Parker isn’t here now, Fleance reminded himself. He’s not going to find Rhys’s notes and use them on us. That’s why I’m doing this, remember?

  He nodded to the notebook. “What do you mean, you never fought? You were always trying to find a way out.”

  “A way out of being a hellhound. Not a way out of Parker’s master plan. I wanted to be out; you wanted to be goo
d.”

  Fleance glared at him. Inside him, his hellhound seethed. Years of frustration and helplessness had crushed it down, and now he was free and had done nothing to fix the misery his former alpha had caused.

  No wonder his hellhound snapped at the smallest misdeed. As far as it was concerned, Fleance had forgotten the one thing he’d always sworn to do. Make Parker pay.

  “Parker is a loose end,” he said out loud.

  “And you’re going to snip him off?” Rhys raised one eyebrow. “Do you even know where he is?”

  Fleance looked past him to Manu, who looked uncharacteristically beaten-down. He acknowledged Fleance’s silent question with a brief nod. “That was what I was for, wasn’t it? He wanted a bolt-hole to run to if everything went wrong.” His mouth twisted. “And someone to play the native guide. Flea, I can’t go back there. My family doesn’t know what happened to me. I can’t… not like this.”

  “I’m not asking you to. I’m doing this alone.”

  Manu looked equal parts relieved and ashamed. Rhys shot him a dark look, then turned back to Fleance. “You’re sure about this?”

  “I’ve got a passport. Parker made sure of that.”

  “I don’t mean the technicalities.”

  “I know.” Fleance set his shoulders. “I have to do this. It’s not just my hellhound, it’s all of us. I meant it when I said Parker was a loose end.” He didn’t want to talk about this—years under Parker’s thumb had taught him never to admit to anything—but he didn’t want Rhys to suddenly decide to experiment with heroism. “You can’t still feel him in your mind, can you?”

  “Of course not.” Rhys flicked through his notebook. “My current theory is the former pack bonds are severed entirely after an alpha takeover. I wonder if the same is true of other shifter bonds. I—” He broke off and his eyes narrowed. “Wait. Can you still sense him?”

  Fleance nodded slowly. The other two shifters paled and took a half-step backwards. He didn’t blame them.

  Parker wasn’t part of the constellation that was his pack. He was a darker patch in the darkness beyond the stars—disconnected, but waiting.

  “None of us knows how this is meant to work,” he said. “But having Parker in my head still feels wrong. I won’t feel like the pack’s safe until he’s gone, and I don’t want to involve Caine and Meaghan. Not with the babies so close.”

  The other two nodded. The certainty of their understanding was almost enough to drive the guilt from his heart. They said their goodbyes, with Manu and Rhys promising to defray their alpha’s reactions to discovering he was gone, and he headed down towards the road.

  Fleance had been turned years before either of them, but Manu and Rhys had been his allies under Parker’s thumb and now they were the closest thing he had to family. He already missed the close camaraderie of the pack.

  A few days later, stepping onto a plane that would take him to Manu’s home country of New Zealand, the constellation in his head became harder and harder to concentrate on. Physical distance had its similarities to psychic distance—he already knew that his telepathic voice had limits, but the discovery that putting hundreds of miles between him and the rest of the pack made their connection feel more distant rocked him. Especially when he was halfway over the South Atlantic and the Parker-shaped darkness in his mind was joined by a new feeling: something that pulled him forward, tugging at his soul as hard as he was trying to keep hold of his pack sense.

  He closed his eyes. This had to mean he was going in the right direction, he told himself. He just had to get through the flight, and through finding Parker and whatever happened next, and then he could go home.

  Back to the closest thing he had to a real family.

  2

  Sheena

  Sheena Mackay could not wait to get away from her family.

  Okay, sure, she was far enough away from them right now that she couldn’t feel their telepathic voices knocking relentlessly at the walls she’d had to put up around her mind, but that wasn’t good enough. Her phone had been buzzing since she woke up. It had kept buzzing as she said goodbye to the cousins she’d been staying with in Wellington—seriously, if her folks wanted to check in with her, couldn’t they just call them? Get the gossip without bothering her?—and now, in the middle of the Desert Road halfway up the North Island of New Zealand, it was still buzzing.

  How did she even have reception out here?

  She shook out her dark curls and sat back, trying to coax a sliver of comfort from the bus seat. But there was not even a sliver to be found. Generations of butts had sat in that seat before her, she reckoned, and each of them had squashed a wee bit more puff out of the seat cushion until there was none left for her.

  Her phone buzzed again, and she checked it. Finally—the one member of her family she could count on not to ask her if she was sure she felt up to traveling on her own, and had she packed enough snacks in case she got hungry, and how no one would blame her if she wanted to put off the trip for a few weeks or months so that Cousin This or Auntie That could come with her, or ideally wrap her in bubble wrap and lock her in her room so she couldn’t get herself into any dangerous situations…

  She plugged in her earbuds, accepted the video call and propped the phone against the back of the seat in front of her.

  Her cousin Aroha’s face appeared on-screen. Aroha was a few months older than Sheena’s barely scraping twenty-three, with long dark hair and a wicked smile. Her voice crackled through Sheena’s earbuds.

  “Have you not even left the country yet? Geez, cuz, get a move on.”

  Sheena laughed. “I’m trying!” She lifted her phone so that her cousin Aroha could see out the bus window. “Guess where I am.”

  “Move your thumb off the camera then, egg.”

  “Fussy much…” Sheena held the phone up in front of her face, careful of her fingers, so she could see the same landscape she was showing to her cousin. Aroha was half the country away, back in the South Island, while Sheena bussed her way north. That was weird to think about. They’d grown up together—or failed to grow up, their parents might say—school, uni, work. And now Sheena was heading off to see the world and Aroha was staying home.

  Stop it, she told herself firmly. Her inner sheep twitched its nose. No, not you. Me! I have to stop acting like they’re all right about me and I’m just some silly lamb who can’t cope on her own.

  “Is that Ngauruhoe?” Aroha sounded awed.

  “Yeah.”

  The mountain stood proudly on the rolling plains, cloaked in snow. Seeing it like this, Sheena could see where the stories of Ngauruhoe and the other North Island mountains warring their way across the landscape had come from. The mountain looked as though it might rear up at any moment.

  “Nice.” Aroha poked a finger accusingly at the camera; Sheena could just see her, reflected in the window. “But it’s not exactly Las Vegas, is it?”

  “I’m trying! Gotta do Roto-Vegas first, see the fam up there.” Rotorua. Sulfur City. She’d only been there once before, on a family road trip when she was ten. Old enough to keep herself out of trouble but not so old she goes looking for it, Nana had said, which was wishful thinking. Sheena never had any trouble finding trouble. Her sheep made sure of that.

  She caught her own eyes in her reflection and winced. Last time she’d been in Rotorua, thanks to her sheep’s blithe absent-mindedness, she’d wandered into a cordoned-off zone and found herself at the edge of a sinkhole bubbling with mud. Her sheep had pulled its head out of the clouds long enough to panic, she’d shifted… and front-page news on the local paper the next day had been the story of the plucky fire-service cadet who’d rescued a miniature lamb from a sizzling mud bath.

  Sheena’s mum still had the photo on her mantelpiece.

  “I can’t believe they’re making you visit all the rellies before you go on your OE,” Aroha said.

  Sheena turned the phone around so that she could see her cousin properly. It gave her time to bit
e back her automatic response: I can’t believe you’re not coming with me.

  The ‘Big OE’, or Overseas Experience, was a rite of passage for young New Zealanders. Pretty much everyone Sheena had been at school with had, facing a life cooped up on a tiny island at the bottom of the world, instead springboarded themselves as far overseas as they could manage to spend their early twenties bartending or waiting tables in the UK and the USA. Sheena was a little late off the mark, but she’d finally scraped together enough money for a plane ticket to the USA and a buffer to live off while she looked for work. Her visa had come through the month before, her flight was booked for a few days in the future, and the next stage of her life was so close she could almost taste it.

  “I can’t believe I’m actually going,” she said instead. “Everyone’s acting like I’m going to get myself murdered the moment I step off the plane.”

  “Just don’t absent-mindedly wander into any trouble. That shouldn’t be hard, right?”

  “Har, har.” Sheena sighed. “Seriously. And now I’m visiting all the rellies before I go… I feel like Mum arranged that just so I’d feel bad about leaving and change my mind. It’s having the opposite effect though.” She made a face. “Everyone keeps saying how much I’ve grown.”

  “They’re just trying to make you feel better.”

  “What, about being bigger than I was when I was pre-pubescent?”

  “All I’m saying is people saying that last time they saw you, you were knee-high to a grasshopper, doesn’t mean much when you’re now only waist-high.”

  “Hey! You’re just jealous because I won more A&P shows than you.”

  “I think you’ll find it’s my name on the rosettes, ya manus.” Aroha did the finger at the camera and laughed.

  “Your name and my codename.” The Agricultural and Pastoral show had been a key date on the calendar in the small town where they grew up. Local kids raised up sheep or calves during the spring and competed at the festival to see who’d produced the biggest and best-trained animal. Sheena had never won biggest… or most obedient… but she had a pinboard full of ‘Cutest Lamb’ rosettes at her parents’ house.