by Chant, Zoe
“I could see myself staying,” he said, pressing his lips against the top of Sheena’s head.
She stilled, then looked up at him. “What? Nah.”
“But you just said—”
“And what about your family? I know—” She waved away his objections. “—I know they’re not your pack anymore, but family doesn’t have to mean who’s related to you by blood, or by whatever we’re calling this hellhound stuff. Magic shit. It’s the people who are important to you. And you wouldn’t have come all this way to stop Parker from hurting everyone you left behind if they weren’t important to you.”
She’s right. For a moment, Fleance couldn’t find words. His face locked down, an automatic response in the face of uncertainty.
Then he realized he didn’t need words. He let everything he was feeling flood through the mate bond, and the only thing in the world shining brighter than his emotions were Sheena’s eyes.
“What about putting down roots?” he muttered. His voice seemed so inadequate compared to the twin suns of Sheena’s gaze.
She tipped her head back and narrowed her eyes mischievously. “What? Right here? With the other trees?” She smiled, wide and lazy and delighted. “I only said I thought I’d want to immediately put down roots. I don’t. I still want to go and see the world, and have adventures, and see what ridiculous trouble my hellsheep gets me into. I don’t just want to go on the trip of a lifetime, I want to have the life of a lifetime. With you.”
Fleance’s hellhound pricked its ears with excitement. Fleance’s face hurt, and it took him a moment to realize it was because he was smiling harder than he had in a long time.
“I’ve still got that plane ticket,” Sheena said.
“I can talk to the airline about bringing my return flight forward.”
“You can introduce me to your family. I want to meet them. And then…”
“Parker hurt a lot of people in a lot of places,” Fleance said gruffly.
“Then we’ll go to all those places.” Sheena pinched his chin and drew his face down to hers. “And we’ll make things right. For them, and for your hellhound.”
Fleance carried Sheena’s pack back to the house and waited while she rummaged through it for clothes that actually fit her. Sunset hit like a comet, roaring red and gold across the sky and falling into darkness and a bone-deep chill that had everyone except those with something to prove, or a house full of relatives to escape, huddling inside Fiona and Rena’s villa.
Outside, Sheena stretched her hands over the hot coals in the abandoned grill, soaking up the last of their warmth. Fleance wrapped his arms around her and frowned at the glowing coals. They pulsed, and new flames flickered up from them.
Sheena sighed contentedly. The sound went straight to Fleance’s heart and stuck there, like a dart made of pure light. “Ooh, that’s nice. I’ll keep you around.”
She relaxed into his arms. For a few minutes, there was nothing but the gentle hiss of the flames and the murmur of conversation from the house behind them.
Was it only a few weeks ago I was so worried about my hellhound’s behavior that I was jumping at my own shadow? Fleance tipped his head back and looked at the stars blazing in the night sky. Standing here, with his mate, that afternoon with Caine at the Puppy Express felt like a lifetime ago.
Just like his time with Parker felt a lifetime ago, and his world before that another lifetime again. He’d been pulled in so many different directions, and now, finally, he was anchored. Not putting down roots, but secure and whole with the woman who loved him.
A chill breeze ghosted across his face and he thought…
Sheena moved against him. *What are you thinking about?* she asked.
*Honestly?* Fleance closed his eyes.
*Honestly.*
Fleance breathed in slowly.
The air was crisp. It stank like rotten eggs, but it held the brisk chill of ice. There was snow on the distant mountains and Fleance was thousands of miles from the only home he’d only known, but in that moment, everything felt perfect.
He pulled Sheena close and kissed the top of her head, breathing her in. Clover honey and wild grass and open skies. But she was more than that, and the proof was all around him. She was wildness and freedom, solitude and endless adventure—and this core of loyalty and love was embodied by her family who’d come from across the country to check on her. Togetherness. Family.
*I’m thinking about Christmas again,* he admitted.
*Because the whole whānau’s here? The family,* she translated, and tucked his hands into her jacket pockets. *I suppose it is a bit Christmassy. Especially with the barbecue out.*
*It’s not too cold? I thought Christmas for you meant summer.*
She wrinkled her nose. *Of course it’s too cold. So? I’m from the South Island. It’s not summer unless it’s raining.*
*It isn’t raining now.*
She sighed and stared up at the clear, cloudless sky. *It might later.* She kissed him. *Or it might snow. I know it’s the middle of the year, but… Happy Un-Christmas, my love.*
Fleance held his mate close. She didn’t just let herself be held; she pressed herself against him, as thoughtlessly hungry for his touch as he was for hers. When he closed his eyes and focused on his pack sense, she was his sun; but here, lost in a kiss that filled his heart with light, they circled each other in perfect harmony. His alpha. His mate. The other part of his soul.
And his own soul, whole at last.
*Happy Un-Christmas,* he whispered, and his hellhound howled with happiness.
Epilogue
Sheena
“This is torture,” Sheena groaned, pressing her face against the car window.
“I thought I was the one with an inner dog,” Fleance laughed. “You want to roll down the window and stick your head out, be my guest.”
“Ugh,” Sheena groaned. “That’ll just make me feel more cooped up.”
They’d landed in Los Angeles—could it only have been a few days ago? After the twelve-hour flight from Auckland, Sheena’s hellsheep had been crazy with cabin fever. Unfortunately, while hellhounds were masters of staying out of sight, hellsheep were apparently not so keen on the idea. Her inner weirdo absolutely refused to let itself turn invisible, so instead of the leisurely days of trying to spy on celebrities that Sheena had planned, she and Fleance had rented a car and headed for the desert. Plenty of wide open spaces for her hellsheep to hoon around in, and, half a day’s drive away, a city that a lifetime of watching American media had promised Sheena would barely notice the presence of giant, fire-breathing livestock: Las Vegas.
And then Fleance had gotten a phone call from his old pack. Something had happened, and they needed all hands on deck.
There had been no time to hoon around the desert. No charging at exciting foreign rocks or finding out if tumbleweeds actually were like in the movies. No acting the wide-eyed tourist on the Strip.
Part of her was glad that Fleance had answered his old pack’s call. She had been deadly serious when she said that the people he’d left in Pine Valley sounded like his family, and packing up at a moment’s notice and racing to be with your family in their hour of need was what families did… as so recently illustrated by her own fam. Knowing that Fleance felt the same way made her feel soft and warm inside.
And another part of her could not get over the fact that the outside world was right there, right outside the window, all green and summery and probably full of delicious things to smell and nibble on and jump on and set on fire and she was stuck in the car.
It was a sheepy part of her. But it was still her.
She groaned again and stared up at the mountains that filled the sky ahead of them.
“We’re a few hours away from Pine Valley still,” Fleance said, peering in the same direction. “There are non-shifters living in town, so we still have to be careful, but you’ll be able to stretch your legs farther up in the mountains.”
A few hours? �
�Aaargh,” Sheena moaned as the open fields either side of the road made way for dense pine forest and they began to wind their way up into the hills. Her hellsheep flared unhappily inside her. A FEW HOURS? IT’S ALREADY BEEN SO MANY HOURS!
Twelve on the flight, overnight on the ground without being able to shift, hours and hours squeezed into the car—Sheena couldn’t blame her hellsheep for getting antsy.
EXACTLY! it boomed. AND IT’S NOT LIKE THERE’S ANYONE HERE TO SEE!
Which was true—the road was pretty empty, out here in the middle of nowhere…
RIGHT, THEN!
“Wait!” Sheena yelped, but it was too late. Her hellsheep shook itself like a dog and took form in a flurry of sparks. She just had time to hear Fleance swear before she dropped through the floor of the car. Damn it, hellsheep!
AHHH! SO MUCH BETTER!
Her hellsheep bounded alongside the car, kicking its heels and trailing smoke.
Fleance’s voice brushed against her mind. *Sheena?!*
*I’m all right!* she reassured him quickly. Her hellsheep baa’d with excitement and headbutted a tree. *Um, for a given value of ‘all right’…* she amended, feeling dazed. *My hellsheep couldn’t take it anymore. It—ow! Seriously? What did the tree ever do to you?*
HAHA! her hellsheep replied, unapologetic.
*I can’t sense anyone else around here,* she told Fleance as her hellsheep slurped in deep breaths of the fresh, green-scented air. *I just—I need to run! Better I get it all out now than when we meet your lot, right?*
He chuckled. *That depends. How likely is your hellsheep to introduce itself by exploding out in the middle of you shaking hands with my old alpha?*
*Oh, one hundred percent likelihood, minimum.*
*In that case I’d better leave you to it.*
Sheena barked out laughter. *Like you could stop me!*
*I could have fun trying.* The mate bond thrummed with promise… but Sheena’s hellsheep was having too much fun already.
*Later,* she said, and Fleance whispered:
*I’ll hold you to that.*
*Oh, really? You could have said ‘I’ll hold that against you’ and then I could say ‘You can hold me against one of these’—yeek!*
She broke off as her hellsheep landed on a fallen tree that immediately collapsed and sent her sprawling into a burbling creek. *I’m fine!* she called to Fleance. She sploshed upstream, water hissing around her hooves. *Still fine!*
Her hellsheep was in heaven. The forest here was mostly pine trees, but they were different varieties to the pinus radiata she was familiar with from home. Some had striking white trunks like silver birch or eucalyptus, and all filled the air with a pungent, invigorating scent that reminded Sheena of long summers back home in central Otago.
Long, hay fevery summers.
Her hellsheep sneezed a burst of flame. Shit! Sheena thought, and rushed to stomp out the flames before they could spread. Cool, yep, just burn down the mountain. Perfect way to introduce myself to Fleance’s friends and family. Just perfect…
*You still there, babe?*
Sheena focused on her pack sense—Fleance was a ways ahead of her, now. The road followed the curve of the mountain and she bounded up until she could see the hire car through the trees. Her nose was still tickling, and if she sneezed another fireball, she figured it might be useful to have another pair of feet nearby to help stomp it out. Or another four feet. Even better.
*Bad news,* she said, once she felt through the mate bond that Fleance had spotted her. *My hellsheep gets hay fever same as I do.*
*Is that just with hay, or…?*
*Pines. Grass. Anything that’s a plant and having a good time being alive.* Her hellsheep shook itself and she sniggered as something clicked in her mind. *Now I know what you meant about your heart saying it was Christmas when your head knew it wasn’t. I know it’s still half a year away, but…*
She closed her eyes and breathed in. The sun on her back, the ground warm and rich underfoot, the smells and lush greenness of all the growing things around her…
*This is SO Christmas.*
She sneezed again and swore.
*And so’s that, damn it!*
Fleance laughed. *Christmas in the summer seems so upside-down.*
*So amazing, you mean. How can you have Christmas without going swimming at the beach? Eating new potatoes with mint and butter, and fresh-caught fish on the barbecue, and a pavlova with strawberries and kiwifruit…*
*You mean kiwis?*
*I mean kiwiFRUIT! You put a kiwi on a pav, you’re going to have the Department of Conservation knocking on your door. And that’s without even talking about the most important Christmas tradition of having too much to eat or drink and finding a nice tree outside to take a nap under. How are you meant to have a post-Christmas-dinner nap under a tree in the middle of winter? You’d freeze!*
*There’s always the Christmas tree. But I thought you said summer where you come from was cold anyway?*
*Look, if you can’t handle a bit of Christmas sleet on your noggin while you sleep off Christmas dinner, then you clearly haven’t been celebrating enough. I don’t know what to tell you.*
*But you just said…* Fleance groaned. *You’re just going to keep talking me in circles, aren’t you?*
*Am I?* It might have been the hay fever, it might have been the sheer joy of running free through the woods and headbutting trees, but Sheena felt drunk. *Is that the sort of thing you might hold against me?*
*You’ll have to wait and see.*
*Aww…*
The sun curved down across the sky as they made their way up into the mountains. The light turned golden, as though the whole world was covered in a fine layer of pollen—which from Sheena’s perspective, it might as well have been.
*It’s beautiful up here,* she said. *I’ve always loved mountains.*
Something bright and hopeful flickered down the mate bond. *We haven’t talked about… maybe once we’ve run out of wanderlust, and things to fix…* Fleance’s voice was hesitant.
Sheena leaped onto an outcrop of rock that gave her a view back down the mountain. The landscape was wonderfully crumpled, and all covered in dense forest. She turned to peer further up wherever the road was leading and saw the distant shine of the late-afternoon sun reflecting off what had to be the roofs and windows of Pine Valley-the-town, as opposed to Pine-Valley-accurate-description-of-every-valley-she’d-run-through-so-far.
She was half a world away from home, and she had no idea what she’d find in the forest as she explored it further, or whether she’d like Fleance’s family and they’d like her, and she had a lot of wanderlust left, but…
*Maybe,* she agreed, and darted back to the road in time to see the worry on Fleance’s face melt into delight.
A few minutes later, her nose wasn’t the only thing that was tickling.
The wool on the back of her neck was prickling, as though someone was looking at her. Her hellsheep spun around several times, yelling HAH!, but there was no one there.
*Do you sense anyone around?* she asked Fleance, who was a hundred meters or so back down the road.
He paused before answering, and she could feel the care he put into checking their surroundings. *…Nothing close,* he said at last.
*Further up the mountain? Or behind us?* But that didn’t make sense. If she could feel someone watching her, they must be close, not so far up or down the mountain that Fleance couldn’t clearly sense them. Unless…
She looked up. Something flickered in the sky far above the treetops.
*Is that a bird?*
Fleance pulled over and craned his neck out the car window. “That’s not a bird,” he called over to her, just as the creature’s wings flared out and caught the late-afternoon sun.
Fleance
Fleance swore as he saw the flying creature’s wings glitter like black diamonds. “What the hell is he doing flying so far down the mountain?” he muttered to himself and reached out te
lepathically. Hopefully the kid wasn’t too far away…
*Cole,* he began warningly, just as Sheena’s voice exploded in his head.
*It’s a DRAGON!* she yelled. *I can’t believe it! A real dragon!*
“A real dumbass kid of a dragon,” Fleance grumbled. “Where are his parents? What are Hank and Opal thinking, letting him—”
He cut himself off, fully aware that it likely wasn’t a case of the Heartwells ‘letting’ their son fly out of the safe zone so much as a case of them turning their backs for the split second necessary for Cole to decide to stretch his wings.
Cole swooped closer, then canted his wings so he was hovering above the treetops. *Oh, darn, you spotted me!* he cried.
*A blind mole could spot you flying out in the open like that,* Fleance told him, and then realized Cole wasn’t angling his descent towards him. He was heading for the bursts of movement and shimmery flames where Sheena’s hellsheep was doing as poor a job of staying hidden as the dragonling was.
*Hey, Cole…* Fleance began. The last thing he wanted was the kid freaking out when he realized he was about to land in front of a stranger.
*WHEEE!*
Another voice chimed like a bell in his head, and Fleance’s chest seized up. Oh, God. Cole wasn’t the only rogue dragonling flying down the mountain: his little cousin, Ruby, was here as well, her brilliant red wings shining like her namesake as she did loops in the air.
Oh, God, Fleance thought. His hellhound was paralyzed inside him. Both of them?
He couldn’t fight the feeling that everything was about to go terribly wrong. Sheena was a stranger, of a shifter type no one in Pine Valley had ever seen before. Anyone who saw her wouldn’t see the sweet, infuriating woman he’d fallen for so suddenly and completely—they’d see a giant sheep with smoke pouring from her woolen coat, who was literally sneezing fire.
And the other thing they would see was him.
Not Fleance, who’d run into a burning building to save a woman he’d just met. Not the Fleance who’d stayed by that woman’s side as she defeated the most evil man he’d ever known, and who had finally found a pack and a place for himself that felt right.