by Zoe Chant
They would see Flea. Hopeless Flea. Dangerous Flea. Flea who set fires, and hurt people, not saved them. Flea who couldn’t control his hellhound when faced with people who were breaking the rules…
…and two dragonlings taking a joyride down the mountain definitely counted as breaking the rules.
He could see it all unrolling, scene by scene. Cole and Ruby startled by Sheena. Him trying to reassure them, and it only getting worse, because of course the Heartwells would have warned their children away from him. And if any of the adults turned up…
His mouth went dry as his psychic senses pricked, alerting him to several shifter presences right at the edge of his awareness.
*Sheena,* he began, his voice halting, *it might be best to shift back for this.*
*Oh, no, really? I’m not sure my hellsheep bothered to bring my clothes with me this shift, and I don’t want to introduce myself to your friends in my birthday suit…*
He tried to keep his feelings under control, but a tendril slithered out along the mate bond.
Sheena paused. *Wait, you’re seriously worried about this, aren’t you? What’s wrong?* She yanked on the mate bond, and Fleance had a sudden vision of her pulling it up to her eyes and inspecting it. *Tell me what’s the matter, and I’ll—*
A booming echo replaced her voice in his mind, all he could hear of what was her hellsheep no doubt making terrible threats. The opposite of what he needed. He hurried out of the car.
*Cole, Ruby,* he called warningly. *I’m over here!*
*It’s cool, I see you!* Cole yelled back, flying in the wrong direction. *In the woods!*
*No, I’m back here, on the—* On the road. His brain seized. Was he really about to ask two shifted dragonlings to meet him on the main road into town? What if one of Pine Valley’s human residents drove past?
Before he could unfreeze, Ruby barreled into Cole in midair and they both dropped down through the canopy. A shriek cut through the air. Fleance broke through his fears and ran.
His hellhound bristled beneath his skin, half desperate to break out and run faster towards Sheena and the dragonlings, half cringing with guilt and misery with the knowledge that that would make him seem like more of a threat.
Ahead of him, branches cracked. Smoke billowed. Shrill dragonling voices shrieked and roared. He burst through into the clearing that his pack sense told him was where Sheena was, expecting the worst, and found—
Sheena laughing in delight. Smoke puffed out of her mouth. *You’re a lot smaller than I thought dragons would be,* she said to Cole, who was standing in front of her, jaw hanging open. *And YOU’RE even smaller!* she added, craning her neck to look at the tiny bright-red dragon clinging to her back.
*You’re not Flea,* Cole said, shrinking down.
Sheena laughed. *No, I’m Sheena! I’m a hellsheep shifter! What’s your name?*
*Umm…* Cole murmured, but Ruby jumped up, wings spread wide and tail whipping back and forth. Fleance’s chest relaxed. Sure, Cole had gone suddenly shy, but he wasn’t freaking out. Maybe this wasn’t going to be a disaster after all.
*CAN BREAV FIRE!* Ruby crowed, and demonstrated.
Or maybe it still was, he thought, as a nearby bush caught fire.
*WOW! WHAT A POWERFUL DRAGON!* Sheena boomed. *Er, I mean, oh dear! That’s very cool but very unsafe, too! Fleance!*
Fleance ran over as she tried to stomp out the fire.
*Flea!* Cole piped up happily. *I thought I saw you but it was this lady instead!*
“What are you two doing this far down the mountain?” Fleance asked, half-distracted as he helped Sheena stamp on the flames.
*Um…* Cole said again, twiddling his foreclaws innocently.
*Oh, sh—sheesh. Fleance, this isn’t working!* Sheena’s voice was tight. *Look!*
She stomped on a burning branch—and it caught fire more.
*It’s my hellsheep!* Sheena all but wailed. *It thinks this is FUN!*
*BIG FIRE!* Ruby chirped, and belched out another fireball from her seat on Sheena’s back. Sheena spun round and made the fire bigger as she tried to squash it.
*Oh, come ON, hellsheep!* she yelled.
A shadow passed over the clearing and the hairs on the back of Fleance’s neck stood on end.
*Some help here, Fleance!* Sheena called out, half-laughing. He barely heard her. *Oh, sh—*
Oh no, Fleance’s hellhound muttered. Fleance was already tense; now he felt like his bones were about to crack under the strain. What?
They’re here…
*More dragons!* Sheena squeaked. *More… bigger dragons! Oh, God, Fleance, I hope no one but you heard that.*
The whole Heartwell clan was there. Cole’s parents: Opal, with her shining iridescent scales, and Hank, who was classic dragon green. Jasper Heartwell, Opal’s brother and Ruby’s father, had scales the same multitude of colors as his gemstone namesake, shimmering oranges and reds and browns. The three dragons folded their wings and landed, twining their long, sinuous bodies between the trees without disturbing a single branch.
*Hey, kiddos,* Jasper said, and Ruby trilled with excitement. She leaped off Sheena’s back and flapped towards her dad, who caught her in one clawed hand. *Having fun, firecracker? Who are your new friends?*
Movement at the corner of Fleance’s eye made him twitch around. He put a warning hand on Sheena’s hellsheep’s shoulder.
Shadows were pouring through the trees. They resolved into three hellhounds. Rhys was wiry and thin, Manu pure tank, and Caine was all alpha, twice the size of the others. Fleance’s pack—except not anymore. He had been so distracted by the dragons he hadn’t even sensed their approach.
*Hello again, Flea.* Caine sounded—not unkind, or wary, but exhausted. If he’d been in human form Fleance could imagine him rubbing his forehead. *You got my message? I wasn’t expecting you back so soon.*
There was a tinge of guilt in his voice, and before Fleance could decode it, Caine stepped between him and Cole.
“We were already in the country,” Fleance said, trying to sound confident. It came out as half a growl.
The edges of his mind buzzed: a hurried psychic conversation was going on, without his involvement.
He didn’t need to hear what they were saying to know what they were talking about. It was obvious the moment the other shifters’ stances turned from casual-bordering-on-wary to defensive.
*Huh?* Sheena murmured.
*Flea—it’s fine. The dragonlings were just playing. They’re not endangering themselves or anyone else.* Caine’s voice was pure alpha. Controlled, with the burn of a warning beneath each word.
Other voices filled his mind, jagged-edged. Voices not meant for him, but the shifters who were speaking were too panicked to keep their telepathy private.
*Remember what happened at the Puppy Express—*
*He chased that fraternity group all the way to Sweetheart Lake before you caught up with him—*
*Kids! Get behind me, now!*
All the blood drained from Fleance’s body. The Heartwells, his old pack—they weren’t happy to see him. They were afraid.
Cole stared at his parents, confused, and looked back at Fleance uncertainly. Fire flickered behind him.
Setting forest fires in the middle of summer. Talk about breaking all the rules meant to protect people and the land they lived on.
Everything he knew they thought about him pounded against his mind. Dangerous—untrustworthy—weak—
The mate bond strained like a kite string in a storm, and Sheena pulled it taut.
*Fleance—what? No. You’re none of those things. You know that. I know that.* She leaned into his touch and shifted. *And if anyone here thinks otherwise…*
In human form again, she looked slightly singed around the edges, with one shoe and the hem of her shirt missing, but she didn’t pay any attention to how much of her clothes she’d been able to shift back with.
He met her eyes. She wasn’t afraid, or panicking, or hor
rified. Her excitement at meeting dragons and his old pack, and embarrassment at all the fires, and concern for him, all poured through the mate bond—and met his rising terror halfway there.
Her eyebrows snapped down and Fleance’s breath cracked as she trampled his terror beneath a flood of love. Don’t be afraid, the light connecting his heart to hers seemed to say; there’s nothing to be afraid of here. Not with your mate beside you.
Fleance’s hellhound raised its head. He straightened his shoulders. The fire all around them crackled against his senses and suddenly, his power twisted inside him, fueled by Sheena’s faith in him.
He lifted one hand and closed his fist. The fire died.
*Now that’s new.* The largest hellhound shimmered and transformed into Caine, who walked forwards, hands in pockets. His eyes searched Fleance’s and he frowned. “So your hellhound—wait. I don’t understand. Why can’t I sense you in the pack anymore?”
Fleance was surprised at how easily a smile came to his face. Then again, with Sheena’s love like the sun in his chest, maybe he shouldn’t have been. He put one arm around her and pulled her close.
“I’m afraid that’s my fault,” Sheena said, with more than a trace of smugness in her voice. She put a possessive hand over his on her waist.
Caine looked at them both, and the exhausted wariness on his face relaxed into a smile. “I’m glad to hear it. Caine Guinness.” He extended one hand and Sheena took it.
“I’m—” she began, and Ruby let out a shriek of excitement.
*FIRE SHEEP!* she screamed, and even the full-grown dragons winced at the force of her psychic voice. Then she leaped out of Jasper’s claws. *COME BACK! BREAV MORE FIRE!*
*Firecracker, no!* Jasper yelled, and she shrieked unhappily and belched fire into his face. Jasper swore, and then made a strangled oh-God-I-swore-in-front-of-my-toddler noise. *Firecracker, spitting fire at people isn’t very nice…*
Behind him, Opal rolled her pearlescent eyes. *Maybe if you gave her a different nickname…*
Fleance clenched one fist. The fire went out. “It’s fine, it’s not a—”
*NOOO! MY FIIIIIRES! NOT FAIIIIR!* Ruby howled, and threw herself onto the ground. Which she immediately set on fire.
*Why are you complaining?* Cole piped up. He flicked his tail at Fleance. *He can make the fire stop, right? So there’s nothing to worry about!* He punctuated this speech by sending a rope of flame shooting towards a tree Ruby was heading towards. She shrieked and aimed her next fireball at his head. He ducked, and another tree caught fire.
Fleance stepped up before anyone else could move, and extinguished the fires.
“OK, kids, I get you’re having fun and all, but—”
*WANNA HAVE ADVENTURE! WANNA FIRE!*
“You can’t just—”
Giggles filled his mind. Sheena was doubled over with strangled laughter. She bit her lip as their eyes met. *At least I’m not the one setting everything on fire?* she said, and covered her face as she gave in to laughter. “Oh, God, Fleance, it looks like we came back at just the right moment after all.”
“It… does,” Caine said slowly. He looked Fleance up and down. Fleance shot him a distracted smile and snuffed another fire. For a power he’d only learned how to use a minute ago, he was sure getting a lot of practice.
Cole whined something about it not being fair that he had to share his adventure with his cousin, which turned out to be a feint to distract his parents as Ruby tried to make her escape. Jasper hauled off after her in human form, his dragon form too big to follow her between the trees. Rhys yelped a warning as another fire kindled beneath Hank’s tail.
And in the middle of it all, Caine laughed.
Fleance clenched his fist again, snuffing another patch of fire, and stared at him in amazement.
“I was worried, but… You sorted out your problem, then?” Caine asked, wiping his eyes.
Fleance looked around. Rule-breaking and havoc abounded, and his hellhound wasn’t rearing to lay down the law—it was ready to jump in and cause some havoc of its own.
And there was Sheena. Still laughing. As though she sensed him watching her—and of course she did—she lifted one hand and pointed behind him. He sensed fire brewing in a dragonling’s nostrils without having to look and extinguished Ruby’s fireball with a smirk.
Not a smirk like Parker would make when he looked out over the results of his latest con job, or the paralyzed, rigid expression Fleance and his packmates would find plastered to their faces as they tried not to let their true feelings show. A full-hearted, absolutely smug and glorious smirk at the knowledge that it would never again be just him against the world and all of the dangers in it. It would be him, and Sheena, together, and whatever dangers they faced, they outmatched them by far.
“Yes, I sorted it out. And then some,” he told Caine.
When the forest was once again fire-free, Fleance and Sheena piled back into the car and drove the rest of the way up the mountain. The dragons peeled off into the clouds before they reached town, leaving Sheena, Fleance and the other hellhounds on the road to the Guinnesses’ property.
The Guinnesses lived in a stone and wood house surrounded by forest. Fleance had first seen it in the winter, when he, Rhys and Manu had slunk up to Caine and Meaghan’s doorstep to beg a place in their pack. Then, it had looked like something out of a fairy tale, glowing warm and bright amid the snow-covered pines and dark, icy night.
Now, mid-summer, it was as though that magic had seeped out to color the house’s surroundings. Pale new growth tipped the branches of the trees, and small flowers clustered around the house’s foundations and patchworked the yard.
But none of that was what made Fleance’s stomach flip as he got out of the car. He looked across at Sheena as she stepped out onto the drive, and she raised her eyebrows. Did she feel it, too?
He and Sheena weren’t the only new thing in town. No wonder Caine’s message had been so tense.
Caine was already there, sitting on his haunches in front of the house. When Fleance and Sheena got out of the car, he shifted back to human form, and cleared his throat.
“You must be wondering why I didn’t come after you to help sort out Parker,” Caine said.
Fleance hadn’t. He’d thought it was up to him, alone, but somehow, standing here in front of his old alpha’s house with his new pack bond bright inside him and the echo of the Guinnesses’ pack bond running over everything he could see was giving him a new perspective. He could see at last how much this place had felt like home, even when he didn’t trust himself, or believe he deserved a home.
Sheena slipped her hand into his and squeezed it.
“Is it all right that I’m here?” she asked Caine. “I mean—I can feel this is the heart of your pack. Somehow. Is there a ceremony, or…?”
Caine looked flummoxed. “God knows. But you’re welcome here, of course you are. Both of you. Pack or not, Fleance, you’re one of us, and your mate is, too.”
“You need to get started writing that manual,” Fleance joked.
“That sounds like a task I could hand off to you, now,” he replied, grimacing.
Sheena asked what they were talking about, and when Fleance explained, snorted. “I’ll write the manual, and then you’ll both be sorry.”
“Please. Both of you come in, and—” Caine took a deep breath and gestured helplessly. “I don’t want you to think I abandoned you. Meaghan was onto me to go after you as soon as Rhys and Manu let slip where you’d gone. She was right. Or maybe she was just sick of me trailing after her like an anxious puppy. But things happened—early, not too early, but sudden. Opal came at once, of course, and she’d helped Abigail when Ruby was born, so she knew what she was doing, but it was still…”
Sheena gave Fleance a worried look. He had a strong suspicion he looked petrified, himself. Then Meaghan, Caine’s mate, called from inside the house:
“For God’s sake, Caine! Stop terrifying them and bring them insi
de!”
*It was the most terrifying moment of my life,* Caine muttered to Fleance as he opened the front door for them.
Meaghan was in the living room, ensconced in a throw rug with the sun streaming in and turning her dark curls into a halo around her head.
She smiled as Fleance and Sheena came in. “He fainted,” was the first thing she said, and Caine groaned out loud. “Not that I’m meant to tell you that. Protecting his alpha dignity, et cetera.”
“You were just glad I got myself out of the way,” Caine accused her, ducking to kiss her on the forehead.
“The floor isn’t ‘out of the way’!” she grumbled. It sounded like a well-worn conversation. Fleance barely heard it.
He was speechless. If he needed any more proof that Caine trusted him, this was it. Tucked up in Meaghan’s lap were two tiny babies, their scrunched-up faces and fluffy tufts of hair enough to break any shifter’s heart.
“Meet Lola and Hamish,” Meaghan said, as Caine slipped onto the sofa beside her and took one of the twins. “The newest members of our pack—but… not your pack, anymore?” She stared hard at Fleance, as though she was trying to look inside him, then blinked and rubbed her forehead. “It might just be the sleep deprivation talking, but…”
Fleance was speechless again. Meaghan was human; so far as he’d been aware, she’d never been able to sense the pack bonds before. But Abigail Heartwell was human, too, and she’d said that after she had Ruby, she had been able to connect to her daughter psychically. Maybe the same was true with hellhound mothers, with added pack sense?
Caine picked up her hand from her forehead and kissed it. “You’re right,” she told her. “He’s broken the pack bond somehow.”
“By forming another.” Fleance was surprised. His voice didn’t come out choked, or surly. It was warm and heady with pride. “Sheena, this is Meaghan, Caine’s mate. Meaghan—Sheena Mackay. My mate, and the reason Parker isn’t going to be a danger to your family or anyone else, ever again.”
Meaghan’s eyes lit up. “So, you’re your own alpha now?”
“Well…” He exchanged a look with Sheena. “That depends. What day is it?”