by Chant, Zoe
They were going to be fine. Work. Retreat. Get well enough to work again and put his gift to good use. He had a system, and it hadn’t failed him yet. These last few months had been harder than usual, but—this was going to work. It always did.
Without warning, pain shot through his skull.
“What the hell?” He jumped to his feet. Coffee spilled across the floor as his mug fell to the ground. Inside his head, his griffin was all fur and rustling feathers, defensively puffing itself up.
The pain was gone as quickly as it had arrived, but he didn’t let that fool him. Someone else was here.
Hardwick swore to himself and barged over to the door. Icy wind whipped against his face as he slammed it open. Snow, too. The flakes were the size of his fingernails, deceptively soft as they flurried through the open door.
There was no sign of anyone outside.
He narrowed his eyes, drawing on his griffin’s enhanced senses to see through the darkness more clearly. It strained inside him, its lie-sensing powers reaching out despite itself. Like scratching an insect bite even though you know it’ll make it hurt worse, Hardwick thought, his stomach clenching.
Nothing. No sight, or sound, of anything in the darkness surrounding the cabin. No sign of whoever it was that threatened his much-needed solitude.
On a winter’s night.
With snow deepening on the ground, and the air so cold it was biting the inside of his mouth.
Crap.
Hardwick ground his teeth. “Is someone out there?” he called. Then, using telepathic speech because given what Jackson had told him about this area, it was as good a bet that a shifter had gotten themselves into trouble on the mountain roads as a human: *Is someone out there?*
Chapter Three
Delphine
Was that a voice?
Delphine stopped moving. She willed her teeth to stop chattering and strained her ears until she couldn’t hear anything over the blood pumping through them, but it didn’t help. Compared to the rest of her family she might as well have been locked in a sound-insulated bubble.
She stumped back towards the car. The snow was coming down so fast it was settling in small drifts on her shoulders—she’d never seen anything like it.
She knew she should be worried that it was too cold, that the chill was slipping in the gaps between her hat and scarf, sticking icy fingers up her sleeves past where her gloves reached. But it wasn’t the thought of what might happen to her that scared her. It was the thought of how her family would react when—
“You’re being silly,” she scolded herself, and repeated the words she’d been trying to reassure herself with ever since she crashed. “That’s not going to happen. I’m going to get this car free—” Somehow, she added silently. “—and get back into town, and everything is going to be fine.”
Somehow.
She wrapped her arms around herself and looked over the car. It hadn’t moved since the crash, unfortunately. Its back wheels were still deep in the snowy ditch and its front wheels just touching the edge of the road. If she got the chains out of the trunk and put something under the front wheels for them to grip on, maybe she’d be able to get enough purchase for the four-wheel-drive to pull out of the ditch.
She repeated the plan out loud to herself, pretending she was explaining it to her boss. There weren’t any holes in it that she could see—at least none that her boss would have been able to see through.
Delphine bit her lip. A plan that her boss could not see any holes in was not necessarily a plan that had no holes in it. And now was not a great time for her to realize that she’d put so much effort into creating a Mr. Petrakis Worldview to guide her actions that she might have slightly lost track of how the real world worked.
In her defense, the plans she tested against the Mr. Petrakis Worldview were usually somewhat less potentially fatal than this one.
But driving in snowy or icy conditions were what chains were for, surely. She should have put them on the car before now, but she hadn’t been expecting the fresh snow, and the last time she’d been in Pine Valley the locals had grumbled about visitors using chains around town and messing up the roads. And—
And in short, she thought, sighing, she could come up with any number of excuses for why she’d gotten herself into this situation, none of which were going to help her get out of it.
But she had a plan.
“Everything’s going to be fine,” she reassured herself. Saying it out loud made it feel more real. She straightened her shoulders. Normally, she wouldn’t add this, but right now…
“It will be fine.” Her voice was almost a growl, which surprised her. Determination stiffened her spine. “Because I’m a Belgrave, damn it. A real Belgrave. No piddly snowstorm is going to stop me.”
Whether she believed the words or not, they helped. She leaned over the edge to open the driver’s side door, and carefully placed her foot in the same safe hole-in-the-snow she’d used to clamber her way out.
And missed.
Her foot hit not a convenient rock, but a hole—one that got deeper the more of her leg was in it. She struggled to get her weight back onto the leg that was still on the road, but it was too late.
She swung around, pivoting on the door handle and the complete absence of solid ground under her foot. The door shut, and she slammed against the side of the car; one foot dropping into nothing, one dragging behind her on the road, and her grip on the car door handle slipping.
Her heart thudded uselessly in her throat.
She couldn’t go down like this. God, how embarrassing. She just had to—to—
Not let go of the door handle.
As soon as the thought crossed her mind, her fingers slipped.
She toppled backwards. Something hit the back of her head, and everything went black.
* * *
The world fuzzed back into existence around her. Or maybe she was the fuzzy one.
Please, a part of herself that she thought she had gotten rid of long ago whispered. Maybe this is it—maybe it’s late, but I am a shifter after all.
It did happen. It had happened last Christmas, right here, in Pine Valley. A man who had thought he was a normal human for the first twenty-something years of his life had suddenly discovered he was a shifter. Delphine was a twenty-something. And if there was ever a time for her inner lioness to show up, this was it.
She moved her limbs tentatively and all hope went out the window. Human arms, human legs. No wings. Worse, they were moving sluggishly. She half-felt as though they weren’t her arms and legs at all.
“Damn it,” she croaked out. “I can’t die here. No real Belgrave would—would let a little thing like—”
Everything went black again.
* * *
The next thing she remembered was probably a dream. It could have been hours later, or seconds. She tried to move her arm. Something thudded against her side. It was dark: the same close, all-enveloping darkness that she’d breathed in so longingly before.
It didn’t seem as welcoming now. Or perhaps it was too welcoming.
Her lips shaped the words she’d been trying to say before. “A real Belgrave wouldn’t let this stop them,” she whispered, not sure if she was speaking out loud or just imagining it. “And I’m a real Belgrave. I…”
Was that a sound? A voice? Delphine strained against the smothering blackness, the cold and heavy weight of the night. Something appeared above her. A face. Dark eyes, staring at her with an expression that—that—
She groaned as shadows crept in at the edges of her eyes and everything went black.
Again.
Chapter Four
Hardwick
The world stopped spinning.
Hardwick moved by instinct. Long hours of training pushed him through motions his brain wasn’t capable of processing. Check for injuries. Check for breathing.
Curse himself for not moving faster, for not thinking ahead and bringing a blanket, something
warm, something to stop her body’s warmth from seeping out like water through a colander. Curse himself for hesitating when he first sensed her presence. For those few resentful seconds he’d spent wondering what the hell anyone else was doing out here, where he was meant to be alone. For the minutes he’d spent getting dressed again once he landed down here in human form, as though his goddamn modesty was the important thing here.
Pick her up. Check airways again. Watch her eyelids flutter. Watch her not wake up.
Wonder how long she’d been out here.
Hardwick pulled his heavy jacket off and wrapped it around her. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do. He laid her down carefully and shifted into griffin form. Snow cascaded around his wings. Some of it landed on the woman. He brushed it aside and carefully picked her up in his front claws. He felt like he was moving through tar.
He clutched the unconscious woman against his feathered chest and leapt into the air.
She was so still. A limp, heavy weight. He was acutely aware of the cold wind rushing past, the snow flurrying every thicker around him as he wheeled up towards the sheltered clearing where the hunting cabin was. Snow was already thick on the ground up here. His car was bumper-deep.
Her car had been more than half-buried. In a few hours, it would have been invisible. Wiped out by the fresh snow. She would have been—
He landed. Ripped the door open. Laid the woman on the sofa and shifted back into human form. Checked vitals. Breathing, pulse, all steady.
He remembered seeing an ancient hot water bottle in one of the cupboards and put water on the stove to heat. Blankets from the bed. Took off her boots and gloves, found feet and fingers cold but not ice-white. Blood still in them. Tucked the hot water bottle against her chest.
Found some clothes. Tucked himself against her chest, folding his body around hers, creating a pocket of warmth to protect her.
Slowly, horribly, the world started moving again. The numb shell that had surrounded Hardwick the moment he saw the woman lying helpless in the snow melted away. His griffin twitched and fretted, watching her out of his eyes.
She was a few years younger than he was, he guessed. It was hard to tell, with her face smoothed out by unconsciousness and gone pale with the cold. Her hair was honey-gold, darkened by patches of melting snow.
Questions there hadn’t been time for during the emergency welled up, unstoppable.
Who was she?
Where had she come from?
And before he could stop it, a cracked, resentful voice added its own question. The voice that crept into his thoughts when his headaches were at their worst, and the whole world seemed fixed on hurting him.
Because this was no ordinary woman. He didn’t know her, had never met her, but from the second he caught sight of her in the snow he’d understood on a level beyond ordinary senses who she was.
His soulmate.
And that broken voice inside him, the dark shadow of the man he wanted to be, whispered:
Why did fate tie me to a mate whose lies are so powerful I could hear her from a mile away?
Chapter Five
Delphine
Something smelled like smoke. Delphine’s nose twitched. Oh, good. Mr. Petrakis has left his curling tongs on again, she thought, and without opening her eyes, sat up and swung her legs off the side of the daybed.
Something else moved, too, something that she barely had time to register as warm and solid before it disappeared. Her brain put two and two together and came up with Oh, good, Mr. Petrakis has adopted another fashionable type of dog and set it on fire. She tried to stand up.
Her feet hit something soft and unmoving. She kicked at it, confused, and found there was something wrapped around her legs. And her head hurt. And—
Everything that had happened rushed back to her.
No curling tongs.
No smoking Samoyed.
No daybed in the corner of her office, where she stole a few minutes’ sleep after staying up all night managing Mr. Petrakis’s latest disaster.
Oh… good. It was only long training with her family that stopped her from swearing out loud. Was she still in the snow? Did she feel like she had something wrapped around her legs because her legs were completely numb from the cold? Was she dying? Was this what dying felt like? Like being trapped somewhere while your boss absent-mindedly set fire to his office bathroom and your head was sore and everything smelled like burning and… coffee…
“You’re awake.”
The voice was like a calming landslide. It rolled over Delphine’s sudden panic, flattening her wild thoughts so she could see them for the nonsense they were.
She opened her eyes.
She wasn’t stuck in the snow, or back at the office sneaking a micro-nap before her boss burst in with his latest grand plan. She was inside a room she’d never seen before, lying on a sofa she didn’t remember getting onto, wrapped in warm blankets.
The back of her head still hurt. She sat up—slowly, this time—and gingerly felt around the pain while she looked for the person who had spoken.
When she saw him, she went completely still.
Delphine believed in magic. Of course she did. She came from a family where people could transform into giant mythical beasts, for heaven’s sake. Where people could speak telepathically and bounce back from minor injuries like they were nothing.
Where every person had a soulmate they recognized on sight.
The ache in her head suddenly felt a long way away. Delphine had the strange sensation of being detached from her own body. That wasn’t unusual in itself—how many times had she felt like she was standing outside of herself and looking in, making sure she wasn’t letting anything slip?
What was unusual was the sensation of standing outside of herself and looking at someone else. Because once she saw the man who’d spoken to her, she couldn’t look away. Not even to make sure she was behaving correctly.
He was the most captivating person she’d ever seen. He looked—
Her eyes took him in greedily. He had dark hair and a hawklike nose beneath heavy, forbidding eyebrows and deep-set eyes; he was too far away and the light in the room wasn’t strong enough for her to tell what color they were. He was cleanshaven, with a strong jawline and…
…and…
She couldn’t look any further. Her eyes kept darting back to his. She felt as though she was searching for something. Like if she could just look at him for long enough, she would… she would…
She thudded back into her body with a gasp.
All at once, she was acutely aware of her breathing, her heartbeat, the sudden heat on her skin.
Oh, God.
She wished she didn’t have a name for what she was feeling. Or that it had a different name. Shock. Post-almost-dying syndrome.
No.
Love.
It had to be. Because what was happening… was exactly what she’d always been told would happen.
Eyes locking across a room. Breath catching in her throat. Everything else in the world fading away until it was just him, and her. A sudden, joyful desire—and with it, certainty so clear it might have been carved into her heart.
She’d just found her soulmate.
So why did falling in love feel so much like utter horror and dread?
Delphine’s lips were dry. She licked them, hunting through her own feelings. Where was the happiness? Where was the heart-deep joy, the contentment in knowing the rest of her life was sitting there in front of her?
Her brain was moving too slowly. She couldn’t understand herself. Then she focused outward, on him—on her mate—and found the answer.
He didn’t look as though he’d just stumbled upon the love of his life. His expression was neutral—no, it was deliberately neutral. Which meant it was actually wary, or watchful.
She knew that particular expression far too well to mistake it. It had taken most of her teenaged years to train herself out of it. Any Belgrave worth their salt c
ould tell when an expression said too little.
Delphine’s breath caught in her throat. She wasn’t sure whether it was hope or fear that stuck it there. She wasn’t sure of anything and she couldn’t remember the last time her own responses had been so unfamiliar to her. She didn’t know how to react. He wasn’t giving her anything to bounce off of, and that meant all she was left with was her own confusion.
The man’s eyes wrenched away from hers. It felt like someone had pulled her heart out through her chest.
“You’re awake,” he said. His voice was rough and went straight to a soft, vulnerable place inside her.
“Yes,” she agreed. That was something she could be sure of, at least. Solid ground. Solid-ish, at least. “Where… am I?”
“At a cabin I’m renting for Christmas,” he said. “Looked like you crashed your car. We’re a fair ways from the nearest town.”
He gestured towards a cell phone sitting on the kitchen counter. “I’ve been trying to reach someone in Pine Valley, but the call keeps cutting out. Weather’s playing havoc with the connection.”
That’s a relief. Delphine let her eyes sink shut. Weather too bad to make a phone call meant weather too bad to fly in, surely. And if her poor map-reading was in any way accurate, then she was too far out of town for anyone to expect to be able to reach her telepathically.
“Why the look of relief?”
Delphine’s eyes snapped open. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, smoothing the blankets. “I’m not relieved.”
He grimaced. “You don’t need to lie,” he said. “So, you’re not broken-hearted about missing Christmas. Big deal.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, forgive me. ’Cos when people drive halfway up a mountain in the middle of a snowstorm, they’re usually not trying to avoid their families.”