Christmas Griffin: A Mate for Christmas #5

by Chant, Zoe

“And you’re a griffin shifter who feels lies like someone’s beating you up.” Her mouth twitched. “If I’m around my family—if we’re together when I’m with them—I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “You could tell them the truth.”

  She stared. “That isn’t an option.”

  “Why not?”

  “Is this an interrogation?”

  Sitting there on the other side of the table, she’d never seemed more distant. It was worse than before they’d touched. Before she’d shuddered beneath him, soft and delicate against his rough-hewn edges, but so full of longing it was as though she didn’t notice how delicate she was. The way she’d strained against him, wanting more of him, his touch and his roughness, and brought out a roughness in him he hadn’t known existed.

  She’d made herself vulnerable to him. Taken that open heart he’d laid out for her and opened hers in exchange. And they were right back where they started.

  Only worse, because now he was acting like that moment of vulnerability meant he got to tell her what to do.

  “Delphine, I—”

  “I said I don’t want to hurt you.” She stabbed her fork into a bite of lasagna, then put it down. Stood up, her eyes burning into his. “Don’t hurt me in return.”

  She grabbed her plate and stalked round-shouldered into the bedroom.

  Hardwick groaned.

  That could have gone better, he thought.

  His griffin shrugged its wings. He sighed, propping his head on one hand.

  It was right.

  Could have gone better? Really? For either of them, given who they were?

  * * *

  Later that night, he knocked on the bedroom door.

  “Delphine?”

  She wasn’t asleep. When he opened the door, she sat up against the bed’s headboard and tipped her head back. Her honey-colored eyes shone in the light from his side of the door.

  “I shouldn’t have said any of that,” he said. “I told myself I’d let you be. Before, when I hadn’t told you that I was your mate. Being your mate doesn’t give me the right to tell you what to do.”

  “Doesn’t give me the right not to be judged by you for it, either.” She gave a weak smile.

  “I can’t judge you. I don’t know what you’ve been through.”

  “And I won’t tell you.” Her smile became a grimace. “I guess we’re at an impasse. And it doesn’t matter anyway, does it? If we’re stuck here?”

  He gazed at her. At the hope in her eyes.

  “No,” he said. “Not if we’re stuck here.”

  “Spend the night with me?”

  He lay down on the bed beside her, holding her close and thanking the stars that she couldn’t sense the turmoil in his heart.

  Tomorrow was Christmas Eve. The blizzard showed no signs of blowing itself out. For the next few days, it was just going to be the two of them, together.

  Maybe that would be time enough for one of them to back down.

  His griffin shook its wings and he sighed.

  You’re right, he told it. Maybe that’ll be time enough for me to back down.

  He hadn’t lied to her. He wouldn’t tell her what to do or force her to let him meet her family if she didn’t want that.

  But she was still unhappy. And everything he was wanted to save her from that.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Delphine

  She had a plan. She could stay with Hardwick, out here, by themselves, and they could find their way together through the strange, magical, discomforting thing between them. Without the person she was in the outside world interfering.

  That was the plan. Then, on their third day together—Christmas Eve—the roof came down.

  The creaking had grown louder all night. In the morning, before she was awake enough to remember the difference between what she wanted to do and what she told herself she should be doing, Delphine made her way to the kitchen to stoke the stove and put on the kettle for more terrible coffee.

  Scones, she thought absently, then after caffeine. Even if it is terrible caffeine.

  She knew herself well enough to know that she was in the sort of mood where one spilled spoonful of flour or dropped piece of butter would send her into childish tears. It wasn’t just the lack of sleep. It was something under her skin. Restless, unhappy energy. Ready to snap.

  Nothing had ever gotten to her like this before. Not her boss’s blindness to the fact that he’d employed a non-shifter. Not the way she’d become so successful at blending into the background at her own family events that these days, nobody even asked if she wanted to join them on the wing. Not even her family’s snide remarks about her mother.

  She couldn’t let herself explode now. The thought of Hardwick seeing her lose it—

  Hardwick. Her surly, exhausted rescuer, whose life she’d completely interrupted and who treated her like she was a bomb about to go off, and yet who already felt like someone she had known all her life.

  Her mate.

  Her soulmate.

  It must be because he had figured out her secret, she thought. Her chest thudded strangely, and the roof groaned as though in sympathy. He knew her secret, but she hadn’t had to say anything. It was… it was almost as good as telling the truth.

  Wasn’t it?

  In the next room, the bed creaked as Hardwick rolled over. “Delphine—” he muttered. His voice was still rough with sleep.

  She bit back a moan. Did he have to say her name like… like that? Like he was having some sort of incredible dream?

  Why the hell had she gotten out of bed again?

  She cleared her throat. “Hardwick? Are you feeling up to some coffee?”

  “Delphine.” The sleepy roughness was gone now. He sat up, though, which provided new distractions: his sleep-ruffled hair. His face creased from the pillow. A slow blink, his expression vague and muddled, just for a moment, before the usual lines deepened around his mouth and eyes. “Do you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  The roof groaned again just as she said it, like it was trying to prove her a liar. She frowned. “It’s just the house settling, isn’t it? All that snow—”

  The groaning crescendoed into a tearing sound. Hardwick leapt to his feet.

  “Watch out!” he shouted, and before Delphine had time to wonder what she was watching out for, everything went white.

  * * *

  Really? Delphine thought. Twice in one week?

  Which answered the question of whether she was alive. Answered it before she’d thought of asking it, even. Which left… how?

  It took her a moment to remember that she had a body full of nerve endings she could use to figure that out. The shock of the crash felt like it had dislocated her mind. Bit by bit, she crept back into herself.

  “Ow,” she muttered.

  Her mind itched.

  “Hardwick?” she gasped. Now that her nerve endings were back online, she could tell she was on her back on the floor, covered with what felt like a heavy blanket. Or possibly the sofa. How the hell had the sofa gotten on top of her?

  Her left leg was cold. So was her right arm. She curled her fingers and felt snow crunch between them. Snow? Really? Inside?

  What happened?

  And why was the sofa moving?

  Her other hand squeezed into the tight gap between herself and the heavy lump and she realized with another thud that it wasn’t furniture on top of her. It was Hardwick, in his griffin form. He was crouched over her, his griffin body protecting her from whatever had just happened.

  The noise. The snow. Holy hell, had the roof caved in?

  Her fingers brushed against Hardwick’s… chest? Feathers, soft beneath her fingertips, transitioning to rough fur lower down.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  Her mind itched again. She gnawed on the inside of her cheek, frustrated. “Of course. I can’t hear you. I’m—I’m not hurt.” She was pretty sure that was the truth. “If you’re going
to try to move, talk to me. I can feel it, like an itch. If you’re not going to move—”

  If you can’t move. Her mouth went dry. If he was injured…

  “If you’re not going to move, don’t say anything, and I’ll know that’s what you’re trying to tell me.”

  Her mind itched.

  Oh, thank God.

  Hardwick stood up slowly. His huge chest heaved as he pushed himself off the ground, and his claws dug into the wooden floorboards. Something creaked above him. He was supporting what looked like half the roof on his back.

  He flicked his beak towards what a few moments ago had been the door. Delphine got the message at once. She shuffled on her elbows in the small space he’d created for her and scrambled free.

  Seconds later, Hardwick surged after her, shedding snow and broken beams.

  She got to her feet and gaped.

  The cabin looked as though a meteor had struck it. The roof was almost completely caved in. All that was left was most of one wall on one side and the remains of the solid old stove in the middle.

  The wind bit at her bare arms. She was still wearing the clothes she’d gone to bed in, Hardwick’s long-sleeved shirt and a pair of his boxers.

  He took one look at her, his eagle eyes sharp, and dug around in the ruins with his foreclaws. She caught his heavy winter coat when he threw it at her and pulled it on, then poked around and found her own boots while he hunted out clothes for himself.

  At least she’d left her boots at the front door. They were easy to find. Squashed, but easy to find.

  She pulled them on, ran her hands through her hair and shook out the bits of snow and splinters they dislodged, and muttered: “Well, shit.”

  Hardwick gave her a look that suggested the same sentiment was going through his mind. He tossed snow on the ruins of the stove, quenching the last of the fire.

  She gave him privacy while he shifted and dressed and leaned into his embrace when he wrapped his arms around her.

  “I guess this is it,” he murmured.

  Delphine pulled the heavy coat more closely around herself and turned around so they were facing each other. She pressed her face into the crook of his neck and sighed.

  “We’re heading back to Pine Valley.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Hardwick

  He’d half expected Delphine to drag her heels, but she was surprisingly efficient.

  She checked the power situation and turned off the electricity so they weren’t risking the house burning down after they left – or what was left of it burning down, anyway. She checked the rubble for a duffel bag and stashed all the extra clothes he managed to dig out into it.

  This was a side to her he hadn’t seen, he realized, as he watched her close her eyes and take a slow, deep breath. Her shoulders straightened, her spine uncurled, but somehow she didn’t seem any bigger.

  Delphine caught him looking at her and grimaced. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just, if we’re going back… I want to be ready.”

  He looked at her again and understanding struck. When her shoulders and back were curved in, she was drawing attention to herself. By straightening up, she made herself more neutral. Her pose, her expression, the way she moved—it was all designed to let her slip through the world unnoticed.

  “What?” Delphine asked, and he explained his theory. Her lips twitched. “Well, it’s a good thing none of my family are as observant as you are. Come on. Let’s… get this over with.”

  They would go to the car first, they decided. Part of Delphine’s new careful neutrality was making sure she arrived back in Pine Valley with the bottles of port she’d left it to buy.

  The bottles were frozen solid. One of them had burst, and Delphine looked at it for longer than Hardwick was comfortable with before closing the trunk on it. When she caught him staring at her, his massive griffin’s head tipped to one side, she explained with an uncomfortable smile, “I wondered if it might be useful, somehow, still, even though it’s broken. I don’t think so, though.”

  She rolled the intact bottles in spare clothing and secured them in the duffel bag.

  He held the duffel in one foreclaw and knelt down so she could climb onto his back. She was more confident this time.

  He wasn’t. The one good thing about her plan to drive into town by herself, he’d reckoned, was that it meant less time when he was terrified out of his mind thinking he was going to drop her. Now? He had to fly close enough to town that they could walk the rest of the way, while keeping out of sight of anyone else taking advantage of the good weather to explore the snow. It was a job for agility and speed, sharp turns to take cover in the trees or drop to the ground and camouflage himself among the rocks. Not a job for keeping his mate in one piece.

  He gingerly took to the air.

  They would go to the Heartwells. That was the plan. Hardwick hadn’t met them, but after he explained to Delphine where exactly she’d crashed the car in relation to the town, she’d decided the Heartwells’ home was closer than Jackson’s place. They could bypass the town entirely and only be in danger of being seen by the most intrepid Christmas Eve cross-country skiers.

  The Heartwells’ lodge. Hardwick had never seen it, but Delphine’s instructions had been clear enough. Farther up than the town, in another of the steep, snow-filled valleys that these mountains were full of.

  She was sure the dragon shifters would help. Hardwick was less sure, but at least they’d be among shifters, on the shifters’ home turf. He wouldn’t have to worry about the background ache of being around people who were constantly, whether they realized it or not, lying about their true natures.

  Not around people, anyway. Person. Delphine was still—

  *!!!*

  What was that?

  His griffin flared its wings in surprise. Delphine squeaked and tightened her grip on his feathers.

  “What is it?” she asked as he hovered in place.

  He didn’t know. Even if he could talk to her, he wouldn’t have anything to say.

  Hardwick reached for the glowing mate bond, trying again to send something, anything through it. Reassurance? Calm? Again, the light slipped through his fingers.

  *!!!*

  It wasn’t a noise. It felt like telepathy, except it wasn’t words. Hardwick banked his wings, coasting over the snow-covered tips of the trees as his griffin raked the landscape for any sign of what could have made the not-sound.

  They were still out of sight of the town and the lodge. The mountain landscape here looked untouched: smooth snow lay like a comforter over dark tumbles of rock and sky-piercing pine trees. Hardwick knew better than to believe that. Hell, the town was called Pine Valley. It had probably been a forestry outpost before the local industry had switched over to tourism. Mining, too, maybe. That picture-perfect snow probably hid abandoned mineshafts, rusted tools—any number of dangers.

  A ridge pushed up towards the sky ahead of them. The lodge should be visible from the other side; he could see the cut in the trees where the road wove its way to the lowest part of it, a gentle dip that didn’t deserve the name ‘saddle.’ Careful to keep far enough from the road that no one driving on it could see him, Hardwick swooped around, preparing to climb over the—

  *Fire! Come on, flames! Go!*

  He would have liked to say he was prepared that time. Instead, his griffin almost jumped out of the air.

  “Hardwick!” Delphine yelped. She boosted herself closer to his head, arms wrapped around his neck. “Is everything all right?”

  Hardwick swung his head from side to side, searching. He still couldn’t see anything, but he could definitely hear it.

  Someone was out there. Some... kid?

  The voice didn’t sound like an adult. Hardwick frowned. He looked for a clear patch of rock and landed.

  Delphine slipped from his back. “What’s the matter? The Heartwells should be just over that ridge.”

  He waved one wing at her and concentrated on shifting. She tur
ned away as he transformed—then turned back, hesitantly. Her cheeks were already red from the cold, but he imagined they would have gotten red then, anyway.

  “About that whole shifting-with-your-clothes thing—” she began.

  He cocked one eyebrow at her. “You’re not enjoying the view?”

  She didn’t need to answer; the sparkle in her eye and the tilt of her chin as she made a show of looking away were answer enough. Then she went serious. “I told you my family take that sort of thing seriously. I still think we should do whatever we can to not force a meeting, but…” She sighed and shook her head.

  She’s ashamed of me. The thought had legs.

  Delphine wrapped her arms around herself. “Don’t get me wrong. No one would say anything to your face. But they’d say it in a way that hurt.” She stretched out one hand to brush against his forehead.

  She wasn’t ashamed of him. She was concerned.

  “Emotionally or because of my power?”

  “A true Belgrave would never limit themselves to just one,” she replied acerbically.

  “Sounds like a lot of chest-thumping bullshit.” He pulled on his pants and jacket.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Belgraves would never be so crass as to thump their chests.”

  Hardwick finished fastening his jacket and turned to her. “Delphine, you know I don’t care what other people think of me, right?”

  She bit her lip and looked away.

  Right. She cared.

  Hardwick pushed away a sudden prickle of unease. Was she ashamed of him? Was she—no. He shook his head.

  “I landed because I thought I heard something.”

  “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “Telepathically.”

  Delphine almost managed to hide her wince. “Oh.”

  He wrapped one arm around her. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I know.” She leaned her forehead against his shoulder. “I just... need to get my head back in the game. I can’t slip up like that once I’m back around my family.”