Christmas Griffin: A Mate for Christmas #5

by Chant, Zoe

  “Hardwick—” Delphine hissed under her breath. Her hand found his and squeezed it tight. “Don’t—”

  “Not exactly, my dear,” Mrs. Belgrave said, the words dropping from her mouth like poison. She looked down the table again and then shut her eyes, like a martyr praying for strength. “True Belgraves would never need to be saved, of course. I would be happy to count those who marry into the family in that, but I’m afraid that history—”

  “Hey,” Anders called out. “Are you talking about our dad?”

  “Would anyone like some more coffee?” Delphine said desperately.

  “—history is against us in that respect. And thus, sadly, Belgraves may indeed find ourselves called upon to save other Belgraves. Whatever the cost.”

  “And without weighing up whether the possible benefits are worth it.”

  Outrage roared against the inside of Hardwick’s skull. It wasn’t the pain of lies—it was a telepathic scream, as wordless and intense as dragonling Cole’s had been when he was caught in the snow. Even Delphine winced and hissed in a breath.

  Her eyes flew to his. “What was—oh, no.”

  Anders and Vance were both standing up, their faces stormy. “What do you mean, possible benefits?” Anders growled.

  Opposite them, their mother tried fruitlessly to reach across the table and tug them back down into their seats. Hardwick couldn’t hear her whispered pleas, but he got the gist.

  The two elder Belgraves stared at the commotion with equally disdainful expressions. “I meant exactly what I said,” Alastair sniffed.

  “Yeah, which is? Come on. If you’re going to say it, say it!”

  “No...” Delphine whispered. Hardwick stood up and touched her shoulder.

  “All right,” he said out loud, pitching his voice to convey rationality and level-headedness, “let’s hold off a minute and stay calm, not-”

  “All I am saying is—don’t look at me like that, Delphy, if she didn’t want to hear it then she should have kept your brothers in line—is that if one is going to save someone, it’s best to think of the overall benefit of that, versus the risk. Now, I’m not saying that Dominic wasn’t—”

  “FUCK YOU!”

  Vance launched himself down the table. He flattened one of his cousins face-first into his breakfast, and sent glasses and water jugs flying.

  “How dare you!” he yelled. “You’ve always treated our Mum like you were ashamed of her, and now you say Dad should have let her die? You talk so much shit about family and it’s all lies!”

  “You don’t care about family at all!” Anders had grabbed Vance, but he seemed more interested in making sure he had his own say than stopping his twin from fighting his way down the table. The others on that side of the table were standing up, now, trying to hold the teenagers back. “Everyone hates you but they’re too scared to say it! No wonder Delphy doesn’t want to tell you she’s not a shifter!”

  Silence fell. Delphine staggered, as though the silence had hit her physically. Vance turned around and pulled Anders into a headlock with his arm over his mouth. Too late.

  Then the whispers started.

  “Pretend to be a shifter?”

  “What’s he saying?”

  “But Delphy is a... isn’t she?”

  “She never had a First Flight.”

  “Her father had just died!”

  Mr. Belgrave drew himself up. “Yes. Your father had just died, Delphine. Our only son. Perfect timing for you, was it? Giving up your First Flight, hiding yourself in your studies...”

  “It wasn’t like that!” Delphine protested. Which was the truth.

  “You lied to us all.” Her grandmother’s voice quavered artistically. Hardwick got the feeling she wasn’t surprised at all. There was something in her eyes that was more triumphant than shocked.

  Delphine was shaking. Her eyes twitched from side to side, hunting for a way out. When she found it, she let out a ragged sob. “Fine. I lied.” The words sounded like they were being torn out of her. “It’s—it’s exactly what Hardwick said. I lied because I knew you’d never accept me if I wasn’t a shifter. I lied to—to protect myself.”

  Lies. Hardwick jerked. His griffin leaned forward, tearing at the sentences with its beak.

  I lied.

  True.

  I lied because I knew you’d never accept me if I wasn’t a shifter.

  True.

  I lied to protect myself.

  Lie.

  Hardwick felt as though a rug had been pulled from under him. All this time he’d assumed she was lying to secure her own place in the family. But if she wasn’t lying to protect herself, who was she trying to protect?

  His mind echoed with the pressure of a dozen frenzied psychic conversations going on at once. Even adults lost their fine control of telepathic speaking when they were upset. But two voices cut through the others, directly to Hardwick’s mind.

  *Tell her I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m so sorry—*

  *He didn’t mean it, please tell her that, neither of us were going to say anything we promise—*

  Delphine’s brothers sounded close to tears. But he didn’t have time for them. Delphine had staggered to her feet, her face bone-white.

  “Let’s just go,” she muttered, her voice broken. She rubbed her hands through her hair, her fingers digging at her scalp. “Everyone’s—I can’t—please, I have to leave.”

  “Don’t be so hasty, Delphine.” Her grandmother’s voice was sickly-sweet. “You were only a child.”

  “Oh, God.” Delphine closed her eyes. She clenched her fists and turned slowly back to her grandparents. Hardwick watched her pull herself together vertebra by vertebra, gathering her fragmented dignity to herself. “I was old enough to know what I was doing, Grandmother. And it’s not like I ever stopped. I lied! Blame me!”

  “But isn’t there someone else we should be blaming, Delphy?”

  “No one,” she gritted out.

  “It’s not your fault you’re not a shifter, after all.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Delphine

  No. This couldn’t be happening.

  Delphine tried her best to erase the last thirty seconds from her memory. As though ignoring it would mean it hadn’t happened. As though she could stop her skull from rattling as half her family tried to shout at her telepathically and wipe away the looks of horror and disgust on every face she turned to.

  “How long have you known?” Her grandfather’s voice cracked like a whip.

  Delphine’s throat worked. What was the best thing to do? Keeping the peace wouldn’t work anymore. There was no peace to keep.

  And she couldn’t lie. She didn’t let herself glance at Hardwick, but she felt his presence beside her and in her heart. The memory of his face going grey under the onslaught of Belgrave boasting was fresh in her mind.

  No peace. No lying.

  Just one chance, if she was lucky, to stop the real truth from escaping after all this time.

  She stuck her chin out. Be fierce. Be arrogant. Be a Belgrave, for the last time in your life. “Trying to figure out how long I fooled you?”

  “How long you’ve been lying to us!”

  “What, your Belgrave family-ing didn’t clue you in all this time?” She tossed her hair—actually tossed her hair, like the feisty governess in one of her grandmother’s novels. “I’m surprised. There were a few years, before I left for uni, that I thought you’d figured it out and were keeping quiet to try and salvage the family honor, or something.”

  “How dare you!” her grandfather bellowed, which was wonderfully to plan even if it did make her want to run and hide, but her grandmother was worryingly clear-eyed.

  “Alastair,” she murmured, and her husband reined himself in. “You know, we really can’t blame her. Even now, she’s only trying her best to distract us from the real problem, the poor dear.”

  “You absolutely can blame me.” Delphine spoke through gritted teeth.


  One of the angry bees buzzing against her mind stopped. A second later, Anders shouted: “I’m sorry! I was just trying to protect—”

  “Protecting your family, is it?” Her grandmother raised her eyebrows. “It appears that there is a bit of that going around. As though proper Belgraves ever needed to be protected. Of course, now it’s all out in the open. We all know exactly how much of a Belgrave—”

  “I’m not protecting anyone but myself!” Delphine snapped before she could get any further.

  She was only thinking of one person, then, and of the raw, torn emptiness that had opened up inside her when her brother yelled out her secret.

  Hardwick choked off a curse. His hand came down heavily on her arm, and the back of his own chair. She spun to support him, and by the time she turned back to glare at her grandparents and try to get the conversation back on track, it was too late.

  Eyes were darting towards her mother. Grizelda. Martin. All the other relatives whose names and habits she’d painstakingly memorized over the years. Even the younger generation. Pebbles looked like she was going to be sick. She was gripping her mate’s hand, white-knuckled.

  Delphine’s heart felt like Pebbles’ hand. Straining and bloodless.

  How had she ever thought she could bluff her way through this? She knew how her family worked. She knew what Belgraves were. There was nothing more important to them than family… and now they all knew the truth about her, they knew she didn’t deserve to be called family.

  She wasn’t a winged lion.

  She wasn’t even a shifter.

  How could she be a Belgrave?

  “Mum—” Her voice was a creak. A wisp.

  Her mother was standing silently further down the table. She was staring straight at Delphine. Staring at her in a way she hadn’t since—since—

  Since the day Delphine’s father died.

  Her grandmother sneered. “I always said that Dominic should have—”

  “Angela,” her grandfather said, in a fond sort-of-telling-off way that Delphine knew was nothing of the sort. He wanted her to keep talking. He just wanted the appearance of not being one hundred percent ready to let his wife rip into their daughter-in-law.

  Her grandmother turned her eyes back to her. “You poor, deceitful girl.” Her gaze was sickly sweet and full of pity, and her lioness stared out, viciously triumphant. “You lied to us. All of us. After Dominic died, we took you in. Treated you like our own, like a real Belgrave, when all this time you were worse than a cuckoo in our nest! And you!”

  She turned to Delphine’s mother.

  “Are you happy now? First you took our son away, and now you’ve destroyed the entire Belgrave bloodline! Centuries of history, gone!”

  “She didn’t know!” Delphine cried out.

  Everyone turned to face her. Even Hardwick.

  Delphine could have sobbed.

  Of course her mother didn’t know. How could she? Delphine had done all of this to protect her.

  And now she would hate her for it.

  Around the table, her relatives’ faces were twisting with disgust. Uncle Martin and Aunt Grizelda edged away from her. The younger cousins, Livia and Brutus, looked almost as excited as Grandmother. Her brothers—she couldn’t even look at them.

  Her mind itched. Pebbles was staring at her like she’d broken her heart.

  “This is Auntie Sara’s fault,” Pebbles announced, her voice shaking. She stuck her chin out and glared down the table at Delphine’s mother, who still hadn’t said anything. “You should have said something—if we’d known—”

  Delphine’s spine bristled. She could take them attacking her. But not her Mum.

  “She didn’t know anything about it!” Her fists clenched as she willed Pebbles to look at her. “And what would you have done differently, if you’d known I turned out not a shifter?”

  Fury blazed from Pebbles’ face. “I would have—I would have—”

  “What? Not married Pascal?”

  Pebbles reeled back. Beside her, Pascal’s eyes flicked nervously from Belgrave to Belgrave. “I wouldn’t have brought him back here at least!”

  “Penelope!”

  It had been so long since anyone used Pebbles’ real name, even she took a moment to realize their grandmother was talking to her.

  Angela was irate. “Dominic was bad enough, but he was always a dreamer. I thought you of all people would understand the importance of sacrificing for this family!”

  “I’m sorry? Pascal is my mate!”

  “Don’t be so naïve, girl,” Alastair rasped. “Do you think fate has blessed our family all these years because we let it control our lives?”

  “But you always said fate was kind to us.” Pebbles’ eyes went wide.

  Suspicion prickled on the back of Delphine’s neck. Pebbles glanced at her and for a moment their eyes met. Her mind itched, and it didn’t take years of practice to guess what Pebbles was trying to say to her, already forgetting that her non-shifter cousin couldn’t hear her.

  “What are you saying, Grandfather?” Delphine asked carefully.

  “Fate is kind to us,” Alastair announced pompously, “because we know when to follow it, and when to ignore it. Your grandmother and I aren’t mates, but we—”

  Chaos. That was the only word for it. Every Belgrave started shouting at once.

  All except two.

  “—we did what was right to preserve the Belgrave line!” Alastair roared.

  Delphine hardly heard him.

  The arguing voices turned into angry shouts. Delphine took an automatic step back and almost tripped over her chair. Hardwick steadied her and she leaned against him, the light in her chest flickering at the same pace as the thudding of her heart.

  “I thought it would just be me,” she whispered to him. “I didn’t think it would destroy my whole family.”

  Her mother was still staring at Delphine.

  And she looked terribly, terribly sad.

  Delphine grabbed Hardwick’s hand. He turned to her at once, his dark eyes searching hers.

  “Hardwick—” she began.

  His eyebrows drew together. “We’re leaving?”

  She nodded.

  It wasn’t running away, she told herself as she and Hardwick slipped out and the other Belgraves screamed at each other. She was just getting a head start on being thrown out of the family. The family she’d always told herself she was doing this for.

  It was only as the cold Christmas air hit her face outside that she started to cry.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Hardwick

  Hardwick followed Delphine out into the street. He wished he could say they were striding out together, but even with his arm around her shoulders, he could feel the distance between them. An icy shell forming around her, protecting her shattered heart.

  He should be the one to protect her. But she had spent so long alone. She didn’t know how to let him in. How to trust him to hold her heart and keep it safe while she was hurt.

  Just like he hadn’t known how to trust her, when they first met.

  He wrapped one arm around Delphine’s shoulders, searching his pockets for a clean handkerchief with the other. But no matter how closely he held her, he felt as though he was losing sight of her.

  The plaza outside was merrily bedecked with Christmas decorations. The hotel was on Pine Valley’s main square, the hub of all the Christmas bustle that had driven Hardwick away only a few days ago. Today, the place was almost completely deserted. A white-feathered bird settling its wings in a tree was the only sign of life.

  Strings of light glimmered in shop windows, and sparkling tinsel was wrapped around every streetlamp and power line. A cluster of Christmas trees huddled in the middle of the square, surrounded by locked-up food carts and abandoned picnic tables decked out like Santa sleighs.

  It was the ghost town Hardwick imagined when Jackson first told him about Pine Valley, and it was the most miserable thing he’d ever see
n.

  Delphine muttered something under her breath and ducked away from Hardwick’s embrace. She walked away from him. His arm fell to his side, leaden.

  She hadn’t looked at him since they left the building. He couldn’t get a read on her. She was too good at hiding the truth in her body language. In her winter jacket, with the furred hood hiding the tilt of her head and the quilted fabric obscuring the set of her shoulders and her spine, she was a blank slate.

  Hardwick’s griffin was desperate to connect with her. It hovered its wings around the glowing mate bond in Hardwick’s chest, like someone trying to protect a candle flame from the wind. And it made sharp, pecking motions at Hardwick himself, urging him to go to her.

  He was too scared to move.

  When he thought of calling out to her, his throat went dry. Each breath he inhaled seemed to chill his whole body and the silence left after the shouting in the breakfast room echoed in his ears.

  Say something, he told himself. For God’s sake, it’s Christmas, and you just watched her family tear itself apart. Say something!

  “Delphine—”

  “Were they lying?”

  “What?”

  Delphine’s voice was slightly muffled. “In there. Everyone who was yelling. My grandparents, Pebbles… were they lying?”

  “No.” Hardwick’s shoulders slumped.

  Delphine gave a damp chuckle and wiped one hand across her face. She was still looking away, but Hardwick was putting two and two together now. Her carefully even breaths. The dampness in her voice.

  “You’re crying,” he said, stupidly.

  Delphine hiccupped. “I’m not—I am, but it’s just—” She raised both hands to her face and let them fall with a gasp of frustration. “It’s nothing I didn’t expect.”