Christmas Griffin: A Mate for Christmas #5

by Chant, Zoe

  The truth in those five words made Hardwick’s teeth ache.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have protected you better. I meant what I said to your grandfather, about being the sort of person who helps people. I thought I was helping you by standing by your side, but I should have seen the risk. You told me you wanted—”

  “—I wanted to stop feeling everyone’s expectations on me. Shaping me. Making me into something I’m not. Or might not be.” She wrapped her arms around herself, still staring out towards the Christmas trees. There was a long, icy silence. “I don’t know if that is what I wanted, now.”

  “Delphine, I’m so sorry. I…”

  “Stop.” She turned around. Her eyes were red, and there were flecks of tears on her cheeks that she hadn’t yet wiped away, but her expression was determined. “I’m not angry at you. I’m not—I don’t even know if I’m angry at Vance and Anders. I’m… angry at myself.”

  “That’s worse,” he growled, and she snorted.

  “I’ve been such an idiot. I thought I was doing this for my family. For—for the Belgrave family name, or something. That’s what I told myself. For years! And now it’s all out in the open, and that was all a lie. I let the twins walk right into my grandfather’s trap. It’s my fault. I was only trying to save myself the whole time, not even thinking about what they would go through. And I don’t care what my grandmother or grandfather say at all, or my aunts and uncles, only—”

  She stopped and her eyes filled with tears. He pulled her to him at once and she leaned into him, pressing all her weight against his as though she wanted his hug to swallow her whole.

  “Mum looked at me like I’d broken her heart. She didn’t even say anything. I know—I know I’ve been lying to them all this whole time. I know that. I just…”

  She buried her face against his chest.

  “I didn’t expect it to hurt so little with the rest of them and so much with her,” she said miserably. “I want—I’ve always wanted it not to be true, what I am, because it means that everything she and Dad were fighting for when they got together was wrong, after all. Them being together didn’t magically turn out all right. Dad died, and I’m not even a real Belgrave. Even if the twins are, I’m… broken. And I wanted… I wanted…”

  She clung to him, desperation in every word. And truth. Hardwick’s heart ached for her. He’d wanted to save her—but how could he save her from this?

  His griffin strained to find a hint of untruth in what she was saying. Nothing. Delphine was telling the truth, just as he’d wanted, and it was breaking his heart.

  All her lies had been to protect herself, after all. And she hadn’t even realized it.

  “I wanted my mother to still love me, even if nobody else did. How can she? The way she was looking at me. She’s ashamed of me. I’m ashamed of me.”

  “Oh, sweetheart. I’m not ashamed of you.”

  Delphine’s head jerked up. She stared blindly past Hardwick, and he turned, still protecting her with his body, until he could see who had spoken.

  It was her mother. Sara Belgrave, with her laughing housecat eyes, who must have snuck out after them on cat-quiet feet. The twins were right behind her. He’d never thought either of them capable of being quiet, but maybe there was something of their mother’s cat in them after all. They were ashen-faced and creeping with guilt.

  Sara reached out towards Delphine. “I’m sad because I wish you’d told me earlier. You’re my daughter, Delphy. I’m meant to protect you, not the other way around. You never needed to lie to me. I will love you no matter what, just like your father would have.”

  “But you wouldn’t have! When I told you, you were both so—so proud of me.” Delphine’s body was shaken by a sob that left her clinging to Hardwick. He held her up, ice gripping his spine. “You were so relieved.”

  Grief passed over her mother’s face. “When Dominic was in the hospital.”

  “But it started so long before that. When you got sick. Brutus had already fledged, do you remember? He was so early. We went to his First Flight. And everyone was saying I would be next, that I couldn’t let any of the other younger cousins beat me at it again. But then you got sick, and I wasn’t next, and the twins were just walking and it was all Dad could do to keep us all together, and I couldn’t—I couldn’t have been another problem on top of that.”

  “Delphy, you wouldn’t have been a problem.”

  “Yes, I would have been. And I had to not be a problem. I helped with the twins. I kept out of the way at family things—and we didn’t go to many, anyway, not while you were sick.” Delphine’s face twisted. “I heard what Grandfather and Grandmother used to say about you. That you weren’t strong enough to be married into the Belgrave family. But then you got better.”

  “And then your father died.” Sara caught Hardwick’s expression of mingled horror and confusion. She steadied herself and explained: “My husband was killed in a traffic accident when Delphine was young. He—a truck came off the road and he pushed me out of the way rather than save himself.”

  That was what the older Belgraves had been talking about, Hardwick realized. A Belgrave sacrificing himself for family.

  And they hadn’t thought Sara was worth the sacrifice.

  “The doctors kept him stable long enough for the children to say goodbye, but he was too injured for even his shifter healing to save him.” The sadness in Sara’s eyes was years old.

  “He told me—” Delphine’s voice choked to a stop. He focused on the mate bond and tried to send her reassurance, strength, but it was as slippery as ever and danced out of his reach. Delphine took a shaking breath. “He told me not to let anyone ever tell me there was anything wrong with me. But there was. I couldn’t tell him that, so I said—I lied—I told him my lioness had come in. That I was normal. That I was a real Belgrave. And he was relieved, Mum. You both were. You’d been so worried and you were relieved I was normal.”

  “Oh, sweetheart. We knew there are no guarantees when two shifters of different types have a child. The same as there are no guarantees when a shifter and a human do.”

  “I’d argue there aren’t any guarantees what you’re going to get when two shifters with the same animal get together, either,” Hardwick added in a low voice. “My folks sure didn’t know what they were getting with me.” A griffin shifter, the same as they were—but with a griffin who didn’t speak, and who couldn’t be around lies without getting a migraine.

  Sara gave him a sympathetic look. “We knew Dominic’s parents would make things difficult if we had a child who wasn’t a winged lion shifter. We were worried because we didn’t want you to face that, not because we would love you any less.”

  “We’re not like the rest of them! We don’t care, Delphy. We only care that you’re okay. And I—” Anders’ face was practically gray. “I’m sorry I told everyone your secret. I promised you I wouldn’t and then the first thing I did was break that promise. I was just so mad. All the things he was saying, about Dad and Mum and you had to just sit there and listen to him.”

  “It’s okay, Anders. And you too, Vance, I know if Anders hadn’t said it you would have been right on his tail.” Delphine took a deep breath. “It—it needed to come out, I think. And I never would have let it happen by myself.” Her lips curved in a sad smile. “Now everyone knows I’m not a real Belgrave, and… maybe that’s okay.”

  “Delphine. No.” Sara’s gaze was firm and loving. “We were relieved when we thought you were a shifter. I’ll admit that. But we would never have treated you any differently if we had known the truth. You still would have been our daughter. You still would have been a Belgrave.” Her hand closed over Delphine’s. “You still are. And a Monroe, too.”

  Her maiden name, Hardwick guessed. Delphine shivered.

  “You mean that?” she whispered.

  “I mean it, Delphy. You are my daughter, and I love you, and your father would say the same if he was here today. You are part of
this family. You belong.” She straightened her shoulders. “I think we all agree now that anyone who says otherwise isn’t worth talking to.” The twins nodded fervently.

  The hope in Delphine’s eyes hurt Hardwick’s heart. He opened his mouth to reassure her that her mother was telling the truth, but she raised a hand, stopping him.

  “You don’t need to tell me,” she told him. “I know she’s telling the truth.”

  She rushed into her mother’s arms. Her brothers joined the family hug, their relief an almost solid force in the air and their voices cracking as they told Delphine that they loved her, too, and they didn’t want her to hate them. Hardwick didn’t need his gift to know that they were telling the truth. The tears in their voices were enough.

  At last Delphine untangled herself and stepped back, wiping her eyes. “I didn’t think this would ever be possible,” she said. “Thank you. I love you all. But…”

  “We’re still exiled from the family breakfast.” Anders had some of the sparkle in his eye back.

  “No food, no presents, nowhere to sleep off a non-existent Christmas dinner,” Vance added.

  “That wasn’t what I was going to say.” Delphine’s eyes shone as she turned to Hardwick but kept talking to the twins. “Can I make the food and presents and what on earth we’re going to do that doesn’t involve crossing paths with the rest of the family today your problem, you two, while I have a few minutes alone with Hardwick?”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Delphine

  They made their way to the center of the square. The last time she’d seen it, before she went port-hunting, the square had been lit up with activity. It was still lit up, but as for activity…

  The end of a piece of tinsel came loose and glittered vaguely downwards.

  It was the liveliest thing in the whole place.

  For the week before Christmas, the Pine Valley plaza had been full of bubbling excitement. Happy cries had echoed alongside Christmas carols as friends caught sight of each other through the tinsel-spangled trees and had impromptu drinks under the strings of fairy lights, or dashing between shop fronts to admire the different festive displays each store had out. It had been like something out of a fairy tale, only instead of being populated by witches and trolls and princesses, Pine Valley was home to a sort of concentrated Christmas magic…

  …and Christmas-obsessed dragons, and a pack of the friendliest hellhounds she’d ever heard of, and a surly newly fledged pegasus.

  Really, witches wouldn’t have been out of place.

  They would be even less out of place now. Without the crowds of shoppers and holidaymakers, it looked smaller, and colder. Even the twinkling lights were a bit sad, with no one to twinkle on.

  Beside her, Hardwick let out a relieved sigh.

  She looked up at him. There was the ghost of a smile on his lips. Perfect for this Christmassy ghost town… which was perfect for him. Of course it was.

  Delphine found an answering smile plucking at her own lips.

  Perhaps instead of thinking of the place as abandoned, she should think of it as ready and waiting for them to find it.

  Anders let out a jaw-popping yawn. “If I’m going to starve to death, I’m going to starve trying to eat that reindeer.” He loped over to one of the life-sized reindeer models with silver bells and candy canes strung from its antlers and flung himself dramatically across its back. “There. Dead. Wait, are those real candy canes?”

  “That’s not a balanced breakfast, Anders,” Sara said automatically. She scanned the nearest shopfronts. “Is that a restaurant? Oh, it’s closed. But there must be something open. Vance, what about that bakery you found last year…” She pulled out her phone.

  “It’ll be shut by now,” he said, but went with her when she tugged on his sleeve. They both wandered, so vaguely it had to be intentional, in a direction that could only be described as away. Anders closed his eyes, feigning death, sleep or both, with a candy cane sticking out of his mouth.

  The square was quiet. Her family couldn’t have been more obvious about giving her space for the few minutes alone she’d asked for.

  She put her hands in her pockets and wandered further into the little grove of Christmas trees in the middle of the square. Hardwick kept pace with her. Each step she took seemed to press more heavily into the ground, until she felt as though she was about to sink into the snow under her own weight.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked at last. “Ah, shit. I’m sorry. That’s a stupid question.”

  His mouth twisted, bitter and self-critical. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from it. She certainly couldn’t look up into his eyes. Everything inside her, the new healed piece of her heart where her family’s love lived and the painful piece he’d ripped out, was too muddled up.

  When the rest of her family turned on her, she’d frozen up inside. Completely. Even her fingers had felt numb, and her senses dulled, as though she was encased in ice.

  She hadn’t dared to check on the glowing mate bond in her heart, to check that it was still there. Still alive, and not as dead and frozen as the rest of her.

  But…

  “Could be worse,” she muttered.

  Hardwick’s chin jerked away from her. “They were lying. All of them, about everything. All that Belgrave family bullshit. Your grandfather’s why. You know that, don’t you?”

  “But they weren’t lying afterwards.”

  “No. They weren’t.”

  The knowledge released something inside her. But not for Hardwick. The lines at the edges of his mouth deepened. He looked as bad as he did when she first met him. When, although she didn’t know it, he’d just been thrown from the promise of a week’s peace and recovery into a reality that promised pain no matter what choices he made. Be with her and let her hurt him, or lose her and rip his own heart out of his chest.

  He growled low in his throat. “And the truth hurt you more than their lies could ever hurt me.”

  “Hardwick, you almost passed out last night after spending a couple of minutes with them.”

  He gestured with one hand. “I can handle my own problems. But not by causing more for you. I thought—you know I thought you should tell them. But the moment the truth came out and the pain stopped, when I saw the look on your face…” He shook his head.

  “You wanted to save me.”

  “And if I’d tried to, I would have hurt you worse than any of them ever did.” His shoulders slumped. “I hated it. Standing there, not doing anything. I should have been able to help you.”

  “You did. You got me out of there.”

  “Too late.”

  She shook her head. “Anders and Vance… they were just trying to help me, too. I never gave them that chance before. I thought I had everything under control, so I had to keep it that way. Belgraves don’t need saving.” She parroted her grandfather’s words and made a face. “The whole bloody family needs saving. And I…”

  Slowly, she reached out and threaded her fingers through his. He stiffened, then returned her embrace, his grip like a lifeline.

  Delphine turned around and he turned with her until they were both looking back towards her family. Her mother and Vance had their heads together, looking at the cell phones, and Anders was doing a terrible job of pretending to be asleep. He kept darting his eyes open and shooting looks at them all.

  “I have spent most of my life convinced that if Mum and my brothers knew the truth about me, then I would lose them. Now I have a real family for the first time since I was a child. It’s more than I ever thought I could have out of life. But it’s not all I want.”

  She turned to him, and his gaze on her face was warmer than the sun.

  “I want you to keep wanting to help me. And I want to help you, too. I don’t want us being together to be something that hurts you. And—I know I’m going to forget to tell the truth sometimes, or slip into old habits, or—maybe even if I’m angry, or upset. I don’t want to be that person, but I can�
�t promise I won’t be.”

  She tucked her other hand under his arm, pulling him closer as she tried to find words for what she wanted to say.

  Quiet settled around them. Not the silence of the world around the cabin; a smaller, cozier silence, somehow all the more precious because of the traces of other lives carrying on around them. The hint of music from a nearby building, the odd shriek of childish excitement from further away.

  The air was cool, but not freezing. A world away from the icy mountainside where she’d spent the last few days with Hardwick.

  She’d thought of that as his world and this as her world but that was wrong too, wasn’t it?

  He’d been hiding from people that caused him pain. She’d been hiding—as alone as Hardwick had been among the people who could cause her the most pain, hiding her true self to keep herself safe.

  But maybe there was a place they could be safe, and themselves, together.

  “I never expected to find someone like you,” she said. “I thought, everything else about me that should have been magical didn’t exist, so why would I have a mate anywhere in the world? And if I had imagined who my mate would be—”

  “You wouldn’t have imagined me.”

  “Not even slightly.” She laughed softly and tucked her head against his chest. He rested his hand tentatively on the back of her neck and she sighed, listening to the thud of his heart through his coat.

  Even this close, though, there was still distance between them. Still some ice left to thaw before she let herself look into her heart. “I would have imagined someone I had to keep the truth a secret from and keep away from my family, and I would have stayed trapped in the life I had built for myself. Even when I knew you were mine, and knew that I couldn’t keep living a lie, I thought that if you met my family and they found out the truth then I would be left crawling back to you because you were all I had left in the world. I know that lying was wrong, but I couldn’t see how I could live with that and not end up resenting you. But now…”