by Chant, Zoe
She molded herself against him, pressing her breasts against his chest, stomach to stomach, standing so close if either of them moved too quickly their legs would tangle and they would end up on the ground.
“…Now, I’m so glad I found you. I’m glad everyone knows the truth. And I know it’s going to be difficult, and we have so much to learn about each other and figure out and get wrong before we get right, but I’m not scared. I have spent so long pretending to myself about what I want and don’t want, and I know, right now, that what I want is to be with you.”
“Delphine, I…” Hardwick crushed her to him. “I don’t deserve this.”
“Yes, you do. You changed my life for the better.” She wriggled in his grasp just enough so she could look up at his face and brush a strand of hair away from his eyes. “You wanted to save me. I say you did. Not just today. Not just when you pulled me out of the snow. Every minute we’ve been together.”
She kissed him. His lips were slow to respond, then urgent and hungry. She guessed—no, she knew—that he had been processing what she’d said, his griffin picking it over for lies. The kiss had surprised him. But now he wasn’t letting her go.
He was passionate and demanding, his teeth grazing her lips and his hand firm on the back of her head. Her mind darted back to the night they’d spent together: his body hard against hers, his possessive joy at her telling him what she wanted and what she wanted being him. She’d been afraid she was asking too much. Too hard, too fast, too obvious. But he’d more than accepted her. He’d relished every secret desire she whispered in his ear.
And she was going to get a lifetime of that.
And of finding out his secret desires in return.
As though he was reading her mind, Hardwick broke off the kiss and muttered roughly in her ear: “You said that I’m yours.”
“You are.”
He made a sound that was more growl than word and kissed her again.
And deep inside her heart, light blossomed like dawn on a frosty morning.
Chapter Thirty
Hardwick
The town’s only restaurant was closed for the holiday, as were the bakeries and coffee shops. But Pine Valley had more miracles in store that Christmas.
Jasper Heartwell came roaring into the square just before lunchtime. His Range Rover was bright red, with white trim and tinsel around the windows. The horn played the first bars of the chorus of ‘All I Want for Christmas’.
The twins sagged under the onslaught of uncoolness. Delphine, still tucked against Hardwick’s side, raised her head in surprise. Her mother sent him a silent question and, when he confirmed who the newcomer was, smoothed her clothing self-consciously. He didn’t know how to reassure her.
“Don’t worry, Mum,” Delphine said. She laid her head against Hardwick’s shoulder and waved to the dragon shifter as he leapt out of the truck. “Jasper Heartwell has a human mate. I don’t think he would—”
“Belgraves!” Jasper called. “I heard there was a Christmas crisis brewing!”
Who told him that? Hardwick wondered. The light in his chest throbbed and Delphine turned to him, surprise on her face.
“Did you just ask—” she began, then shook her head. “There was a snowy owl hanging around earlier. I think it might have been Olly, Jackson’s mate. She must have heard—” She bit her lip.
“And she sent in the cavalry.” Hardwick kissed the top of her head.
Jasper drove them up the valley towards his family homestead. The Heartwells’ home was massive and solidly, reassuringly lived-in looking. Cars and trucks were parked higgledy-piggledy on the drive. Children’s toboggans and skis were piled up next to the huge double front doors. Another toboggan was perilously balanced on the roof. Occasional patches of the building’s log cladding were a darker shade, charred-looking.
Hardwick stared. Not just charred-looking. Charred.
Jasper cleared his throat. “My daughter’s work,” he explained. “She found her dragon very early. And flying. And fire breathing.”
“She sounds like a quick learner.”
“Precisely!” His eyes lit up. “And now that we’ve installed a few extra rain barrels, we haven’t had any actual near-disasters in, oh, months.”
“And during the winter you have the snow, as well,” Delphine added.
“It does have an excellent dampening effect, that’s true. Now…” Jasper pulled into a spare park and twisted around in his seat to look at all of his passengers. “I don’t know the details of how you ended up out in the cold at Christmas, but nobody’s going to bother you about it once we’re inside. Heartwell Christmases are about celebrating, not prying.”
Hardwick’s griffin stretched out its neck, but it couldn’t find a whisper of a lie in Jasper’s voice, or his multi-colored eyes.
“I appreciate that,” Delphine said softly.
Jasper grinned. “Then let’s head inside.”
Christmas at the Heartwells was not just about celebrating; it was something worth celebrating. Hardwick braced himself as he walked inside, but the only thing that hit him was a wall of heat. The conversation in the living room was closer to a roar, with a toddler in the middle of the room, surrounded by shredded wrapping paper, supplying a high-pitched shriek that cut through the rest.
People were talking. Laughing. Exclaiming over gifts, and telling stories, and a thousand other things all at once, and no one was lying.
The knots in Hardwick’s shoulders eased. Inside him, his griffin relaxed, the feathers on its spine feeling out-of-place as they lay down.
Jasper started a lightning round of introductions. “Hardwick and Delphine, you’ve already met my sister and her husband.” Opal and Hank waved from a sofa, where they were snuggled together, picking at the last scraps of buttered croissants and various cheeses. Their son was sprawled in front of the enormous, spangled Christmas tree, his head firmly in a book. “Cole you know, and this is my mate, Abigail—” A short, plump woman looked up from where she was sitting on the floor with the toddler, and Hardwick saw only humanity in her eyes. “—and my daughter, Ruby—”
“The fire-starter?” Hardwick asked in an undertone.
Jasper laughed. “My little firebug! I mean—no—not now, sweetheart…”
The adorable toddler disappeared. In her place, a ruby-scaled dragonling crouched in a nest of wrapping paper. She eyed the flammable stuff with keen interest.
Abigail made a warning sound, and Jasper swooped in and grabbed their daughter as smoke started to pour from the dragonling’s nostrils. He ran out the French windows leading outside just as she let out a tiny burp of flame.
Abigail stood up. “Welcome to the madhouse,” she said, smiling at them all. “I’d say this hardly ever happens, but I’m not sure there’s any point. Have you had breakfast yet?”
“Abigail! The emergency presents!” Jasper called from the yard, where Ruby was doing her best to set fire to a snowman.
“Breakfast first!” she called back. She raised her eyebrows at her guests—the twins in particular. “Yes?”
They agreed, loudly and at length, until their mouths were too full of pastry to keep talking.
Conversation swelled around him, filling the house with warmth and joy. It turned out that his old colleague Jackson’s mate Olly had been hanging around in owl form ever since she saw the twins climbing down the outside of the hotel earlier that morning. She’d wanted to know what the hell was going on, and when she put it all together, she’d told Jackson and they’d alerted the Heartwells.
The Heartwells were as different from the Belgraves as it was possible to be. Different from the wider Belgrave clan, that was. This small offshoot, Delphine and the people who loved her, were a fierce knot of love that burned all the brighter for how close it had come to being lost forever. Hardwick would have pushed through any amount of pain for that.
But there was no pain.
Even when Opal rounded up Cole to help in the kitchen, he didn�
��t try to bluff his way out of it. He complained, but even his teenaged whining didn’t contain any actual lies. “But I want to read my book,” he said, and “Can’t we just eat more croissants?” and “But it’s not fair!”
“Would you rather go outside and look after Ruby so your uncle can help?”
“Ughhhhhhh.” Cole kicked his feet but followed his mother out of the living room.
Hardwick’s griffin sifted through each sentence, pulling the words to pieces and flipping the pieces over with its beak. It couldn’t find so much as a trace of untruth. For whatever reason, objective reality agreed that it wasn’t fair that Cole had to help set up for lunch. Maybe his parents had told him he could have Christmas off chores; maybe growing up and having to drag your nose out of a good book in order to help out just plain wasn’t fair. Maybe living in the same house as an arsonist toddler meant ‘fairness’ was left by the wayside long ago.
Delphine caught his eye and left the room. Assuming she was heading for the kitchen to re-enact the Cinderella role she used to play with her own family, Hardwick followed her—and found her waiting for him in a quiet alcove.
She slipped her hands around his waist and drew him closer to her. He went to her without resisting. Outside, their touches had been muffled by the thick layers of their winter clothing; now, there was only a thin layer of knit fabric between his hands and her warm, inviting skin.
And a similar, solitary layer of cotton between her fingers and his skin. She untucked his shirt with a matter-of-fact swiftness that made his heart soar. Despite what he had done, Delphine still claimed him as hers. Her hands sliding up his back left no doubt about that.
Then she kissed him, and his thoughts splintered into blinding light.
The splinters of light rushed to fill his veins, then pulled back until there was only that single burning sun inside his heart. Stronger and brighter than before, and the thread connecting him to Delphine was more like a plaited rope.
Delphine pulled away so slowly that somehow the act of ending the kiss was more charged than the kiss itself had been. Her amber eyes bored into his, pupils huge and dark.
“Um,” she said, sounding as stunned as he felt. “That’s not what I came out here to do, but it’s…”
She kissed him again and gasped as the light connecting them pulsed.
“It’s stronger,” she breathed against his lips.
He waited for her to say isn’t it? and for self-doubt to darken her sparkling eyes. But she didn’t. Instead, her smile filled his heart.
“What do you think makes it change?” she asked, and the answer was on his lips before he’d even thought about it.
“Wanting it to be true,” he said. “Accepting that it’s real. That we might be good together, after all.”
“Oh, might we?” Her smile turned teasing. “Is that the truth?”
He answered her with a kiss that turned urgent too quickly.
Neither of them wanted to pull away, but the sound of a door closing made them jump away from each other guiltily.
“We’d better not,” Delphine murmured, her cheeks flushed.
Heat coiled between them. “Better not what?”
Whatever Delphine saw in his eyes, it made her tip her head back, part teasing, part defiant. “Disappear into a spare room somewhere and abandon our hosts who’ve so kindly taken us in on Christmas Day?”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Hardwick!”
He felt drunk. Not just on desire, though that was a part of it. A weighty, wanting part of it. But it was happiness, too. Happiness so intense it made him light-headed.
“Don’t you want to test my theory?”
“What theory?”
“About this.” He kissed her again, long and slow, and the golden light that connected them glowed like a sunrise. “You remember when it first appeared, don’t you?”
Delphine made a soft, breathy noise against his lips that was better than a yes. Her fingers clutched in his hair.
They’d both felt the connection from the moment they first laid eyes on each other. But it wasn’t until they’d slept together that the light of the mate bond had started to flicker in their hearts.
“We could talk to the Heartwells,” she said. “Do some background research. Find out how they experienced the beginning of their mate bonds, compare what we’re feeling—”
“Don’t you dare,” he growled, and Delphine pressed her face into the crook of his neck and laughed.
“No,” she agreed. “I’m sick of looking to other people to know how I should behave and experience things. I want to find out for myself. With you.”
His griffin crooned.
“Now?” he suggested.
Delphine half-groaned, half-laughed into his shoulder but before he could decide whether he was joking or not and, bad manners or not, the scales were weighting towards not, a door opened and the swell of conversation rushed out towards them.
“I’ve got my eyes closed!” one of Delphine’s brothers called. “’Cos I don’t want to see whatever’s going on out here.” Laughter from the other room. “Lunch is ready, if you two want to get in before it all vanishes—”
“Or move further away!” someone else called. Delphine choked, her cheeks burning.
“Caught,” she muttered, and reluctantly unwound herself from his arms. “We’d better go in. No, wait…”
He waited while she thought, her bottom lip lightly caught between her teeth.
“Not we’d better,” she said after a moment. “But let’s. I haven’t had a good Christmas with my family in so long, and…” She stood on tiptoes to whisper into his ear. “…we still have the rest of the day to experiment with your theory. If that’s what we’re calling it.”
With that promise burning in his ear, Hardwick had to force himself to let her go and tidy his own clothes before they rejoined the others. Just before they reached the door, he hooked one arm around her waist and asked:
“What did you come out here for in the first place?”
“Before you distracted me?” Her teeth flashed in a smile, but her eyes were gentle. “I wanted to check on you. I didn’t think you’d want me to ask in front of everyone. How are you feeling?”
She pressed the back of one hand against his forehead. He took it and kissed it, trailing his lips across her fingertips. “How do you think?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Good enough to tease me about it, clearly.”
“I feel—” fine, he’d been about to say, before his griffin’s claws pricked warningly at him. “—better than I expected.”
“But still not fully healed.”
“It’s easier around the Heartwells. They don’t have any reason to lie in their own home, I guess.”
“Unlike my family.” Her eyes shadowed.
He tipped her head back until he could meet her gaze. “Your family here is fine, Delphine. They’re not hurting me.”
“Good.” There was more than just care for him in her eyes. The relieved love she had for her small, healed family washed over him… through the mate bond.
Hardwick closed his eyes and let it sink in. Then he returned what he was feeling, tentatively winding the emotions around the golden light that connected them.
Love. Ease. So much happiness he thought he might burst. And a determination that Delphine should have the Christmas she so badly deserved.
Delphine gasped. “Was that—?”
“Yes.”
Someone called them for lunch again, but they stayed where they were, sinking into one another’s eyes.
The same someone, or another one, knocked on the door. “You’ll miss out on the ham if you wait any longer!” they called.
“And the potatoes!”
“And the roast goose!”
Delphine shook herself. “Not fully healed,” she said vaguely, as though coming out of a dream. “You need to eat.”
He couldn’t argue with that.
“And after that…
” She kissed him lightly. “We’ll need some time on our own, won’t we, for you to heal properly? Another retreat.”
“Together.”
“Together,” she agreed.
* * *
The day had more surprises in store for them. After the meal, Jasper made good on his promise (or threat) of emergency presents. He had a store of them, apparently, kept safe in the attic for Christmas crises. Hardwick found himself the proud new owner of a Christmas sweater featuring a red-nosed husky dog. The twins whooped over matching toboggans as though they were Cole’s age, not freshmen. And Delphine unwrapped a stack of books that made her double over with laughter. He didn’t understand until she tilted the covers towards them.
They were the same series of airport thrillers that she’d so completely failed to read up in the cabin.
“Maybe you’ll have better luck getting into them this time,” he deadpanned.
Delphine gulped back another burst of laughter and wiped her eyes. “I hope not.”
There was more food after the presents. The teenagers all headed out to cause trouble in the snow, laden down with their new toys and bags of candy, while the adults and a miraculously dozing toddler settled down in the living room.
And then the first extra visitor arrived.
Hardwick’s griffin was on alert from the first whisper of wings outside. Jasper and Hank were already looking up when he glimpsed golden eagle wings at the corner of the window and, a few minutes later, heard a knock on the door.
They all exchanged a look. Sara sighed and smoothed down her skirt. “I know who that is,” she said carefully. “I’ll go and ask what they—”
“Absolutely not!” Jasper declared. He leapt to his feet and was blocking the living room door before she could even move. “You’re our guests. I’ll let them in.”
It was one of Delphine’s cousins—the older one with the Flintstones name.
“Pebbles!” Delphine exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
Her mate was with her. They both looked nervously around as Delphine’s mother made quick introductions. Then Pebbles burst out: