by Chant, Zoe
Parker was limping, but the look on his face was pure malevolence. *You shouldn’t have come here,* he snarled.
Fleance growled back at him. He couldn’t risk looking back but all of his senses were straining towards his mate behind him. *Sheena,* he sent, taking care to make sure Parker couldn’t hear him, *are you hurt?*
*I’m—* A bitten-off curse that fell like a knife’s blade on his ears. *All good. Just gotta shift.*
Her voice was hard and slippery, and he fought against the sudden feeling that she was getting away from him. Parker’s voice echoed in his head.
*But you turning up does have its benefits.* His hound’s face split in a sulfurous grin. *With my business partners sadly missing their appointment, I was in for a lonely afternoon.*
“Business—where are my aunts, you arsehole! Why is their house the only one not on fire? What have you done with them?” Sheena yelled. She must have shifted back into human form already. Her voice was hoarse.
*Done with them? Nothing. They should be here…* Parker swept his muzzle in an arc, a caricature of the concerned host. *People in this country are too laid back, if you ask me.*
“If you’ve hurt them—”
*What will you do? Bleat me to death?* Parker laughed again.
Fleance concentrated. *Sheena, I can’t smell anyone here but us. There’s a strong scent of two people around the one house that hasn’t burned down, but it’s stale. They must have gotten out before all this started.*
Her relief shuddered down the mate bond.
Parker yawned, his jaw cracking. *They’re both shifters, of course, which limited my options, but I didn’t think I’d scared them so badly that they’d miss the big day. We’re meant to be cracking open the champagne! Doesn’t it seem like the perfect time to celebrate doing business together?*
Standing half-in the flames of a burning house, Parker looked as though he’d stepped straight out of hell. Fleance stared at him.
*What’s wrong with you? What you did back home was bad enough, but this…*
*This is what it looks like when I don’t have anyone holding me back.* Parker’s eyes gleamed. *Oh, that’s right, boyo. Without you whining and crying every time I tried to get ahead, I’ve been able to move into the big leagues. I’m going to see just how far my luck can take me. And my powers, of course.* His voice was like a nest of worms squirming against Fleance’s mind. *But it’s a lot of work for one man, so I’m thinking of putting together a team.*
*You’ll never convince me to come back,* Fleance snarled. *That bullshit about me holding you back—that’s not true. You never showed any mercy.*
*Well, listen to Mr. Too-big-for-his-britches over here! Who said I was talking about you, boyo?*
His eyes slid past Fleance to Sheena, and then he vanished in a whirl of stinking smoke. Fleance jerked forwards, but there was nothing to chase—no scent, no sign. It was as though Parker had never been there.
Then a voice whispered in his ear: *Good talking to you, kiddo. We’ll have to do this again some time. All three of us.*
And he was gone.
“Is he—” Sheena began, and gasped. Fleance spun to face her, but she was looking over his head. “The fire’s stopped.”
Fleance turned slowly. The air still smelled of smoke and burned wood, stone, and plastic, but the fire that had been devouring the houses was… gone.
“How is that possible?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” And the fact that he didn’t know worried him. Parker had already shown him once today that there was more to being a hellhound shifter than he knew. Hellhounds had burning eyes and breathed smoke, but control over fire? That was new, and it scared him.
Sheena swore under her breath and took a wobbly step towards him. Her knee buckled beneath her and Fleance shifted and caught her in his arms before she fell.
For a moment, all he could see was golden light.
Sheena was all warmth and softness. She’d shifted without her clothing and without meaning to, Fleance’s hand slid over the generous curve of her hips, the other spreading across her upper back between her shoulder blades. Her head was perfectly tucked under his chin and her body molded against hers like they were made to fit each other.
Fleance’s breath was ragged. He’d come so close to losing her that for a moment he couldn’t force himself to let her go. He breathed in and her scent filled him: sweet and delicate, like nectar-filled flowers and fresh green grass.
She made a soft, longing noise against his neck and Fleance’s world turned upside down. Because he wasn’t only touching her, she was touching him, her arms wrapped around him and her lips hot against the sliver of skin at the collar of his shirt.
The mate bond hummed with wordless need. Sheena tipped her head back and pushed herself onto her tiptoes, losing her balance just enough that she had to press against him to stay upright. Her eyelids fluttered against his cheek; her lips were so close to his he couldn’t think of anything else—
“Ow,” Sheena burst out, wincing. She dropped heavily back only her heels as her whole body hunched over with pain. “Fucking—ow. Please tell me that prick didn’t literally bite my whole leg off, because that’s what it feels like.”
Fleance’s voice clawed up through his throat. “He bit you?” He shrugged off his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. She leaned into his touch, shivering.
“Yeah, when he tossed me around like a freaking chew toy—” She gasped and swore again. “Seriously, you’d tell me if I was hopping around on one leg, right? I don’t want to look.”
He didn’t want to look, either. His body felt hollowed out with fear. Inside him, his hellhound froze in place, eyes wide and staring. If Parker had bitten Sheena—if he turned her—
His fear crackled along the mate bond. No! He couldn’t let her know how scared he was. His hellhound burst into action, snaring the emotion before it reached his mate’s heart.
Sheena trembled. He helped her sit down. His jacket skimmed the tops of her thighs. It wasn’t enough to keep her warm, and it did nothing to hide the wound just above her knee.
He forced himself to look.
His breath stopped. He didn’t swear, or cry out, but only because of the many years he’d spent controlling his reactions in front of Parker. He breathed out, gently. Normally.
“It’s not that bad,” he lied, and couldn’t stop his voice from choking up.
“Bullshit.” Sheena leaned over, balancing one elbow on his shoulder. She hissed in a breath. “That looks…”
There were three deep gashes in her leg, trailing blood. Tooth marks. They had to be. The scars on Fleance’s neck tingled and the edges of his vision went dark.
“…not as bad as I expected.” Sheena’s voice seemed to come from a long way away. Fleance’s vision narrowed as fear rose bitter at the back of his throat. He held it back, determined not to let Sheena feel it before he’d figured out what he was going to say to her.
The future he’d seen so shining and clear in front of him fell away. What replaced it was just as clear, and more horrifying than anything he’d imagined. If Parker turned Sheena…
Sheena was still talking. His hellhound whined, urging him to listen. “My leg’s still attached, right? And it’s stopped bleeding. Could be better, sure, but could be—” She winced. “—a whole lot worse. Teach me to go running into a fight with some arsehole ten times my size.”
She looked up and her eyes widened. Too late, he tried to control his expression the same way he’d controlled his internal emotions. Her lips parted in a question, and he could almost taste her words, as cold and bitter as the dread coiling at the back of his throat: Why did you let me do it? Why didn’t you protect me?
His heart ached.
But instead of accusing him, she closed her mouth in a tight line and hunched her shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “Shit, we haven’t even known each other for ten minutes and I’m already a fucking dead weight. I… This can’t
be what you were hoping for in a mate.”
Her expression, which until then had shimmered and glowed with every emotion Fleance had felt reflected in the mate bond, closed over. She looked suddenly much smaller than he remembered, wrapped in his jacket, her bare feet turning white on the frozen ground.
Something snapped inside him. Or, more accurately, snapped into place.
She was his mate. And he was hers. Parker had hurt her, and he needed to protect her, not malinger over his own fears.
“I never thought I’d have a mate,” he said roughly. “I didn’t let myself hope for anything. Let alone someone like you.”
Her face twisted. “Someone totally hopeless?”
“Someone who would stand up to a man like Angus Parker.” He tipped her head back. “You’re strong, and beautiful. I’m the one who has failed you.”
Her eyebrows drew together. “What are you talking about? You haven’t—”
“I let you get hurt.” He ghosted his fingertips along her jaw, guilt twisting inside him as his need to touch her warred with the ugly truth he had to reveal. His hard calluses rasped against her soft skin, another reminder that although fate might have decided they were meant for one another, he was so far beneath her he’d spend his whole life catching up.
“It’s just a bite. I’ve had worse.”
“Not worse than this.” He wrapped his jacket more closely around her shoulders, then gritted his teeth. Delaying tactics. “A hellhound’s bite won’t just hurt you. It turns you into a hellhound shifter. Like an infection in your soul.” He reached for the ugly marks on her leg, holding his hand a scarce inch above her broken skin.
She didn’t shrink away. He didn’t realize, until she leaned closer to him, that he’d expected her to.
“But I’m already a shifter.” She made a sudden, jerky movement. “I’m already a shifter! He can’t—he can’t take my sheep away. Can he?”
Fleance looked into her eyes. The mate bond fluttered as her emotions caught it. He felt as though his brain was half-frozen, each thought sodden and heavy.
Parker had never targeted shifters before. That had been part of the threat: to keep his pack in line, as much as anything. If they didn’t do a good enough job carrying out his instructions to terrify his latest target, Parker would turn them, and finish the job that way. But only humans. Never shifters.
What had Parker said before, when he was talking about Sheena’s aunts? They’re both shifters, of course, which limited my options.
Relief washed through him, a cool, tidal wave that left him feeling light-headed.
“He can’t.” He pulled his hand away from Sheena’s leg and held her close. Her heartbeat thundered against his chest. “It’s okay. You’re safe. He won’t turn you into a monster like we are.”
“You’re not a monster.” Sheena’s expression darkened.
Fleance laughed. The noise surprised him. “You don’t need to say that. You’ve seen Parker. You’ve seen what hellhounds can do. The fire, the terror…” He smoothed her hair, willing her to understand. “You don’t need to pretend. I saw the way you looked at me when you thought I was the one who burned this place down.”
“Only for a second!” The mate bond twisted, echoing the guilt that flashed through her eyes. Fleance took her hands and hoped she could feel the reassurance he was trying to send back to her.
“It’s okay. I get it. You thought I was a monster.” She shook her head, but he went on, a wry smile pulling at his lips: “I am. I know that. I’ve had long enough to come around to that fact. But I’m your monster, now. I’ll keep you safe.”
A monster who’d been so weak, he hadn’t even been able to keep his mate from harm. That changed, now.
The next time Parker tried to hurt Sheena or her family, Fleance wouldn’t fail.
4
Sheena
I’m your monster.
Sheena wasn’t sure how she felt about the shiver that went through her at those words. It was a good shiver—in some very localized areas of her anatomy, a close to fucking unbelievably good one—but it was also…
Disappointed?
No, she told herself. Why would she be disappointed that her mate was a mythic shifter of a type she’d never heard of before, who’d just sworn to protect her from anything that might cause her harm? He was big, strong, and powerful in a way that seemed to surround him like an aura. He would protect her. And as recent events had just shown, she bloody needed protecting.
And—fuck it, she was angry, too. Yes, she’d been wary of Fleance when she’d seen his burning eyes. Just for a second. But he was nothing like that other hellhound shifter. His hellhound was nothing like that other monstrous, rotting creature. How could he think that—
She took a deep breath that turned into a hiss of discomfort, and Fleance was all concern.
Of course he is, she thought. Because I’m his mate and as I’ve just proved beyond all doubt, I’m just as useless as everyone always told me.
Fleance shifted back into his hellhound form and carried her through the bush to where he’d parked his car. The rental car was shiny and new and currently parked halfway across a paddock. Sheena grimaced automatically. Tourists…
She’d have to have a word with him about that. Along with all the other words, among them, What the hell just happened?
He let her down and shifted back into human form the moment her feet hit the ground, and whatever else she’d been about to ask, one new question leaped up in front:
“Hold up,” she burst out. Geez, bad enough that she was weak and injured. Had her brain totally carked it, too? How hadn’t she noticed this before? “You’ve got clothes on?”
Fleance looked down at himself. He was wearing the same outfit he’d had on earlier: a long-sleeved, gray woolen top that fit him like a glove, and dark jeans. And shoes. Shoes! And… she was wearing his leather jacket.
She stared back towards the village, half-expecting to see her brain left behind on the path.
He’d shifted straight back into human form… with his clothes. That was somehow freakier than any of the other shit that had happened today.
“You have got to tell me how you do that,” she breathed, her thoughts jumping back to the outfit that had disintegrated around her as she shifted into her sheep form. She tucked her borrowed jacket more closely around herself. It came midway down her thighs, so it wasn’t like she was completely naked, and anyway her sheepiness meant she rarely felt the cold—as though her brain was convinced she was permanently wearing her own wool coat—but… “Being able to shift with my clothes would have made so much of my life so much less embarrassing.”
“I’ll teach you how,” Fleance said. His eyes flicked to the collar of her jacket and then—ooh—down to where its hem was skimming her legs. Her skin heated up, and not because of any wool-coat-delusion.
That kiss had been incredible. And they were mates. There was more than just kissing involved in that. If Fleance was anything near as good with other parts of his body as he was with his lips…
He cleared his throat. “I’ll grab you a pair of pants, too.”
“Oh. Sure. Thanks.” Sheena blinked. Not the time, she told herself firmly, trying not to feel as though she’d just been brushed off. Except how could he brush her off when she hadn’t come onto him?
She’d told him she knew he wasn’t what he’d expected. How could she be? How could someone as incredible as him have thought he’d end up with an undersized sheep shifter?
She looked down at her leg to distract herself from the rush of exhaustion that thought sent through her. Fleance had opened the passenger side door and she sat down while he hunted through the boot.
“Clothes and a first-aid kit,” he declared, coming back around the car with his arms full. She pulled on a sweater that did a better job of covering her everything than his jacket had. He averted his eyes while she got changed and she felt—good? Bad? Confused?—about it.
Not that she want
ed to encourage perving, but… they were mates. Shouldn’t he want to perv at her?
She sure as shit wanted to perv at him. Damn his magical, clothing-shifting abilities. And a quick perv would at least be something normal in the midst of all this…
One minute we’re fighting for our lives against some… thing that’s burning down everything around us, the next he’s lending me a clean pair of socks, she thought. I’m pretty sure none of my aunts or uncles ever went through anything like this with their mates.
She pulled on a pair of sweats that felt like she was wearing a sleeping bag on each leg, and carefully rolled up one pant leg to uncover the wound just above her left knee.
The bite hurt like hell, but it was nothing to look at. It wasn’t even bleeding anymore. Just sitting there, on her leg (in her leg?), hurting.
Fleance made a small, relieved sound as he kneeled down in front of her. She glanced at him, but his face had fallen back into a sort of careful neutrality that she told herself wasn’t freaking her out at all.
“Am I going to make it, doc?” she joked.
He almost smiled. He looked up at her, though, his pale eyes warm, and that was good enough. “You’re already healing,” he said. “The bleeding’s stopped. I’ll clean this up and bandage it, and you’ll be fine.” *And you won’t turn.* His psychic voice was a warm breeze against her mind.
She smiled at him. “Fine and ready for round two,” she said.
He tensed, just for a moment, and Sheena fought to keep a frown off her face. Then something inside him released. Fire kindled behind his eyes.
“Round two,” he said, his voice closer to a purr than a growl, “is something I’m going to take care of myself.”
Sheena swallowed. Okay, she thought, maybe this whole ‘my monster’ thing is hotter than I gave it credit for.
