by Chant, Zoe
Hardwick kissed her gently on the top of her head, frowning. He’d hoped, after last night, that she would start to rethink the need to lie to her people. Apparently not.
“Anyway. What did you hear?”
“At first, it sounded like...” He gestured, trying to put words to it. “Not words. More like when you hear something loud, and it echoes in your ears. But just the echo, not the noise.”
“Like someone screaming?”
“I don’t know. And then—”
*Screw you, snow! Screw you, stupid mountain! Stupid Christmas! Stupid flames!*
“—Sounds like a kid,” he said, and told her what he’d just heard.
She looked concerned. “Are they in trouble?”
“I think so.”
“Can you tell where they are?”
“Not from here. And not from just their telepathy. It’s not directional, like hearing someone shout out loud. Hard to trace back to the source.”
“You don’t have to explain that to me.” Delphine pulled away.
He raised his eyebrows. “Thought you might find it helpful. You don’t need to guess what’s going on if I’m that guy who narrates his own every action.”
“...Oh.” She leaned against him again. “Thanks. I’m sorry for being so suspicious.”
“This is new for you, same as it is for me.”
“I never thought about what it would mean, having someone who knew my secret. I never planned—” She looked as though she was about to say more, then shook her head. “Forget about me. What about this kid? How can we find him to check on him?”
“Easy.”
She stared at him, waiting for him to continue, and then swore. “For goodness’ sake. Did I hit my head? You heard him using telepathy, you can respond to him just the same.” She paused. “You could have while we were still in the air.”
“I wanted to keep you in the loop.”
Again, she looked surprised. Hardwick filed that away in a folder labelled fucking Belgraves and squeezed her hand.
*Hello!* he called, sending his telepathic voice as wide as he could. *Can you hear me? Do you need help?*
There was a pause. Then: *No-o! I don’t need any help!*
Pain shot through Hardwick’s head. He hissed and bit back a curse.
Delphine pulled off one glove and put her hand on his forehead. “Let me guess. Whoever it is, they’re completely fine?”
“Got it in one,” he gritted out.
She rubbed one thumb over his temple. He leaned into her caress.
“Bet he doesn’t want his parents to know he’s in trouble out here, either.”
“Good point.” Hardwick laced his fingers through hers so her hand wouldn’t get cold. “One sec.”
*Hey, sure. You don’t need any help. Maybe you could help me. I’m trying to find the Heartwell lodge—*
*Don’t tell them I’m here!*
*Buddy, I don’t even know where ‘here’ is. What are you doing?*
*I’m not lost!*
Hardwick grimaced. “Ow.”
Delphine squeezed his hand silently and he added:
“He says he’s not lost.”
“You don’t say. You know, this is all sounding really familiar. Stuck out in the snow, trying to convince yourself everything’s fine, you can totally handle it…” She stared up at him, her honey-colored eyes worried. “I know he’s a shifter, whoever he is, but we can’t just leave him out here.”
“I know.” He scanned the mountainside around them. *My name’s Hardwick Jameson. I’m on vacation here, seeing a friend of mine. Jackson Gilles. Do you know him?*
*You know Mr. Gilles? That—doesn’t matter! ’Cos nothing’s wrong. I—argh!*
Hardwick was still wincing from the ‘nothing’s wrong’ when the kid’s voice suddenly cut out. Delphine tugged on his arm.
“There!” She pointed at a patch of snow further along the ridge. “That collapsed just as you got hurt.”
“Let’s go.”
They hurried up the slope. The snow here was deep, but there were enough rocky outcrops that they could scramble up to where the snow had collapsed without getting too deep. Hardwick kept a careful eye on Delphine. Her lips were pale and pinched, but she was refusing to say anything was wrong, even though he knew she must be comparing this to what had happened to her.
He kept talking to the kid the whole way. The kid responded mostly in groans and complaints that this was so embarrassing, and they should just leave him here to die. Hardwick took that as a good sign.
The snow crumbled a bit more as they reached it, as though something was disturbing it from underneath. Hardwick pulled his jacket off. “I’ll shift and start digging,” he said.
Delphine took his clothes and knelt down. “Can you hear me?” she called. There was a muffled screech in reply, and she went pale. “Cole? Is that you?”
Another screech… this one definitely closer to the ‘embarrassed’ side of the equation than the ‘in mortal peril’ side.
Hardwick dug into the snow with his foreclaws. They weren’t well designed for scratching at snow, but he managed to haul the slip away within a few minutes. He stayed in constant communication with the kid, and when they figured he was getting close, he eased off on digging.
*How you going in there?*
*I can see something—wait! Hah!*
Hardwick lurched backwards just in time to avoid a plume of red flame bursting from the hole. Delphine yelled in surprise, then darted forward before he could stop her.
“Cole!” she cried out. “What are you doing in there?”
A small dragon slithered out of the hole. The snow it had melted glittered on its black scales, then exploded through the air like droplet diamonds as it shook itself. The dragonling—Cole?—was the size of a small pony, but long and skinny, like someone had taped limbs to a big snake. It checked over its scales and sent little puffs of flame to melt the snow still clinging them.
*Sorry, Miss Belgrave,* he said, curling himself into a sad pretzel.
Delphine crossed her arms. She gave no sign that she hadn’t heard him.
Hardwick decided to step in. He shifted and dressed quickly, frustrated by the delay of having to pull on clothes. Delphine was right, he should figure out whatever trick the other shifters had found to bring their clothes with them when they shifted. Not for chest-thumping reasons, but for practicality. Frostbite took longer to set in for shifters than it did for regular humans, but it did set in eventually. And cold was cold, regardless of whether your veins were actually closing up or not.
“How’d you end up out here, kid?” he asked once he was safely human-shaped and dressed.
The dragon’s tail whipped. *I’m not telling!*
Delphine raised her eyebrows at Hardwick. “I think the real question is how long he’s been out here.”
*Umm...*
Hardwick groaned. “That’s the sort of non-answer that tells the whole story,” he said for Delphine’s benefit.
*It’s not my fault! I had to get it done before Christmas!* The dragonling stared beseechingly at Delphine..
And said something to her that Hardwick couldn’t hear.
Damn.
Well, if he couldn’t translate for her, he could at least distract. He touched her arm. “We should keep moving. I don’t know about you two, but I’d rather keep talking somewhere with a roof over my head and something to eat, rather than out here.”
“Good thinking. Cole, we were heading up to your place and hoping to borrow a car to get back into town. Want to come with us? We could knock on the front door while you sneak in round the back. Not that you’re here because you snuck out, or anything.”
*Yeah, maybe, but... oh, no. Too late.*
Cole looked like he wanted to jump back down his hole. Hardwick followed his gaze, shading his eyes against the sunlight, and Delphine followed suit a moment later. If you didn’t know she hadn’t heard half the conversation, you never would have guess
ed she was making it up on the fly.
It made him feel uneasy. The whole thing did. Even playing along with her. It wasn’t lying, but it was close enough that he could feel the ghost of a knife behind his temples, waiting to stab down.
“Oh...” Delphine breathed, and he guessed as she hesitated that she’d been about to say ‘no’. “...good. The whole family’s here.”
Winged figures were appearing over the distant ridge. They were sinuous, glittering creatures that soared through the air like fish through water.
Cole sank to the ground, groaning pitifully.
“Don’t worry,” Delphine told him. “I’m sure they’ll just be pleased to see you—oh.”
More figures appeared behind the dragons. These ones didn’t fly like elegant sea-creatures. Their wings pummeled the air like it had insulted their mothers. They were stocky and powerful, similar to and yet so different from what Hardwick remembered of seeing his parents flying.
Not griffins. Winged lions.
Delphine’s family.
“What are they doing here?” she said under her breath.
Hardwick stepped closer to her. “Maybe they were looking for you, after all,” he murmured.
“No.” Delphine shaded her eyes and peered up into the sky. “No, that can’t be—oh, blast. Just call them, will you? I’ll say I was busy with Cole.”
Hardwick hailed the distant shifters, but they had already spotted them anyway. The dragons curved towards them and the nearest, which was the color of mother of pearl, sent a message directly to Hardwick’s mind.
*Cole’s down there with you? He’s been gone all night!*
“You’ve been gone all night?” Hardwick echoed. Cole wriggled miserably.
*Only ONE night! And the weather was looking better yesterday! And anyway, I’m fourteen! I can look after myself!*
Hardwick’s head hurt. He couldn’t tell whether it was because of lies, or because of teenagers.
Both, he thought gloomily.
“At least you found cover,” Delphine said. Her voice was cheerful, but she was watching the winged lions with an uncertain look in her eyes. “Lucky you found the cave.”
How was she managing it, Hardwick thought, amazed. Carrying on her own half of the conversation as though she could hear the other half. He was helping, but she was picking up his hints and running with them.
It couldn’t always be like this, he realized. Most of the time she must be running blind, with no one to provide translation for her. What would that mean?
She must come off as absent-minded as best. Uncaring at worst. She would talk over other people, ignore their questions, seem like she was more interested in the sound of her own voice than anyone else’s opinions.
And that was the lie she’d happily built her life around?
Delphine wasn’t arrogant, or unfeeling. She was observant, and kind. He’d seen that over the last few days. Even when she’d doubted her own feelings. Even when she’d figured out he was hiding the truth of their connection from her. She’d gotten to the bottom of his problem, his hurt, before trying to get anything for herself—even the truth.
Hardwick barely noticed the three full-grown dragons that landed in a semi-circle around the two of them. His attention was all on the winged lion shifters that thudded to the ground further uphill.
They were solid, stocky creatures. Like tanks with wings, he thought. Golden-haired as Delphine, with wings ranging from pure white to gold-speckled and autumn-toned. Her family.
The people she was so afraid of knowing the truth, she’d twisted her whole life around lying to them.
His griffin’s hackles rose.
What had they done, to make her think that was the only way she could live?
Chapter Twenty-One
Delphine
Uncle Martin. Aunt Grizelda. Several cousins: Brutus, Livia, and Pebbles. And her own brothers, wirier than the others, but still close enough to the classic Belgrave template that they’d never had any trouble fitting in.
Delphine resisted the urge to move closer to Hardwick. Except—was that the right thing to do? If he was her mate, and everyone was surely about to find out that particular fact, then maybe it would be natural for her to move closer to him. But how? Casually? Territorially?
She tried to remember how some of her cousins had acted when they brought their mates to family vacations for the first time. Pebbles had met her mate, a stunning bird of paradise, three years before. She had brought him home for Christmas that year. Delphine had spent most of the holiday in the kitchen, but she remembered how Pebbles had shown Pascal off. She’d practically glowed with happiness, preening and sticking to Pascal’s side as though she couldn’t bear to be apart from him. And even though a bird of paradise wasn’t exactly the sort of shifter the olds had expected to match with a Belgrave, she’d been so proud of him.
Delphine was proud of Hardwick, too. Wasn’t she? He was a griffin, for God’s sake. No one could complain about that.
But no matter how hard she tried to pull on a mask of satisfied pride and smugness, what she really was, was terrified. Terrified that this was the moment that everything she’d worked so hard for was about to collapse. Terrified that her family would know what she really was.
Terrified that she was going to hurt Hardwick, badly.
Terrified that the deeper truth they had both been avoiding was not that they were mates, but that they were impossible. That she’d spent most of her life painstakingly transforming herself into something that was so opposite to what Hardwick needed that they could never be together.
Her chest tightened. No, that can’t be possible. There had to be a way out, a way to fix this, a way to make everything okay again.
Something itched against the back of her mind. Just what she needed: someone trying to speak to her telepathically. Which had been fine when it was Cole—it wasn’t hard to guess what teenaged boy who’d been snowed into his secret bunker overnight would try to say to get himself out of trouble, and even if the distracted-older-family-friend act hadn’t worked, Hardwick had been amazing, translating for her.
She didn’t even know who was trying to speak to her. It could have been anybody.
Delaying would only make things worse. She had to make a choice.
Delphine leaned against Hardwick and raised her eyebrows at Cole. “Too late to run now,” she said. Cole hung his head and her mind itched again. She gave him a sympathetic smile, assuming that was what he was after, then took Hardwick’s hand and looked up at him.
“Too late for us, too,” she said. “Are you ready to meet my family?”
“Are you?” he replied in an undertone.
She kept her smile fixed on her face. “I don’t think I should answer that.”
A shadow passed across Hardwick’s face and for a moment she was worried her smile would slip. She squeezed his hand and turned back to the crowd.
Goodness. Three full-grown dragons, and half a dozen winged lions. Her relatives must be hating this. Winged lions were around the size of regular lions; full-grown dragons were, frankly, massive.
Which gave her just the in she needed.
“Opal! Hank! Jasper!” she cried out, greeting the three dragons.
Opal and Hank were Cole’s parents. Opal’s scales were pale and luminescent, like her namesake, while Hank was a shade of forest green that would almost have counted as camouflage if it wasn’t the middle of winter and he wasn’t unmistakably dragon-shaped. Jasper, Opal’s younger brother, was a thousand brilliant shades of red, orange and brown.
They all bent their heads to her in greeting, and the itch in her mind intensified. She waited for it to fade, then shaded her eyes against the light and added: “I don’t think there’s enough room out here for all of us in our animal forms! Shall I do introductions in human form, and then we can all head back somewhere warm?”
For another group of shifters, it might not have worked, but because both the Heartwells and her own fami
ly knew how to do Mr. Petrakis’s trick with clothes, it did. Even cold-resistant shifters might not be too happy to hang out on a snowy mountainside stark naked, but the Belgraves leapt at the chance to show off their new skills—and to be, in human size, not completely physically outmatched by the dragon shifters.
Hardwick rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand, and she realized she was holding onto him with a death grip. She took a deep breath while the others were distracted by shifting and pulled herself together.
There were small rushes of air and sparks all around as the dragons and winged lions shifted back into human form.
The Heartwell siblings, Jasper and Opal, were both tall and broad-shouldered, with red hair and sparkling eyes the colors of the gems they were named after. Hank, who had married into the family and taken Opal’s name, was a giant of a man with brown hair and eyes the same color as his dragon’s scales. Jasper was dressed up as brightly as his dragon, in a hideous Christmas sweater and matching boots and hat that clashed incredibly with his red hair. Opal and Hank were slightly more normally dressed, though Delphine noticed a giveaway embroidered reindeer under the open collar of Opal’s long jacket.
Beside her, Cole sighed and transformed back into a lanky teenaged boy. His hair was darker than either of his parents’, and he’d shot up at least a foot since Delphine had last seen him. He was also, to his bad luck, wearing pajamas. Opal tsked and advanced on him threateningly, already pulling off her own coat to wrap around him. “Mom, no!” he cried, backing away.
She left them to it and turned to her own family.
Her heart did its usual complicated thing, because as terrified as she was at the idea of her family finding out the truth about her, she did love them. And this group weren’t the most terrifying. Her grandparents weren’t there, of course—she guessed that, if they’d all set out from the Heartwell lodge to find Cole, Grandmother would be waiting there, taking the opportunity to privately sneer at the dragon shifters’ base. Uncle Carrick wasn’t there, either. A little of the weight came off her chest.
Delphine’s brothers, Vance and Anders, were identical twins. Like all Belgrave men they were tall with golden hair, and at almost-eighteen they were just starting the transformation from teenaged weed to burly full-grown adult.
