Christmas Griffin - Zoe Chant Page 0,18

them.

She hadn’t said anything.

Why not?

“None of your business,” he repeated, his voice a gravelly rasp. “You sure about that?”

Her eyes narrowed further. Excitement fluttered in his stomach, a bright spark that drove the last of the pain in his head away. This wasn’t lying. This was a game. Wasn’t it?

Delphine held his gaze for a minute that seemed to stretch on forever. The air between them almost sang with tension.

Then she looked away.

“There are only a few things in my life I’m sure of,” she said, her eyes still averted. “One of them is that I feel like I should get back to my family as soon as I can. The snow’s stopped. If you can take me back to my car…”

Hardwick’s stomach dropped. “Of course.”

No point telling himself that what he was feeling wasn’t disappointment. Or confusion. The energy that had sparked between them—she must have felt it. And if she was from a shifter family, she must know what it meant.

Which meant she was deliberately avoiding it. Their connection. Him.

The sinking in his stomach turned into a pit. His appetite disappeared. He stood up.

“We’d better get moving before the weather turns again,” he said. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

Chapter Nine

Delphine

Delphine tidied herself up in the tiny bathroom and wondered what the hell she was doing.

Hardwick wasn’t her mate. That was obvious, wasn’t it? He wasn’t her mate, and he wasn’t interested in her hanging around, so why had it been so difficult to tell him she wanted to go back to her car?

It wasn’t even a lie. At least, she thought it wasn’t. Ugh, she hated having to second-guess everything she was saying like this.

At least life with her family was simple. She knew exactly what each of them expected of her, and fulfilling those expectations was the easiest thing in the world.

Even if they didn’t expect a lot from her.

She hissed in a breath. The thought had bubbled up before she could stop it. She tried to push it away, but it just loomed larger.

Her family didn’t expect a lot from her.

How could they?

She’d spent most of her life putting herself in a very specific box. She wasn’t fun to be around, like her brothers, or wickedly opinionated, like her cousin Pebbles, or on track to discover the next big cancer breakthrough like everyone said Brutus was going to do. She was just… there. Or not there, most of the time. In the background, being helpful and keeping out of the way.

Never looking anyone in the eye, in case they noticed there was no winged lion looking back at them. Never replying to any telepathic conversation. She’d accepted years ago that that meant her relatives would think she was either a snob or stupid, and she’d been fine with it. Hadn’t she?

If she told Hardwick she was fine with it, would he look at her like she’d just admitted to kicking puppies?

She smoothed down her sweatshirt. Her hands were shaking.

It was a good thing she was going back to town, if just one night around Hardwick was messing her up like this.

If I said that to Hardwick, would he—

She shook her head firmly. She had to stop thinking like that.

And start thinking about what she would tell her family when she got back to the hotel.

If they were at the hotel. She ran over the holiday schedule in her mind. Yesterday, her grandfather had planned to visit the Heartwells so the younger lions could go flying out of sight of the town and the older ones could bask in the various ways they decided they were superior to the dragon shifters.

She didn’t need to be there to know that was the plan. The only reason her grandparents ever thought other varieties of shifters were worth talking to was to cement their position as the top of the heap. Winged lions with pedigrees going back thousands of year were just better than everyone else, don’t you know?

At least she wouldn’t have to pretend to already know what had happened there. So far as everyone else was concerned, she’d been out of range of even the loudest telepathic shrieks. Which meant there was an opportunity for conversation. Maybe Aunt Grizelda would like to give her a blow-by-blow of the visit, and that could keep her out of having to do... whatever was on the cards for today.

Dogsledding? Ice-skating?

She couldn’t remember.

Delphine stared at herself in the mirror, horrified. She couldn’t remember? She always remembered. Remembering was how she got