Christmas Griffin - Zoe Chant Page 0,22
moved towards him.
“Nothing to worry about. Just like getting on a horse,” she muttered to herself, and his griffin hissed. Delphine jerked back. “Sorry! Sorry, I—wasn’t thinking. I’ll be more careful.”
He was the one who needed to be careful. It was so much harder to disguise his griffin’s reactions in this form. And although she knew he could tell when people were lying, he’d kept quiet about the pain it caused him. He didn’t want her to know that the reason he was all the way out here in the mountains was that he was hiding.
Delphine put a gentle hand out to rest against his side. Her touch was muffled by the thick gloves she was wearing, but it was still touch. Deliberate touch.
He curled his talons more securely around his trousers. He would need to get dressed fast once he shifted back into human form.
“I’m going to use your fore-leg as a step,” she warned him, then swung herself up. She overshot, and Hardwick moved beneath her to keep her balanced until she could steady herself. “Oof! I think I’ve got it now. Thank you.”
She put one hand on each shoulder, gripping the bases of his wings where they sprouted from his back. Hardwick held still.
“No mane,” she murmured. “I didn’t think of that. I don’t want to pull any of your feathers out.”
Hardwick tried to shrug without dislodging her. She shifted her weight slightly, and the strange feeling of having someone on his griffin’s back became, if no less strange, at least less precarious feeling.
“Okay.” Her voice was more confident now. “Try standing up?”
Hardwick got to his feet. Slowly. Delphine’s breathing shallowed nervously, but she didn’t overbalance.
He looked back at her over his shoulder. She wasn’t pale or showing any other tell-tale signs of fear. In fact, she looked cautiously excited.
He wondered if she would say as much. Ironic, really, that he was the one having to read her body language and not just the other way around.
His griffin tipped its head to one side. It wanted to get into the air; it wanted, Hardwick realized with a lurch, to show off.
“Is that you asking if I’m ready to take off?” Delphine looked over his head for a moment, past the ring of snow-covered trees around the edge of the clearing, to the cloud-thick sky. “Yes. I’m ready.”
All right, he told it. Easy, though.
His griffin stretched out its wings. From above, it must have looked like someone had spread gravel in front of the cabin. He beat the air once, twice, testing it for lift and the small eddies of breezes that sifted through the trees, then on the third stroke leapt into the air.
The icy air wasn’t the best for flying. It was even worse for flying from ground level, with a woman clinging to his back. He should have launched himself from the cabin roof—if he’d thought it would hold his weight.
Too late now. He beat his wings against the frigid air, fighting to gain enough height that he could simply glide the rest of the way to where Delphine had crashed her car.
Delphine’s knees dug into his sides. And her elbows. Her hands twisted in the feathers just above his shoulders. Could sheer terror break a mate bond? He was sure he was about to find out.
Finally, he was far enough above the canopy that he could stop flapping and stretch his wings out. He made sure he was flying steady, then snuck a look at Delphine over his shoulder.
She was smiling as though her heart was about to burst with joy.
A ripple of warmth went through him. She caught his eye and her smile changed. The first smile had been open, unintentional, a straight transfer of feelings to expression.
This smile was for him. And this new smile wasn’t hiding those feelings or translating them into something she thought he would prefer. It was inviting him to join in her happiness, her energy, the sheer joy radiating through her.
He didn’t want the flight to end.
But soon enough, it did.
Chapter Eleven
Delphine
The mood changed as soon as Hardwick landed. No, that wasn’t fair. There was no universal mood that changed. It was her. Her mood. Her workaday self, wrapping back around her true self like an old, itchy coat.
She wished the flight could have lasted longer. That she could have caught it and frozen it in place, like a scene in a snow globe, and never had to move on to deal with whatever was coming next.
Especially