Christmas Griffin - Zoe Chant Page 0,24

it up, of course. She couldn’t remember anything before she woke up on the sofa and by that time Hardwick had fled to the other side of the room.

But he’d been close to her. He’d touched her. Which meant he would know, surely, if they were mates.

She closed her eyes tight. Why do I keep going back to this? Haven’t I already decided it’s nonsense?

If she was Hardwick’s mate, he would have said something.

Unless…

She went very still.

Unless he had a reason not to.

A reason like his mate being a woman who’d built her life around lying to the people who should love her the most. A woman who’d lied to him, first deliberately and then by omission.

The cold that stuck chill fingers down her back now had nothing to do with the weather. It crept inside her, stiffening her lungs, making her stomach clench.

And met a sudden, hot anger.

She wasn’t the only one who’d been lying by omission.

With a screech of metal and snow grinding on snow and rock, Hardwick hauled the car up out of the ditch. He paused a moment, sides heaving with effort, then shoved it again, pushing it fully onto the flat. Snow cascaded off his wings as he settled them across his back and he turned to Delphine, dark eyes glittering.

This was it, she thought, as ice and fire met inside her to create something churning and awful. We’re done. I’ve gotten everything I want: back to the car, and soon I’ll be back with my family, and out of his hair. Everything is going to plan.

She searched inside herself for upbeat, professionally grateful and one hundred percent not on the edge of regretting all of her life choices and found an appropriate smile.

Hardwick looked uncomfortable. He glanced from the car, to Delphine, to the road behind her, and then let out a sigh that made his wings rustle. He moved behind the car and the air around him began to shimmer.

Delphine turned her back. It wasn’t polite to watch people shift, she told herself, but it wasn’t just that. Plenty of shifters were practically exhibitionists. But Hardwick had been shy about the no-clothes issue, so it would be especially wrong not to give him some privacy.

That wasn’t it, either. The truth wormed into her mind. She turned away, because despite everything she told herself some hopeful part of her heart still believed he was her mate. But that couldn’t be real. A decision she’d made over a decade ago, a decision she’d shaped her life around, meant that even if that was real, it couldn’t happen.

And if it wasn’t going to happen then she was not going to try to steal a glimpse of him.

“Delphine—”

She swallowed down a sudden lump in her throat and turned around. “You actually did it! Thank you so much. I am sorry to have taken so much of your time, but—”

“You don’t seriously think you’re going anywhere in that?”

Hardwick had been standing behind the car, but now he stalked around it. Her pulse spiked until he rounded the car and she saw he’d pulled on his trousers. He must have carried them with him.

What about the rest of his clothes?

“What are you talking about?” she asked, trying her best to ignore all the bits of Hardwick’s body not covered by his trousers, but also not to stare at his trousers. “You got the car out—”

“Car’s not the problem. The road is.” He gestured behind her, and she tore her eyes away from not-his-chest and not-his-trousers.

He was right. The road, like the patch of flat ground she was standing on, like everything else she could see, was two feet deep in snow.

Her stomach dropped. “You’d better drop me back in town then.”

“That’s an hour’s flight, at least.” He added, reluctance in every angle of his body: “I don’t know if you saw over the ridge while we were flying, but more snow’s on its way. Looks heavier. It’s going to get colder. I don’t want to risk you losing your grip and falling off me or ending up flying blind in a blizzard with no shelter.”

He was right. She had seen the snow, and realized, like him, that the calm surrounding the rustic cabin had been a lucky chance.

But him being right didn’t make this any easier.

As she thought that, the first flakes of snow began to whisk through the air.

“Well I can’t stay here!”

“No.” His dark eyes caught hers, even through the flurrying snowflakes. “We’ll have to go back