Christmas Griffin - Zoe Chant Page 0,38
light inside her heart was glowing even stronger than it had after their first kiss. And it wasn’t just a lonely star. Part of it stretched out, a ribbon of golden light that stretched from her heart to Hardwick’s.
“I can feel it,” she gasped. “I can—I can see it. But how is that possible? It’s inside me...”
“My griffin is inside me, but I can see it.” Hardwick brushed a strand of her hair back and turned her head to kiss her. “I don’t know whether you call it your mind’s eye, or seeing into your own soul, but the way I see my griffin and the way I see our bond is the same.”
Our bond.
Delphine was suddenly aware of the world slotting back into existence around her. The warm cabin filled only with the sounds of their breathing and the gentle fire-noises of the stove. Outside, the heavy silence of snow and the mountains. And then, somewhere beyond that...
The real world.
Her family.
And the old her, her old self, the one she’d built so carefully.
Something inside her snapped shut, afraid.
Chapter Eighteen
Hardwick
Delphine went stiff in his arms.
“Are you cold?” he asked, reluctantly slipping out of her. She half-turned, one hand still clasping his, the other rising to rest on his chest. “We can move to the bed now if you like.”
“It’s not that. I—” She looked up at him, her face pinched. “What happens now?”
He reached for the mate bond. His parents had told him once that they could use it to communicate even more closely than they could with telepathy. Telepathy could send words, but two mated shifters could send emotions down their mate bond.
But not him, apparently. When he tried to hold onto the mate bond it slipped out of his psychic grasp, as immaterial as mist.
Was it because Delphine wasn’t a shifter?
His jaw tightened. Thank goodness she couldn’t feel his emotions, because that stray thought might have just broken her.
“Now?” he said out loud, trying to push away the guilt and worry building up inside him. “It’s almost Christmas—”
He didn’t need a mate bond to see the sudden panic in her eyes. Thank all the stars she was finally being honest with him, and not hiding her genuine responses behind her mask of lies.
“You don’t want to go back to your family for Christmas, do you?”
Delphine opened her mouth. Shut it again. Gave him a look that told him this probably wasn’t a conversation to be had in a naked clinch.
He tugged her towards her and kissed her forehead. “Tell you what. Let’s get cleaned up. I’ll put on some food. You can tell me later—”
Her shoulders stiffened.
“—if you want.”
He let her have the bathroom first and grabbed a couple of frozen lasagnas. One veggie, one classic. That was a balanced meal, right, if they split them?
As he heard the shower start to run, he sighed. His shoulders slumped.
Had this all been a terrible idea?
Staying apart from her had been agony. But being with her would be agony, too. She knew now that her lies caused him actual, physical pain, and she seemed to regret it—but now that the glow of their first time together was fading, his headache was back. The dull, constant ache he’d come to think of as all Delphine.
She might want to change. He would believe that. Believe in the want, anyway. He’d been on the force too long to fool himself that want lasted any time at all against the other pressures in anyone’s life. Whatever pressures had caused her to be the way she was, being with him was unlikely to remove them.
She would keep being her. And he would keep hurting—or have to force himself to be apart from her, which would hurt in a different way, but just as badly.
The mood thickened as Delphine borrowed more of his clothes to change into and he took her place in the bathroom. The days before, you could have cut the tension in the air with a knife. The tension had been all possibility. Now, the knife would stick mid-air, snared in the dense tangle of unsaid words, and their weight was the threat of things breaking down.
“I don’t want to go back,” Delphine said when they were both clean, and dressed, and weighed down by not saying. She glanced at Hardwick quickly, watching his face for signs of pain, and added: “I know it sounds awful...”
“Plenty of people prefer not to spend Christmas with their family.”
“Like you?” Her lips curved into a smile