Christmas Griffin - Zoe Chant Page 0,42
and found her own boots while he hunted out clothes for himself.
At least she’d left her boots at the front door. They were easy to find. Squashed, but easy to find.
She pulled them on, ran her hands through her hair and shook out the bits of snow and splinters they dislodged, and muttered: “Well, shit.”
Hardwick gave her a look that suggested the same sentiment was going through his mind. He tossed snow on the ruins of the stove, quenching the last of the fire.
She gave him privacy while he shifted and dressed and leaned into his embrace when he wrapped his arms around her.
“I guess this is it,” he murmured.
Delphine pulled the heavy coat more closely around herself and turned around so they were facing each other. She pressed her face into the crook of his neck and sighed.
“We’re heading back to Pine Valley.”
Chapter Twenty
Hardwick
He’d half expected Delphine to drag her heels, but she was surprisingly efficient.
She checked the power situation and turned off the electricity so they weren’t risking the house burning down after they left – or what was left of it burning down, anyway. She checked the rubble for a duffel bag and stashed all the extra clothes he managed to dig out into it.
This was a side to her he hadn’t seen, he realized, as he watched her close her eyes and take a slow, deep breath. Her shoulders straightened, her spine uncurled, but somehow she didn’t seem any bigger.
Delphine caught him looking at her and grimaced. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just, if we’re going back… I want to be ready.”
He looked at her again and understanding struck. When her shoulders and back were curved in, she was drawing attention to herself. By straightening up, she made herself more neutral. Her pose, her expression, the way she moved—it was all designed to let her slip through the world unnoticed.
“What?” Delphine asked, and he explained his theory. Her lips twitched. “Well, it’s a good thing none of my family are as observant as you are. Come on. Let’s… get this over with.”
They would go to the car first, they decided. Part of Delphine’s new careful neutrality was making sure she arrived back in Pine Valley with the bottles of port she’d left it to buy.
The bottles were frozen solid. One of them had burst, and Delphine looked at it for longer than Hardwick was comfortable with before closing the trunk on it. When she caught him staring at her, his massive griffin’s head tipped to one side, she explained with an uncomfortable smile, “I wondered if it might be useful, somehow, still, even though it’s broken. I don’t think so, though.”
She rolled the intact bottles in spare clothing and secured them in the duffel bag.
He held the duffel in one foreclaw and knelt down so she could climb onto his back. She was more confident this time.
He wasn’t. The one good thing about her plan to drive into town by herself, he’d reckoned, was that it meant less time when he was terrified out of his mind thinking he was going to drop her. Now? He had to fly close enough to town that they could walk the rest of the way, while keeping out of sight of anyone else taking advantage of the good weather to explore the snow. It was a job for agility and speed, sharp turns to take cover in the trees or drop to the ground and camouflage himself among the rocks. Not a job for keeping his mate in one piece.
He gingerly took to the air.
They would go to the Heartwells. That was the plan. Hardwick hadn’t met them, but after he explained to Delphine where exactly she’d crashed the car in relation to the town, she’d decided the Heartwells’ home was closer than Jackson’s place. They could bypass the town entirely and only be in danger of being seen by the most intrepid Christmas Eve cross-country skiers.
The Heartwells’ lodge. Hardwick had never seen it, but Delphine’s instructions had been clear enough. Farther up than the town, in another of the steep, snow-filled valleys that these mountains were full of.
She was sure the dragon shifters would help. Hardwick was less sure, but at least they’d be among shifters, on the shifters’ home turf. He wouldn’t have to worry about the background ache of being around people who were constantly, whether they realized it or not, lying about their true natures.
Not around people, anyway. Person. Delphine was still—
*!!!*
What was that?
His griffin flared