Christmas Griffin - Zoe Chant Page 0,52

name. You’re not even—”

“Don’t. Don’t say it.” Delphine stood up, wringing her hands. “I’ll go for that walk and let you rest.”

“I wasn’t going to say—”

“You should rest. Without me here. Shouldn’t you?” She squared off against him, arms crossed, eyes blazing. “Is that the truth?”

“...Yes.” Hardwick growled in defeat. “It is. I should rest.”

“Alone.”

“No.”

Delphine turned away, all business and angles and unhappiness as she gathered her jacket and outdoor gear. “Try to get some sleep. I’ll call Jasper and see if he knows of any spare rentals around town. Or Jackson might be able to put you up. He and Olly are good people, I’m sure they’d be better at... all this... than any of my family.”

“Delphine, wait. Please.”

It was that last word that made her pause. She looked at him over her shoulder, her eyes shadowed with hope.

You’re not happy. That’s what he had been about to say. He’d thought that Delphine’s desperate need to fit in with her family was because she had some sort of personal issue around not being a shifter, and she’d set her family up as some sort of flawless goal she wanted to be like, but that couldn’t be true. She admitted her family was a pack of assholes. And she was miserable. All those lies she told, the whole fake life—and it left her miserable.

But he was in no position to ask questions. His head was spinning too badly for him to string more than a few words together. Even longer thoughts unraveled in his mind before he got to the end of them, torn away by the crashes of pain in his skull.

“Stay,” he asked. “Please. Even if it hurts.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Delphine

She stayed. How could she not?

More like how could you, she accused herself. You should leave him. He’ll be better off without you.

His face was a rictus of pain. It wasn’t fair, Delphine thought. It wasn’t fair that someone could be that pale and close to passing out, and still hurting that much. Wasn’t fainting meant to be a relief? But Hardwick seemed trapped, his body twisted from his so-called ‘gift’ and not even giving him the escape of unconsciousness.

“Tell me what you need,” she begged. She bent over him, as though the pain he was experiencing was something external that she could protect him from. “Please. There has to be something I can do.” What is the point of me being his mate if all I do is cause him pain?

“The truth,” he gritted out. “Tell me something that is true.”

Something true?

“I want to protect you,” she whispered. Hardwick shuddered, but it was a shudder of relief, not pain. She stroked his hair, rested her hand on the back of his neck where the muscles were hard as stone. “I don’t want you to hurt like this anymore. Or at all. I—”

She braced herself. The instinct to shy away from the truth was so embedded in her she had to force herself to peel away the lies that wrapped around it before the thought was even fully formed.

“—I’m a bit freaked out, how quickly I’ve come to care about you. I know that’s how mate bonds work, but I’ve never had any sort of magic before. It’s so new to me that it’s terrifying. I want to be with you, but there’s part of me that might run away at any second, because how can even magic make this work?”

And you wanted me to run, she added silently. You wanted me to leave without saying anything. Without knowing the truth.

Her words were easing something within Hardwick. His breathing became slower. The knife-like edges of his shoulder blades pressing through his shirt relaxed.

“Thank you,” he whispered, his voice the last ragged edge of something almost worn through.

She stayed there, whispering nonsense until he was asleep—no, she reminded herself, not nonsense. True things. How she was worried he was overextending himself. How he should have told her that he was so much worse here than when they were alone. How she would have done something—she didn’t know what, but something. Anything to keep him away from her family and the pain they caused.

It wasn’t until she was certain he was asleep that she let the words that had been prickling in her throat out.

“I don’t see how this is going to work,” she whispered. His eyelids didn’t even flicker. “You and me. Fate must have gotten it wrong. I don’t even know who I am without the story I’ve told my