Christmas Griffin - Zoe Chant Page 0,6

wrapped it around her. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do. He laid her down carefully and shifted into griffin form. Snow cascaded around his wings. Some of it landed on the woman. He brushed it aside and carefully picked her up in his front claws. He felt like he was moving through tar.

He clutched the unconscious woman against his feathered chest and leapt into the air.

She was so still. A limp, heavy weight. He was acutely aware of the cold wind rushing past, the snow flurrying every thicker around him as he wheeled up towards the sheltered clearing where the hunting cabin was. Snow was already thick on the ground up here. His car was bumper-deep.

Her car had been more than half-buried. In a few hours, it would have been invisible. Wiped out by the fresh snow. She would have been—

He landed. Ripped the door open. Laid the woman on the sofa and shifted back into human form. Checked vitals. Breathing, pulse, all steady.

He remembered seeing an ancient hot water bottle in one of the cupboards and put water on the stove to heat. Blankets from the bed. Took off her boots and gloves, found feet and fingers cold but not ice-white. Blood still in them. Tucked the hot water bottle against her chest.

Found some clothes. Tucked himself against her chest, folding his body around hers, creating a pocket of warmth to protect her.

Slowly, horribly, the world started moving again. The numb shell that had surrounded Hardwick the moment he saw the woman lying helpless in the snow melted away. His griffin twitched and fretted, watching her out of his eyes.

She was a few years younger than he was, he guessed. It was hard to tell, with her face smoothed out by unconsciousness and gone pale with the cold. Her hair was honey-gold, darkened by patches of melting snow.

Questions there hadn’t been time for during the emergency welled up, unstoppable.

Who was she?

Where had she come from?

And before he could stop it, a cracked, resentful voice added its own question. The voice that crept into his thoughts when his headaches were at their worst, and the whole world seemed fixed on hurting him.

Because this was no ordinary woman. He didn’t know her, had never met her, but from the second he caught sight of her in the snow he’d understood on a level beyond ordinary senses who she was.

His soulmate.

And that broken voice inside him, the dark shadow of the man he wanted to be, whispered:

Why did fate tie me to a mate whose lies are so powerful I could hear her from a mile away?

Chapter Five

Delphine

Something smelled like smoke. Delphine’s nose twitched. Oh, good. Mr. Petrakis has left his curling tongs on again, she thought, and without opening her eyes, sat up and swung her legs off the side of the daybed.

Something else moved, too, something that she barely had time to register as warm and solid before it disappeared. Her brain put two and two together and came up with Oh, good, Mr. Petrakis has adopted another fashionable type of dog and set it on fire. She tried to stand up.

Her feet hit something soft and unmoving. She kicked at it, confused, and found there was something wrapped around her legs. And her head hurt. And—

Everything that had happened rushed back to her.

No curling tongs.

No smoking Samoyed.

No daybed in the corner of her office, where she stole a few minutes’ sleep after staying up all night managing Mr. Petrakis’s latest disaster.

Oh… good. It was only long training with her family that stopped her from swearing out loud. Was she still in the snow? Did she feel like she had something wrapped around her legs because her legs were completely numb from the cold? Was she dying? Was this what dying felt like? Like being trapped somewhere while your boss absent-mindedly set fire to his office bathroom and your head was sore and everything smelled like burning and… coffee…

“You’re awake.”

The voice was like a calming landslide. It rolled over Delphine’s sudden panic, flattening her wild thoughts so she could see them for the nonsense they were.

She opened her eyes.

She wasn’t stuck in the snow, or back at the office sneaking a micro-nap before her boss burst in with his latest grand plan. She was inside a room she’d never seen before, lying on a sofa she didn’t remember getting onto, wrapped in warm blankets.

The back of her head still hurt. She sat up—slowly, this time—and gingerly felt