Christmas Griffin - Zoe Chant Page 0,66

you have done differently, if you’d known I turned out not a shifter?”

Fury blazed from Pebbles’ face. “I would have—I would have—”

“What? Not married Pascal?”

Pebbles reeled back. Beside her, Pascal’s eyes flicked nervously from Belgrave to Belgrave. “I wouldn’t have brought him back here at least!”

“Penelope!”

It had been so long since anyone used Pebbles’ real name, even she took a moment to realize their grandmother was talking to her.

Angela was irate. “Dominic was bad enough, but he was always a dreamer. I thought you of all people would understand the importance of sacrificing for this family!”

“I’m sorry? Pascal is my mate!”

“Don’t be so naïve, girl,” Alastair rasped. “Do you think fate has blessed our family all these years because we let it control our lives?”

“But you always said fate was kind to us.” Pebbles’ eyes went wide.

Suspicion prickled on the back of Delphine’s neck. Pebbles glanced at her and for a moment their eyes met. Her mind itched, and it didn’t take years of practice to guess what Pebbles was trying to say to her, already forgetting that her non-shifter cousin couldn’t hear her.

“What are you saying, Grandfather?” Delphine asked carefully.

“Fate is kind to us,” Alastair announced pompously, “because we know when to follow it, and when to ignore it. Your grandmother and I aren’t mates, but we—”

Chaos. That was the only word for it. Every Belgrave started shouting at once.

All except two.

“—we did what was right to preserve the Belgrave line!” Alastair roared.

Delphine hardly heard him.

The arguing voices turned into angry shouts. Delphine took an automatic step back and almost tripped over her chair. Hardwick steadied her and she leaned against him, the light in her chest flickering at the same pace as the thudding of her heart.

“I thought it would just be me,” she whispered to him. “I didn’t think it would destroy my whole family.”

Her mother was still staring at Delphine.

And she looked terribly, terribly sad.

Delphine grabbed Hardwick’s hand. He turned to her at once, his dark eyes searching hers.

“Hardwick—” she began.

His eyebrows drew together. “We’re leaving?”

She nodded.

It wasn’t running away, she told herself as she and Hardwick slipped out and the other Belgraves screamed at each other. She was just getting a head start on being thrown out of the family. The family she’d always told herself she was doing this for.

It was only as the cold Christmas air hit her face outside that she started to cry.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Hardwick

Hardwick followed Delphine out into the street. He wished he could say they were striding out together, but even with his arm around her shoulders, he could feel the distance between them. An icy shell forming around her, protecting her shattered heart.

He should be the one to protect her. But she had spent so long alone. She didn’t know how to let him in. How to trust him to hold her heart and keep it safe while she was hurt.

Just like he hadn’t known how to trust her, when they first met.

He wrapped one arm around Delphine’s shoulders, searching his pockets for a clean handkerchief with the other. But no matter how closely he held her, he felt as though he was losing sight of her.

The plaza outside was merrily bedecked with Christmas decorations. The hotel was on Pine Valley’s main square, the hub of all the Christmas bustle that had driven Hardwick away only a few days ago. Today, the place was almost completely deserted. A white-feathered bird settling its wings in a tree was the only sign of life.

Strings of light glimmered in shop windows, and sparkling tinsel was wrapped around every streetlamp and power line. A cluster of Christmas trees huddled in the middle of the square, surrounded by locked-up food carts and abandoned picnic tables decked out like Santa sleighs.

It was the ghost town Hardwick imagined when Jackson first told him about Pine Valley, and it was the most miserable thing he’d ever seen.

Delphine muttered something under her breath and ducked away from Hardwick’s embrace. She walked away from him. His arm fell to his side, leaden.

She hadn’t looked at him since they left the building. He couldn’t get a read on her. She was too good at hiding the truth in her body language. In her winter jacket, with the furred hood hiding the tilt of her head and the quilted fabric obscuring the set of her shoulders and her spine, she was a blank slate.

Hardwick’s griffin was desperate to connect with her. It hovered its wings around the glowing mate bond in