The Hellhound's Un-Christmas Miracle - Zoe Chant Page 0,70

moving around him. Names went in one ear and out the other. Someone pressed a filled roll into Fleance’s hand.

“Better get stuck in now, mate, they’re a pack of magpies around here!” someone—possibly the same someone, possibly not—bawled in the vicinity of his eardrum.

“Thanks,” he said, feeling dizzy. When had he made it all the way up to the house? His brain hadn’t been involved in any decision to move, that was for sure. The flock had moved, and he’d been swept along with it.

He was beginning to understand what Sheena meant about going along with the flock. And why her sheep sometimes wanted to run in its own direction.

“No worries. Someone’s gotta remember to keep everyone fed while Heather’s on the warpath.”

He had no idea who the man was who’d just given him a sandwich. *A cousin,* Sheena said when he sent her a desperate question. He couldn’t see her and was seriously considering resorting to tracing her using his pack sense, when she pushed through the crowd. He grabbed her hand, trying not to feel like he was grabbing for a lifesaver.

*How many cousins do you have?*

*Jeez, I don’t know. Too many?*

Fleance barely managed to take a single bite of the filled roll before he found himself dragged into the kitchen and installed at a rough-hewn dining table. Someone pressed a bottle of beer into his free hand as Sheena elbowed her way in beside him. The two of them were at the heart of a whirling storm of her family, all emanating concern and curiosity.

“I’m fine,” Sheena said in response to a question he didn’t catch. “Really! Better than fine. I’m not going to catch cold from being outside for half a minute.”

*You could just shift and show them,* Fleance suggested. She shot him a dirty look.

*Sure, if we want half of them shifting in shock and trampling through the house.* Sheena snorted.

Her mother narrowed her eyes. It was a distressingly familiar expression, and Fleance wondered if Sheena knew just how much of her own stubborn nature was part of her sheep shifter heritage, not something new from her hellsheep’s influence.

Someone held a phone up, screen towards Fleance and Sheena. A young woman who looked Sheena’s age, with long dark hair and what was now a familiar expression of mixed exasperation and worry on her face, stared out at them.

“Aroha!” Sheena cried out.

“I can’t believe you!” the woman on the phone yelled back, her voice tinny through the speakers. “I stop talking to you for half a day and you burn down an entire village!”

“That wasn’t me! It was a hellhound!”

“A what?!”

Her mother, Heather, cleared her throat. On-screen, Aroha slammed her hands against her face and groaned. “That’s enough,” Heather said placidly. She turned to the two of them sitting on the picnic bench. “Let’s deal with the important things first.”

Fleance saw Sheena revving herself up to complain again that she wasn’t hurt, she wasn’t too cold or too tired or too hungry she was fine, when Heather followed up with: “How did you two meet?”

The mate bond trembled with indignation, but Sheena covered it well. Fleance hid his grin. *Now you’re indignant she’s not asking after you?*

*Hush, you.* Sheena ran her fingers through her hair. “Funny you should say that. I was about to run into a burning building—”

“Sheena!”

“—but then Fleance turned up and ran in for me, which was real helpful. It meant that I had the first bash at this dickhead hellhound shifter who turned up…”

“No!”

Fleance began to suspect as the story unraveled that despite her protestations Sheena actually quite liked scandalizing her family. He joined in the retelling where necessary, but mostly sat and enjoyed Sheena winding up her audience. Even in Pine Valley, he’d never been so close to the center of such a clearly loving group of people.

These people were real family. Not just the shared blood he had with Angus. Even if Sheena couldn’t remember all of her cousins’ names or how they were related to her—and he gathered, from a few whispered remarks, that she wasn’t alone in that—they were all ride or die for her. People talked about herd mentality like it was a bad thing, but if it meant everyone coming together to protect one member of the herd from an outside threat?

He wrapped his hand around Sheena’s as she skipped over the non-PG parts of the story and began to describe their early-morning car race out of town. The mate bond hummed, and he let some