The Hellhound's Un-Christmas Miracle - Zoe Chant Page 0,73
her touch.
*That could have gone worse,* she said. *I think they like you.*
Fleance stretched his hearing out to catch the conversation from one of the nearer clusters. *I think they’re already picking out baby names.*
*Oh, God. If we don’t act quickly we’ll wake up tomorrow morning with the rest of our lives planned out for us.* Sheena nuzzled against him with a groan.
“You’re lucky to have a family that cares about you.” Fleance put his arms around her.
“And you’re brave, saying that out loud where they might hear you,” she quipped, then sighed. “I hate to admit it, but you might be right. I’ve always thought they smothered me, but seeing them all here today… it’s because they care about me. Not just because they want to wrap me up in cotton wool.” She snorted, and a puff of amusement raced along the mate bond. “In retrospect, if they’d actually been smothering me properly all these years, I wouldn’t have caused them nearly as much stress as I have done.”
“Really, they’re the victims here.”
“You are so right. Better say it a bit louder, the aunties will love you forever.” She pulled his head down and snuck a kiss that drove the last of the strain of the previous few days from his shoulders. “What about your family? Not Parker. Your pack back in Pine Valley.”
“They’re not my pack anymore, remember?” he reminded her with a fond grimace. “You took care of that.”
They walked deeper into the trees together, picking their way over frozen leaf litter and tough, winding roots. The tree ferns and palm-like plants looked more exotic the longer Fleance looked at them, and he couldn’t help but wonder aloud what they would look like in the summer.
“Very green,” Sheena said flatly. “These ones have white flowers, but for the most part it’s just green, green, green. And—my bag!”
She dashed over to a bright blue backpack, which was lying abandoned at the base of one of the fern-like trees.
“I dropped it when I smelled the smoke…” She trailed off, frowning. “That feels like years ago, now.”
“You were planning a trip, weren’t you?”
“Huh! I was meant to fly out of here tomorrow evening. Still am, technically. Auckland to Honolulu to San Francisco, and then… wherever the road took me. Meaning wherever I ended up after my sheep does its thing.” She stared at her pack and nibbled on her lower lip. “You know, before I met you, I thought that once I found my mate everything would slot into place. I’d put down roots wherever I was and get stuck into the rest of my life. Which would mean right here, I guess.”
Right here? Fleance let the thought sink in. Then he looked up again, at the frozen forest that surrounded them, and let that sink in, too.
He’d barely had time to appreciate New Zealand as a place. His arrival and memory of everything from Auckland south was a blur, and if he’d thought about Rotorua at all, he’d thought it was a fittingly hellish backdrop to his mission. The sulfuric gases, boiling mud pits and steam gushing from natural vents at the sides of the roads had seemed eerily apt.
Now, though, he could see the beauty in it. This landscape was strange, almost alien, like the photos he’d seen of Yellowstone, but made stranger still by the unfamiliar trees and bushes and the birdsong that fluted from hidden branches. The landscape seemed new and somehow incredibly ancient at the same time, and somehow alive. It wasn’t monstrous, or some vision of hell. It was beautiful.
“I could see myself staying,” he said, pressing his lips against the top of Sheena’s head.
She stilled, then looked up at him. “What? Nah.”
“But you just said—”
“And what about your family? I know—” She waved away his objections. “—I know they’re not your pack anymore, but family doesn’t have to mean who’s related to you by blood, or by whatever we’re calling this hellhound stuff. Magic shit. It’s the people who are important to you. And you wouldn’t have come all this way to stop Parker from hurting everyone you left behind if they weren’t important to you.”
She’s right. For a moment, Fleance couldn’t find words. His face locked down, an automatic response in the face of uncertainty.
Then he realized he didn’t need words. He let everything he was feeling flood through the mate bond, and the only thing in the world shining brighter than his emotions were Sheena’s eyes.