The Hellhound's Un-Christmas Miracle - Zoe Chant Page 0,9
for herself. Finding your soulmate and settling down was part of being grown up, like buying a house and owning a matching dinner set. She’d spent so long filing it away with the other things she was definitely not going to manage anytime soon that she hadn’t even considered it might actually happen to her.
Now, for the first time since she was seven years old and competing with Aroha over who could come up with the most fantastic-sounding mate, she really thought about it.
She might find her mate out there. The one person in the whole world who was perfectly suited to her. Which was a bit of a worry, really. Sheena sometimes thought she wasn’t suited to herself, especially when something startled her sheep and the next thing she knew, she’d run off somewhere and got herself lost.
But the thing that hit her like a rugby ball to the chest was the idea that being bound to someone so inextricably might mean she never came home again.
It did happen. Aroha was right. Maybe that was why her parents had insisted she do this massive roadie and see all her relatives before she went overseas. They were worried that she would find her mate and immediately settle down wherever she was at the time, like a seed blown on the wind. Somewhere overseas, never to come home again.
She looked out at the unfamiliar landscape flashing past the windows. Sheena had grown up in Central Otago, a land of endless skies and sweeping hills that changed their color by the season—green, then gold, tussocks that moved like an ocean in the wind, parting around the jutting tors of granite that pushed up like islands. Sunlight was sharp there, slicing flat shadows into the mountains and burning your skin wherever it touched.
It was sharp here, too, but the land was different. Ngauruhoe straddled the landscape, its white cape of snow enhancing its classic volcano shape. Where the road cut through the sides of low hills it revealed rich red-brown earth, shot through with layers of black volcanic ash. A strange yearning twisted at Sheena’s heart. She’d lived in New Zealand all of her twenty-three years and spent all but a handful of weeks in the South Island. What was she doing, going halfway across the world, when she hadn’t even explored the country on her own doorstep?
I’m not going forever, she reminded herself. It’s just a trip.
Unless she met her mate.
She swallowed.
Aroha was still talking. “Hey, my shift starts soon, I’d better go. Wait—shit, your mum asked me to remind you about something and I’ve forgotten what it was.”
“Hah, and you don’t even have my excuse.” Sheena’s voice didn’t give away the worry twisting inside her.
“Shut up.” Aroha groaned and smacked herself on the forehead. Sheena grinned at her.
“Do you reckon if you do that enough, you’ll knock loose your inner animal?”
The woman in the next seat gave her a very odd look. Sheena wasn’t worried that she’d revealed the secret existence of shifters—you could get away with a lot, she’d discovered, being a tiny white girl with big eyes and a tendency to squeak when startled. The woman probably thought she was talking metaphorically. Or that it was a sex thing.
She mouthed another ‘Sorry’ at her neighbor and tried to look like the sort of person who wouldn’t be talking about a sex thing over the phone on an InterCity bus.
Aroha made a face. “Like I want some dumb animal inside me telling me what to do. Bad enough having the fam in my business all the—hah! Got it.” She snapped her fingers. “Your mum asked me to tell you to find out what’s happening with Auntie Fiona and Auntie Rena. Remember at Christmas, how they wouldn’t shut up about that building development thing they were doing? Your mum says they’ve gone quiet.”
“Oh, so she’s sending me in to get the latest gossip?” Honestly, the idea of serving up some gossip that wasn’t to do with herself sounded like a nice change.
“Mm. Last she heard, they were approached by some overseas investor. Basically I think she wants you to find out if the aunties are suddenly multi-millionaires in which case they should put some money into doing up Nana’s place.”