It was definitely a warning, he decided as his mind was swamped by a dozen shifters wanting to know the whole story.
Sheena gave him a wry look. *You would have been better off taking all the credit,* she said, slipping her arm through his.
* * *
He wasn’t sure who made the decision to drive en masse back to Silver Springs. He suspected it was Sheena’s mother, in some sheepish, non-alpha form of complete and utter control. The hotel staff were relieved to see them go, although they kept their relief professionally hidden. One midnight fire alarm—which Fleance had no doubt would appear on his room bill—was bad enough without adding an entire sheep shifter clan to the situation.
It was a clear afternoon—no, Fleance realized, it was morning again. How long had he and Sheena been asleep?
The flock drove in a single mob down the motorway to the Silver Springs turnoff, and jostled down the winding, decorative drive through the houses.
Or what was left of them.
Sheena’s dad hissed a breath in through his teeth. “What’s the story here, then?”
Heather clicked her tongue. “Weren’t you listening before? Poor Fiona, all the work she’s put in.”
“Was that what you were trying to dig out of her? I thought you were bothering her about Christmas again.”
“Well she’s hardly going to be able to host it now, is she? With the whole place gone up in flames.”
Squashed into the back seat, Fleance caught Sheena’s eye. Somehow in the crush to get everyone into various cars, Sheena had ended up wrapped in a blanket and clutching a thermos. She grimaced, tucked the thermos down the side of the seat, and took his hand.
*Just say the word, and we can phase out of here and go bush.* Her psychic voice had a hint of smoke in it. Not sulfur—woodsmoke.
He smiled. *I don’t mind.*
Sheena rolled her eyes and wriggled against him. *Did you consider that I might mind?*
*Shame.* He grinned and dropped a kiss on top of her head. *I’m glad to meet your family. You’ve seen where I came from—* He tried not to wince. *—now I get to meet the people who helped you turn out so wonderful.*
*I feel like I should resent the suggestion that I’m not responsible for my own wonderful-ness.* Sheena wrinkled her nose. *Except I’m pretty sure that’s my hellsheep talking.*
Her eyes slid past him to the wreckage outside, and fire shimmered at the edges of her irises. The texture of her parents’ conversation in the front of the car didn’t change; neither of them had noticed anything.
*We’re definitely going to have to do something about that,* Sheena murmured as the ruined houses passed by outside, and her psychic voice tasted like a bonfire.
The mob reformed outside the only house that had been left unscathed by Parker’s attack: her aunts’ patchwork villa. Fiona and Rena were standing together at the front door. Fleance watched them exchange an exhausted glance.
Heather tutted. “They could have left us a better park!” she complained, hauling the steering wheel around and blocking another car in as she found a spot.
Sheena squeezed Fleance’s hand and slithered into the tiny gap between their car and the next. *You can’t say I didn’t warn you.*
Fleance frowned as he opened his door. *What do you mean?*
He soon found out.
Relatives surrounded him in a swarm. All of them were shouting. Hands clapped him on the shoulder, none of them clearly connected to any of the people 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
