She stretched one hand across the table and took her mother’s hand. “I’m all right, Mum. Really. You don’t need to worry about me anymore.”
“Of course I need to worry about you!” Heather sniffed, half-laughing. “My little lamb, always getting in over her head.”
Sheena laughed. “It’ll take a bit more to get in over my head these days, Mum.” She squeezed Heather’s hand. “When Parker bit me and my body tried to fight off the hellhound infection, my sheep… disappeared.”
“But it came back,” her mother interjected. She closed her eyes briefly and Fleance felt a strange pressure through the mate bond; the feeling of being watched, but experienced through someone else’s skin. “I can still see you there, part of our big old flock.”
“It did come back. Just… a bit different.”
“What do you mean?”
Sheena’s smile started off nervous, but she clearly couldn’t hold it back for long. Glee spread across her face, bright and shining, and Fleance wondered how much of the energy burning behind her eyes was her inner animal and how much was herself, thrilling with excitement. “I didn’t turn into a hellhound. But I didn’t totally not turn into one, either. And you don’t have to worry about me now, because I’m not a little lamb anymore. I’m…”
Sparks flashed over her skin. Her body shimmered at the edges, light and shadows dancing like sunspots, and the smell of wool and woodsmoke filled the air.
*…a hellsheep.* Sheena’s voice crackled like a bonfire.
Fleance blinked as the lights of Sheena’s shift temporarily dazzled him. When his vision cleared, Sheena’s hellsheep was taking up more space in the small kitchen than he’d thought existed. Fire sprouted from its eyes and licked along its curly black-and-white coat.
It got exactly the reaction that Fleance suspected Sheena had been hoping for—before she’d decided to ease her family into the news rather than jump it on them. He wondered just how much her hellsheep was steamrolling Sheena’s gentler feelings. Not that it wanted to scare anyone—he could feel as clear as his own thoughts that it was just overjoyed to be able to show off.
Her mother stood up, mouth wide open. Several possibly-aunts swore; one could-be-an-uncle made a sound that was close to a shriek. There was a flutter of wings by the door, and suddenly a small bird with darkly iridescent plumage and a white bit of fluff at its throat was perched in Fiona’s hair. She patted it absently, mouthing something Fleance couldn’t make out.
*See? Not so little,* Sheena said, kicking her back legs happily. She’d half-phased through the window, Fleance realized belatedly; that was how she could still ‘fit’ in there without crowding everyone else out. *I’ll have to try a lot harder to get in over my head now!*
Her mother just stared at her. Beside her, Sheena’s dad pushed his hat back off his head.
“I’ll be damned,” he muttered.
*And as for Parker…* Sheena looked over her parents’ heads—which wasn’t difficult—towards Fiona and the bird-shaped Rena. *He’s not in charge anymore. I am. I’m the alpha of his pack. And I’m going to make sure he fixes everything he broke here. Down to the last singed flax bush.*
Heather was still staring at her. “Sheena, you’re…”
Sheena lowered her massive head to look at her. A hint of clover mingled with her hellfire scent. *Finally big enough to deal with the trouble I keep running into by myself?*
Heather let out a breath that was half-sigh, half-laughter. She drew herself up. “Big enough? Look at you! Do you know how much extra energy a form like that must need? And you haven’t eaten a thing since you got here!” She put her hands on her hips and shouted over Sheena’s huge, slightly-on-fire shoulder to a group of men gathered around a grill outside. “Kev! Gav! Hurry up with those sausages!” She reached up and patted the side of Sheena’s nose with a smile on her face. “I don’t care how big you are, my wee lamb. I’ll still worry about you as long as I know you’re out there getting into mischief. That’s my job.”
“She’s got me to help her with that, now,” Fleance added. Heather turned her eyes to him.
“If that’s meant to reassure me,” she said, a sparkle in her eye, “then you have a lot to learn about my Sheena. You’ll end up helping her into trouble more than you help her out of it.”
“That sounds just fine to me,” Fleance said, and the golden rope that connected him to Sheena glowed as brightly as the twin suns in the center of his mind.
* * *
Much later, after Heather had made good on her threat to feed Sheena until she was bursting in order to fuel her hellsheep properly, the two of them managed to slip away into the trees.
Sheena had managed to pull her clothes with her when she shifted back into human form. She squeezed herself up against him, sliding one hand up under his jacket. A thrill shivered across his skin at 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
