He chuckled. *That depends. How likely is your hellsheep to introduce itself by exploding out in the middle of you shaking hands with my old alpha?*
*Oh, one hundred percent likelihood, minimum.*
*In that case I’d better leave you to it.*
Sheena barked out laughter. *Like you could stop me!*
*I could have fun trying.* The mate bond thrummed with promise… but Sheena’s hellsheep was having too much fun already.
*Later,* she said, and Fleance whispered:
*I’ll hold you to that.*
*Oh, really? You could have said ‘I’ll hold that against you’ and then I could say ‘You can hold me against one of these’—yeek!*
She broke off as her hellsheep landed on a fallen tree that immediately collapsed and sent her sprawling into a burbling creek. *I’m fine!* she called to Fleance. She sploshed upstream, water hissing around her hooves. *Still fine!*
Her hellsheep was in heaven. The forest here was mostly pine trees, but they were different varieties to the pinus radiata she was familiar with from home. Some had striking white trunks like silver birch or eucalyptus, and all filled the air with a pungent, invigorating scent that reminded Sheena of long summers back home in central Otago.
Long, hay fevery summers.
Her hellsheep sneezed a burst of flame. Shit! Sheena thought, and rushed to stomp out the flames before they could spread. Cool, yep, just burn down the mountain. Perfect way to introduce myself to Fleance’s friends and family. Just perfect…
*You still there, babe?*
Sheena focused on her pack sense—Fleance was a ways ahead of her, now. The road followed the curve of the mountain and she bounded up until she could see the hire car through the trees. Her nose was still tickling, and if she sneezed another fireball, she figured it might be useful to have another pair of feet nearby to help stomp it out. Or another four feet. Even better.
*Bad news,* she said, once she felt through the mate bond that Fleance had spotted her. *My hellsheep gets hay fever same as I do.*
*Is that just with hay, or…?*
*Pines. Grass. Anything that’s a plant and having a good time being alive.* Her hellsheep shook itself and she sniggered as something clicked in her mind. *Now I know what you meant about your heart saying it was Christmas when your head knew it wasn’t. I know it’s still half a year away, but…*
She closed her eyes and breathed in. The sun on her back, the ground warm and rich underfoot, the smells and lush greenness of all the growing things around her…
*This is SO Christmas.*
She sneezed again and swore.
*And so’s that, damn it!*
Fleance laughed. *Christmas in the summer seems so upside-down.*
*So amazing, you mean. How can you have Christmas without going swimming at the beach? Eating new potatoes with mint and butter, and fresh-caught fish on the barbecue, and a pavlova with strawberries and kiwifruit…*
*You mean kiwis?*
*I mean kiwiFRUIT! You put a kiwi on a pav, you’re going to have the Department of Conservation knocking on your door. And that’s without even talking about the most important Christmas tradition of having too much to eat or drink and finding a nice tree outside to take a nap under. How are you meant to have a post-Christmas-dinner nap under a tree in the middle of winter? You’d freeze!*
*There’s always the Christmas tree. But I thought you said summer where you come from was cold anyway?*
*Look, if you can’t handle a bit of Christmas sleet on your noggin while you sleep off Christmas dinner, then you clearly haven’t been celebrating enough. I don’t know what to tell you.*
*But you just said…* Fleance groaned. *You’re just going to keep talking me in circles, aren’t you?*
*Am I?* It might have been the hay fever, it might have been the sheer joy of running free through the woods and headbutting trees, but Sheena felt drunk. *Is that the sort of thing you might hold against me?*
*You’ll have to wait and see.*
*Aww…*
The sun curved down across the sky as they made their way up into the mountains. The light turned golden, as though the whole world was covered in a fine layer of pollen—which from Sheena’s perspective, it might as well have been.
*It’s beautiful up here,* she said. *I’ve always loved mountains.*
Something bright and hopeful flickered down the mate bond. *We haven’t talked about… maybe once we’ve run out of wanderlust, and things to fix…* Fleance’s voice was hesitant.
Sheena leaped onto an outcrop of rock that gave her a view back down the mountain. The landscape was wonderfully crumpled, and all covered in dense forest. She turned to peer further up wherever the road was leading and saw the distant shine of the late-afternoon sun reflecting off what had to be the roofs and windows of Pine Valley-the-town, as opposed to Pine-Valley-accurate-description-of-every-valley-she’d-run-through-so-far.
She was half a world away from home, and she had no idea what she’d find in the forest as she explored it further, or whether she’d like Fleance’s family and they’d like her, and she had a lot of wanderlust left, but…
*Maybe,* she agreed, and darted back to the road in time to see the worry on Fleance’s face melt into delight.
A few minutes later, her nose wasn’t the only thing that was tickling.
The wool on the back of her neck was prickling, as though someone was looking at her. Her hellsheep spun around several times, yelling HAH!, but there was no one there.
*Do you sense anyone around?* she asked Fleance, who was a hundred meters or so back down the road.
He paused before answering, and she could feel the care he put into checking their surroundings. *…Nothing close,* he said at last.
*Further up the mountain? Or behind us?* But that didn’t make sense. If she could feel someone watching her, they must be close, not so far up or down the mountain that Fleance couldn’t clearly sense
