Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
For a heartbeat, Colton thought he'd made a terrible mistake.
One of several, starting with revealing himself as a shifter, although he hadn't seen a way out of that, and Jo Talbott seemed to be adapting to it pretty well, all things considered.
But she stiffened when he drew her into a hug, and he thought maybe he'd pushed it much too far on so little acquaintance.
Only then, after the space of a breath, she shuddered and put her arms around him in turn, hanging on hard.
Even in the cold and wind, she felt warm as she clung to him, although she let go after a minute and stepped back, breathing erratically.
"This isn't the time for blame games anyway," she said with an obvious effort to steady her voice.
"We need to find shelter, and on one hand, it's probably smart to stay near the crash site because it's biggish, but on the other, it's still snowing and if it keeps up the site could get pretty well buried.
And on the third hand we could be just a few miles from a road anywa—oh!
" Her eyes widened. "Can you, I don't know, fly out and see? "
Colton grimaced as his chimera let loose a wail inside his head. "Chimeras are mostly warm-weather fliers," he said apologetically, trying to drown the beast out. "My wings get cold pretty fast."
"Oh. Oh, right, yeah. They're like bat wings, aren't they. No fur. Or feathers, I guess. Yeah, okay, dang it." She rubbed her hand over her head, knocking her hat askew before straightening it again. "Funnily enough I don't have wing-mittens in those bags. Go figure."
Wing-mittens, his chimera said with starry-eyed delight. Can I have wing-mittens?
"I don't know if I could even fly with wing-mittens," Colton said, both to Jo and the chimera, who both, in turn, gave him very similar skeptical looks.
"I don't know how to tell you this, Colton, but that lion thing you are must weigh at least eight or nine hundred pounds, and those little wings are not designed to carry that kind of weight, even if the way they're attached would support it."
Although his chimera clearly agreed with her, it also got distracted, even offended, by her phrasing, and protested, My wings are not little!
Colton, unable to help himself, said, "I have a thirty-two-foot wingspan!"
Jo's mouth twitched. "Yes, very nice. But thirty feet isn't going to fly a nine hundred pound lion.
So I don't think wing mittens are going to be the kill switch on chimera flight, that's what I'm saying.
But I don't have any, anyway. Well." She dug into a pocket again and this time came out with an old-fashioned compass instead of her phone.
"Obviously 'downhill' is the way to start, if we want to hike out or at least hike to look for some kind of shelter, but north is that way, and civilization, or what passes for it in Montana, is that way.
" She pointed as she spoke, and unsurprisingly, civilization was also downhill.
"You have a compass?"
She clicked its cover closed and put it back in her pocket. "I do. I never go out without one, in case of exactly this kind of emergency. No plane, no signal, but magnetics still work."
"I'm just going to marry you, okay?" The words slipped out, and Jo Talbott's eyes popped comically wide open before she let go a single staccato laugh.
"Why don't you hold off on proposals until we get out of here alive?
I think we'll be fine, but I also think I can already start feeling my feet getting colder, so since there's nowhere obvious for a good shelter here, I suggest we start walking.
It'll keep us warm, at least." She started wading through snow toward one of the nearby trees, grunting with the effort.
Colton hesitated for just a moment, then shifted and leaped lightly in front of her, sinking into the snow and forging forward through it to break a path.
But my wing-mittens! his chimera wailed. I'm cold!
Fold them down, Colton said. We're much bigger than Jo, and breaking a path won't exhaust us the way it will her.
In fact, right behind him, Jo let out another much more breathless laugh as she staggered into the path he'd made. "Thank you. I was going to get a stick for breaking the snow, but if you can do it, that's a lot more effective. But your wings?"
See? Our mate understands about my wings! She doesn't want me to be cold! Colton swore his chimera had tears swimming in its eyes.
Oh, he said dryly, so you want our mate to be exhausted and worn down just to save us from a little cold weather?
His chimera looked so horrified that Colton started laughing.
Of course, he was in chimera form, and lions weren't really all that well suited to laughing, so a series of roaring, coughing, rumbling shorts emerged from his throat, and Jo froze.
"Are you…okay? Is there trouble? Is…you don't talk in this form, do you… "
Colton, still laughing, shifted back to human.
"No. No, I'm sorry, I can't talk as a chimera, but also no, nothing's wrong.
I was just laughing at my chimera." Only when he said it out loud to somebody who wasn't a shifter did he realize for the first time ever that the phrase 'talking to my chimera' probably sounded completely insane.
Indeed, Jo's eyebrows pushed her hat up a little as they lifted. "You were, um. What?"
"The chimera is part of me, but he's also kind of a separate voice in my head, with opinions and thoughts of his own. He really likes the idea of wing mittens, for example."
Jo put her hands on her hips. "Are you saying you don't like the idea of wing mittens?"
Yeah! said his chimera. Don't you? Huh? Don't you?
"I—I did not say that!" Colton said on both fronts. His chimera hmphed while Jo's gorgeous big smile lit up again.
"No, you didn't. I'm just teasing you. But your wings," she said again. "I don't want you to get frostbite. I can clear a path."
No! We cannot let our mate wear herself out for us!
Now his chimera sounded panicked, although Colton tried to send it soothing thoughts.
"As you say, we'll be warmer walking, and…
are there blankets in any of these bags?
" He was still carrying all of them, which wasn't an inconvenience at all when he was in chimera form, but which did strike him as somewhat awkward and bulky now that he was thinking about it as a human.
"Yes, that one. Oh, here, yes, that's a good idea," Jo said, taking one of the bags.
Colton refrained from pointing out he hadn't actually voiced any ideas, and, smiling, watched Jo root through the bag and come up with a crinkling thermal blanket that unfolded to an unexpectedly large size.
"If you tuck your wings down I can jury-rig a couple of straps, one to go across your chest and one under your hips, and that'll keep some of the snow off your wings and in general keep them much warmer.
Oh! And wait, there's a fleece blanket in here somewhere.
Not as warm as wool but so much lighter.
Hang on." She dug around some more, came up triumphant, and said, "Okay, shift. "
Colton, hardly about to argue, did so, and watched Jo take a wide-eyed step back. Oh no, his chimera said miserably. She's afraid of us.
"You have no idea how large and terrifying you are, do you?
" Jo asked on top of that. She sounded more conversational than afraid, although she didn't move yet, just stood there examining him as her tone became brisker.
"Like, it's the wrong time of the year for bears anyway, but a bear would shit themselves and run away if they saw you.
You're huge. Even with the wings folded down.
Lions aren't supposed to be able to look humans in the face.
And what's with the tail? Can you walk without using it to balance?
Because it's going to get cold like your wings are if I don't tuck it up against your butt. "
Colton blinked slowly. She wasn't wrong.
His tail, which, like his wings, was leathery rather than furry, would drag in the snow, or at least get very cold.
But the phrase 'tuck it up against your butt' was not one he'd expected to encounter today, or possibly ever.
It certainly wasn't high on a list of things he'd expected Jo Talbott to say.
After a moment, he carefully coiled his tail up against his butt.
Jo looked delighted. "I take it you can walk without using it for balance, then. Great, okay, hold still, you great lunk."
Amused confusion shot through Colton, and he couldn't help shifting back to human so he could say, "Lunk?"
Jo, walking toward his other end, yelped as suddenly she was beyond him instead of halfway down the length of the chimera's body. "That's not holding still!"
"Technically I didn't move! Lunk?"
"Colton." Jo turned back to him, her arms full of blankets.
"Look, I'm not scared of you, okay? I absolutely should be, because like I said, you're huge and terrifying, but I'm used to dealing with huge terrifying animals that don't even have a human brain behind them, and besides that, I don't think you'd hurt me anyway. But you are large and terrifying and—"
"And you raise bison," Colton said with a sudden understanding laugh. "You're talking to my chimera like he's a bison."
"With teeth and wings and claws, yes," Jo said a bit sheepishly. "I know you understand me better than they do, but…"
"No," he said, grinning now. "No, it's great. I just didn't expect it. You can ride me, you know."
Jo's eyebrows shot up and Colton felt himself blush under all his layers. "I mean. The chimera. Through the snow?"
"Yes," she said in a strangled voice. "What else could you have meant.
But no. I don't think I can, not if I've got your wings blanketed down.
But that's okay. You're big enough to break a good trail for me.
I'll be fine." She'd regained control over her voice by the end of that.
"Thanks for the thought. If I really need a ride I'll tell you, okay? "
Colton, still blushing, nodded and shifted back to his chimera form. The chimera tilted its head, very cat-like with curiosity. What else could you have meant?
Nothing!
The chimera squinted dubiously, but the question of Colton's accidental double entendre was forgotten as Jo started tucking the fleece blanket over his wings.
The chimera purred, which was not a usual sound for it, and she chuckled, patting his wings gently after the fleece was in place.
It took several minutes to secure it and the thermal blanket, especially around his hindquarters, and Colton did have a brief moment of wishing he was one of the chimeras who had goat hindquarters instead of a whole lion body.
Goats had short tails; dragon-style chimeras, not so much.
But that was the whole thing about being a chimera: they were mixes of different species, and it came out differently in each of them.
"All right," Jo said, finally stepping back from warding the chimera against the weather. "It'd be better if I had giant kitty boots for you so your feet wouldn't get as cold, but this will have to do."
Kitty boots, the chimera said happily. Our mate loves me. She wants to give me wing mittens and kitty boots! And a TAIL HAT!
Colton burst out laughing, which, once more, was not especially suitable to a lion's voice box.
Jo nearly fell over at the sudden roar, eyed him, then suddenly laughed herself.
"Oh. Oh, I get it. That's a laugh. Okay, see, you're smiling.
Who says cats don't have expressions," she added in a mutter as Colton, still chuckling, struck off down the hill with Jo in his wake.
It was a pretty good day, he thought. Especially for one that included a plane crash.