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 youarelarge 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 elsecouldyou 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 chimerapurred, 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 achimera: 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 matelovesme. 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.
CHAPTER SIX
Colton had said they would talk about the wholeshifterthing as they walked along, but that was before they'd realized he would make a good snowplow. That was okay, though: it gave her time to get used to the idea. And heaven knew it was better to think about Colton being a shifter than it was to think about the fact that she'd wrecked her damnplane.
Of course, that made her look over her shoulder toward the crash site. She couldn't see it any more: the snow hadn't stopped coming down, and the wind was probably spreading any remaining smoke across the mountains. Flying in this weather had been stupid.
Except she was a good pilot and not inclined to take stupid risks. Jo sighed and rubbed a hand over her face. The conditions had changed while they were in the air. It happened. And thundersnow happened rarely enough thatnotexpecting it wasn't a failure on her part. It had just been incredibly bad luck.
A tiny smile crept over the corner of her mouth, though, as she watched Colton's fleece-wrapped chimera butt striding along ahead of her. The crash had been incredibly bad luck, and also possibly the best and most amazing thing that had everhappened to her, because now she knew there werechimerasin the world. People who could shift back and forth from humans to animals! To fantastic beasts!Who knew!
Every once in a while Colton turned his big fluffy lion head back to make sure she was doing okay. Jo gave him a thumbs-up when he did, and marched along behind him feeling remarkably light and happy for somebody who'd just wrecked her plane. She had no idea how she was going to deal with that financially, but right now getting out of the mountains and finding shelter was more important. The sun was going down and the wind was picking up, which wasn't a great combination. If Colton didn't have those thin bat wings she might have thought just curling up with him as a ginormous cat-beast would be a viable way to spend a frozen winter night, but she didn't want his wings or tail getting frostbitten, so they needed another option.
Every once in a while she checked her phone for signal, with about as much success as she expected. The mountains didn't have good signal at the best of times.
They made it down the rest of the mountainside before Colton stopped, shook snow from his mane, and shifted back to human. It made Jo's breath catch just seeing it: it looked so effortless and quick that she sort of felt like she should be able to do it herself.
"It's getting dark," Colton said a little worriedly. "We should make camp before it does. I just don't know how we're going to set up enough protection from this kind of weather. This isn't my field of expertise."
"Lucky for us it's kind of mine." As Colton's eyebrows rose, Jo made a face. "Notreally, but flying small planes means you should have at least some practice at handling emergencies on your own. I do have a tent in the survival gear," Jo promised. "It's a hell of a lot better than nothing. If we can dig in beneath a tree?—"
There were plenty of evergreens around, though a lot of them were scraggly little messes, or huge towering things whose branches didn't start for thirty feet up. She'd been keeping an eye out as they worked their way down the mountain, hoping for a batch of white spruces, which often had branches close to the ground, Christmas-tree-style. Those made good shelters, because snow often only drifted beneath the lowest branches, making a naturally protected space. She hadn't seen any that looked worth stopping for, though, and even now, the pickings were slim.
"Hold on." Colton shifted back to his chimera form almost at the same time he spoke, and just casually leaped over the nearest trees.
Jo's jaw fell open as he bounced around, briefly visible through the snow as he cleared treetops, then disappearing among them again. She started goingboing! boing! boing!mentally every time she saw him bounce up, then whispered it until he bounced back to her and startled a squeak out of her.
"Found one," he said triumphantly as he shifted back to human. "I'll clear a path for you."
"That was. You. Boing!"
"Oh." Colton looked shyly pleased. "Yeah. That was nothing compared to when my wings are free, but it did the job."
