The Hellhound’s UnChristmas Miracle

taken the tourists off into the trails, and Rhys and Manu ran at the first sign of trouble like the sensible bastards they are. No one left to cause you any trouble.”
Fleance didn’t mention that the reason the other hellhounds had vanished like smoke was that they were afraid they’d catch his hellhound’s rage. It was contagious; he might not be an alpha, but something in his hellhound’s hunting instinct lit a similar instinct in the others.
Thank God for Caine, he thought, standing up. He would hide himself away in a cabin if he needed to. Pine Valley had plenty of hunting lodges, farther out in the mountains where you’d have to run for days to meet another soul. But having Caine’s alpha authority as a backup if everything else went wrong…
He’d never thought he’d come to consider his chains with relief. But he’d never thought he’d be free of Parker, either.
“Let’s get a move on. I’m driving Meaghan down to town for her ob-gyn appointment this afternoon.” Caine paused at the door. *Hmm.*
The voice in his head was Caine’s, but the rumble underlaying it was all hellhound. Fleance bowed his head. Caine was his alpha, and he was a good one, but Fleance knew from bitter experience how these things worked. If his alpha said jump, you didn’t wait to hear how high. If your alpha said hmm, you kept your mouth shut until he finished thinking.
Caine stared at him coolly over his shoulder. “Before we go… one more thing.”
He walked over to the safe that held the Puppy Express’s cash earnings for the week and pushed his hand through the door of it. The metal shimmered around his wrist as he used his hellhound powers to make it as insubstantial as mist.
When he withdrew his hand, he was holding a stack of bills. Fleance watched as he casually pocketed them.
“What are you—” He broke off as his hellhound reared up inside him, all fire and rage. Smoke curled at the edges of his vision. If he looked in a mirror, he knew his eyes would have transformed from their usual mild gray-blue into pits of spitting hellfire.
His hellhound held back—barely. Caine was his alpha. Fleance couldn’t even conceive of his hellhound attacking his alpha. But…
His hellhound snarled, a low, fierce rumble that made Fleance’s vision blur.
Fleance sat down again and dug his fingers into the arms of the chair. Worn vinyl cracked beneath his fingertips. No, not fingertips. Claws.
“Boss,” he forced out. Caine shot him a smile that said we’re-all-friends-here and patted his pocket.
“Let’s head out,” he said, his voice casual. “I’ll escort you back to the house, and let the others know they’re on the hook for your shifts until we’ve figured this out.”
“But you’re—” Fleance broke off as his throat went dry.
Caine was leaving with the cash in his jacket pocket. And even though Fleance knew this was some sort of trick, a test, and because he knew it his hellhound should too, the beast inside him was howling with rage.
Its voice thundered in his skull. No! it howled. Not this time! We won’t let him get away with it!
Fleance leaped up, unable to stop himself. His hellhound was tearing his way out of him, forcing a shift that would—
“All right, that’s enough.”
Caine’s alpha authority wound like chains around Fleance’s limbs. His hellhound stopped. Its rage was still there, but contained within the power of his alpha’s command. Fleance’s chest heaved as he gasped in air. He dropped back into his seat like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
“That proves one thing,” Caine said, grinning. Fleance stared at him. Had he gone mad? “Don’t worry, Flea. I might not like to use them, but if my alpha powers mean I can stop you from—”
Not this time! Fleance’s hellhound roared. Make him—stop him—our alpha should not—
The rest of its words were lost in a storm of brimstone-laden fire. Fleance’s spine cracked and he fell forward as his shift took hold. Muscles burning, he tried desperately to catch hold of his hellhound, but the creature of smoke and flame evaded his grasp. He transformed in a blaze of fear and rage.
Fear poured from him. It sent tendrils out to choke the breath of anyone it could find, to drive sharp fingertips into spines and the backs of necks, to make shadows dance at the edges of vision, to make every breath seem shallower than the last. Once it found its prey it would stick to them like a tick, scaring them into running. The hunt would begin.
It found Caine.
Transformed, Fleance’s hellhound filled the small staff room. He loomed over his still-human alpha, panting out smoke. The urge to hunt flooded through Fleance’s veins: his hellhound’s primary instinct, primal and unstoppable.
Villain—monster—stop him—protect—
His hellhound’s voice howled through Fleance’s head, screaming words that were disconnected but pulled together by its bonfire rage.
Stop this! he commanded. His words disappeared like tissue paper held to a flame.
His hellhound prowled forward, placing its massive paws carefully, heavily. The floor hissed, smoke rising from under his claws.
*Don’t do this, Fleance.* Caine was still in his human form, but his voice packed a punch like a freight train. Surely his hellhound couldn’t ignore it.
His hellhound took another step forward.
Awareness crackled at the edge of Fleance’s mind: the rest of the pack. Manu and Rhys, the two younger hellhounds, were back at the Guinnesses’ lodge. Fleance’s urge to hunt singed the edges of their minds, a match flame to kindling. The huskies left in the kennels started to howl, and the ones Bob had taken out with the kids stopped in their tracks, shivering with anticipation.
Caine didn’t back away. Fleance felt his hellhound’s frustration: it wanted to hunt, to chase. It couldn’t chase someone who wouldn’t run.
He’s our alpha! Fleance yelled inside his head. Stop this!
Closer—harder to find, her human mind not burning like the hellhounds’ did but shining like the moon, with two precious lights in close orbit around it—his alpha’s mate. Meaghan. Caine swore