Cole

“Come on, Cole, you promised to go!” Olivia was pulling on his arm like she’d done when they were children. Bothering him until he would agree to go wherever it was that she wanted to go. She was already bundled up in a bright magenta coat with black hat and black gloves. As shifters they didn’t really need it; their temperature ran hotter than most humans. But it was a particularly chilly day, so maybe she wasn’t just putting on a good show—maybe she actually was cold.

“Olivia, I just don’t want to. I haven’t heard anything from Liam yet, and I’m extremely busy.”

So the last part was a lie. Cole really had nothing to do, but an evening at the winter festival didn’t sound like something he was interested in. He hardly went out into the town unless Dax convinced him to go down to Wilson’s Bar, but lately Cole felt like he was the one trying to convince Dax to go to the bar with him. He had stopped by every Thursday and Friday night for the past couple weeks, hoping to catch a glimpse of Juliet once again, but she wasn’t there. He’d lost her, and it was killing him slowly. After poring over books for the past couple weeks, he couldn’t find anything about sparks of lightning coming from between two people. Whatever had happened between them was just something totally normal, static electricity in a dark room. He just had to accept that and move on.

“On Christmas Eve, I asked you if you would go to the winter festival with me, and you said that you would! Come on, this is Sam’s first one.”

“Then why don’t the two of you just go and enjoy it as a couple?” Cole was starting to appreciate Sam’s presence more and more in the house. Anytime Olivia was bugging him, he could immediately turn it on Sam and send her his way. Poor sap, he no idea what hit him when he decided to come home with Olivia.

“Because I don’t want to just go with Sam, I want all of us to go. You, me, Sam, and Dax. Like a family.”

Cole rubbed his temple. “Fine.” Mostly he knew that if he didn’t agree to go with her she would just continue to bug him for the rest of the evening, and at least at the winter festival he could go for half an hour and then ditch her and come back home without being noticed. If they stayed here, she would take up his entire evening with her incessant whining.

“Great! I’ll go get Sam and Dax. I’ll meet you at the gate.”

Cole closed the book that he had been reading and walked down the silent stone halls to the front of the manor house, where his coat was hanging in the closet. He wrapped the black wool pea coat around him, buttoning it slowly before Olivia came bounding down the hall looking as excited as ever.

“You’re going to love it! Snow cones and hot chocolate. Do you think we’ll have the apple pie this year, Cole? Oh my God, Sam, you have to eat this apple pie. It’s mind blowing.” She was talking a mile a minute and about food. Her absolute favorite thing. Cole couldn’t help but smile to himself. Especially after he saw Dax’s face. He looked so annoyed, served him right. He spent hardly any time with them since before Christmas. Besides the one night that Dax had dragged Cole to the bar, the night he met Juliet, he was hardly home. Every time Cole called him and invited him down to Wilson’s himself, he had other arrangements or he could only stop by for a quick drink. He was hiding something, but Cole knew that if Dax was really in any kind of trouble, he would tell him himself. He wasn’t going to pry.

“I’m sure they’ll have the apple pie. Don’t you think, Dax?”

He watched as his brother’s eyes lit up; clearly he had been deep in thought. “Oh yeah, I’m sure they will. It’s excellent, Sam, really. The winter festival is kind of a tradition around here and it’s been going on for, I don’t know… Maybe fifty years or so? Our parents used to take us when we were kids.”

Olivia added, “Yeah, it was a yearly tradition for the seven of us.”

Cole sucked in a sharp breath. The seven of them. Now they were just six, and since his parents had left, he was really only considering the four of them. But once they were seven. And suddenly that seemed like such a long time ago. When Bianca was alive, before he was alpha.

But as Olivia interlaced her fingers with Sam’s, Cole also realized that was before she had found her mate. And she seemed so much more complete the past few months with him around. Though since meeting Juliet, Cole had to admit to himself that he was seeing Olivia in a new light, that her feelings for Sam were legitimate. And he had to start honoring their relationship, treating it with respect. He would start tonight, he promised himself.

“Well? Shall we? We don’t want all the apple pie to be gone, now do we?”

Olivia beamed as she pulled Sam behind her. “Of course not!”

* * *

Cole was admiring some candy apples and considering which one he would choose when he saw a flicker of flaming red hair off to his left around the ice sculptures.

“Aunt Irma, if you want me to take your picture, you have to stand still.”

He looked over to see Irma waving him down. That woman was a hoot. Totally insane, but he loved her tenacity.

“Irma! Excellent to see you.” He strode over to the pair of them and immediately saw Juliet begin to smile. “Juliet, a pleasure as always.”

“Cole. It’s nice to see you again. How’s your jacket?”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Warm?”

“No! I mean your suit jacket. The one I so stupidly ruined.”

He shook his head. “You didn’t ruin it. I took it to the dry cleaners and it’s fine. How have you been? Read any good poetry lately?”

She chewed on her lower lip for a moment, and he couldn’t deny how much it turned him on. She had on a dark green wool coat and black gloves, but she let her fiery red hair shine bright underneath the stars. He looked into her deep green eyes as flames reflected in them from the bonfire behind him. She was perfect. Snow reflected off of her porcelain skin and he found himself beginning to count her freckles as she talked. “Not really. Irma and I have been busy with my cousin Maxine. She’s visiting from out of town. She’s around here somewhere.” She began to turn around; clearly she had lost her cousin. His bear began to paw at his mental cage. He wanted to be closer to her.

“I’m sure she’ll turn up.”

Juliet set her lips into a thin line. “That’s what I’m afraid of. Irma, why don’t you have a seat on that bench? I’ll bring you some waffles and ice cream. Sound like a plan?”

Irma leaned on her cane and waved goodbye to the two of them as she wandered over to a bench underneath the tree in the middle of the square. They stood in front of the fountain, which had been turned off. Instead, ice sculptures were placed inside the basin. Lights shone from below them, illuminating them and making them seem almost alive. Cole stood near the edge, pretending to admire them, when secretly he couldn’t take his eyes off Juliet. She pulled on his coat to the other side of the fountain. “Is everything all right?”

Her eyes shifted back and forth. “I don’t know. Listen, I know that this is weird and I hardly know you, but Irma told me what you are. I know you’re a bear.”

His bear continued to prowl beneath the surface, tossing his head back and forth wildly; not only were humans not supposed to know about their shifter side, but the Bradwick bears had the tendency to be overly proud. He tried to calm himself down, but was still so confused. Why would she bring this up now? In public, with all these other humans milling around them?

“I don’t know what you mean…”

She gripped his shoulder more forcefully. “I don’t have time to discuss this. But my cousin Maxine… Something is going on with her. I mean, she’s always been a lot more serious about magic than I’ve been, but…”

Cole’s mouth dropped open. “You’re a witch?”

“A phantom, actually. It’s slightly different, but the magic is pretty similar. Anyway…”

“Is that why there was a spark? I mean, in all my reading I just looked at humans and shifters, not witches.”

She raised an eyebrow at him and smiled smugly. “You were reading? I mean, I’ve been reading too but I couldn’t find anything either. Though phantoms are rarely written about.”

“I’ve looked up everything I could, but I didn’t find anything about our connection.” He leaned in closer to her so that their faces were only mere inches apart. He could see her breath blooming around them in the air. “And there is a connection here, isn’t there?”

She nodded just slightly. “There might be, but I can’t focus on that right now. Like I was saying about my cousin Maxine, something’s up with her. She’s broody and crazy as usual, but I feel like it’s worse this time. She hasn’t been back in Crescent Valley in years, and suddenly she shows up here and wants to come to this winter festival. I’ve been following her around since she arrived, but she slips out at night, and I’m asleep sometimes, and Irma snores really loud, so I don’t always hear her, but she’s definitely leaving the house. She sleeps all day long while I’m at work so when else would she be awake? That one day she went to a spice shop in Crescent Springs right before closing. It was weird. And she’s using her magic all the time. I mean, I don’t even think she flushes the toilet with her hands—she’s using a spell. It’s insane! Anyone who’s using magic that much is training themselves for something. Something big. And our family just doesn’t use magic like that anymore, not in probably a century.”

“Okay, calm down,” Cole said, trying to reassure her. Clearly, she became quickly unhinged when something was bothering her, because her rambling hardly made any sense. The biggest trouble was that Cole just thought she was cuter and cuter with every deep breath and run on sentence. “What could she be doing? What are you really worried about?”

“Something dark? I don’t know what. But something really dark, Cole. I think we’re all in trouble.”

Cole didn’t care how dark the deed was that Maxine was planning. If Juliet was worried, then so was he. He had to keep her safe. His bear told him so. She was his responsibility now.