The wind swished through my hair as I stuck my head out of the sleigh. We were cruising over the woodland, everyone searching for any places that resembled a hideout, or movement that could be Krampus. Leven was on the other side of the compartment, doing the same, and yet I couldn’t stop thinking about him taking me right here in the sled—with Jax watching! My pussy still throbbed in the best possible way.

I glanced over my shoulder to catch Leven checking me out before returning his attention to the forest. Jax focused straight ahead, and Tatum kept flying along the mountain range. With everything going on, I kept wondering if Tatum knew what we’d been doing earlier. I could only guess he’d be pissed that we hadn’t been paying attention to the mission. I should have felt guilty as hell that I hadn’t been more attentive. But I swore, being sprayed by the Good Stuff had played with my head, and I couldn’t help myself around Leven. Another reason I hung over the edge of the sleigh. To clear my head of the pixie dust Viagra.

I needed to focus.

Find Britta.

Survive.

And with each passing second, dread flooded back, smothering the calm sensation I’d enjoyed momentarily.

Staring back down, I surveyed the area blanketed in snow. Hang on, Britta. We’re coming.

I couldn’t remember how long we’d been traveling, and I wondered if Tatum was exhausted. Maybe he needed a break. I stretched my back when I caught movement farther below. We were a fair distance up, so it was difficult to make it out clearly.

“Hey, I see something,” I called out over my shoulder, pointing to a location where the trees were thinner. I squinted for a better look as Leven pressed up alongside me, peering into the direction.

He gasped, and I found a moose lingering near a rock wall. “Wait, is that a cave?”

“Take us down!” Leven shouted and moved over to stand behind Jax, talking about where to land while I couldn’t stop staring at a potential hideout.

Are you in there, Britta? My chest squeezed as I pictured her chained to the wall. I blinked away the tears. Now wasn’t the time to fall apart—it was time to get ready to fight.

We careened to the right, dipping as Leven took my elbow and pulled me to his side on the bench behind the driver’s seat. His arm looped around my back, and our sides were plastered together. “When we get there, you stay in the sleigh,” he instructed. “We’ll search inside the cave. I need you safe.”

When the sleigh started diving, I yelped instead. We lurched backward against the driver’s seat, the wind driving my hair into my face.

“Fuck!” Jax yelled.

“What the hell?” Leven was on his feet and turned to Jax. “What’s happening to Tatum?”

I gripped the edge of the sled, and twisted around to find a spluttering of black dust encasing Tatum as he drew the sled through the air. My throat dried at seeing his legs flaying about, his body contorting and convulsing.

“What’s he doing?” My heart bled to see him grunting and in clear agony.

Jax pulled on the reins, but it didn’t help.

The air kept buffering into us as I held on to stop from tumbling forward from the momentum.

“Don’t fucking know,” Jax barked. “The moment we took a sharp decline to land, black dust exploded from the front of the sleigh and sprayed him.”

I stared at Tatum. The particles were now gone, but he kept shuddering. “We have to help him,” I pleaded. “Can you fly to him?”

“We only fly when connected to a sleigh’s magical harness.” Leven was already morphing and shifting, his body enlarging, his legs extending, his neck lengthening, and I looked away, convinced he was in pain. Within seconds, he stood in the back with me as a full-blown reindeer, snorting. He was massive.

But the ground was flying toward us too fast.

I screamed and held on to the back of Jax’s seat while he heaved on the reins.

“Tatum, damn you!” he bellowed.

We were diving to our deaths. I’d always thought when I faced my end, my life would flash before my eyes, but it didn’t. I just screamed and prayed to survive so I wouldn’t leave my sister alone.

Leven leaped past me in his animal form, his hooves bouncing off the nose of the sleigh, and sailed forward.

I held my breath.

He crash-landed against Tatum, both of them tangled into a mess of legs and cords.

The tops of trees were so close to us now. A scream pushed through my lungs as I pictured us dying out here, Britta left at the mercy of Krampus, and the world falling under his fury.

But Leven’s legs were kicking, and in a sudden jerk, he swung us upward, his head high as he ran through the air, with Tatum, now transformed into human form, slumped across his back.

“Holy shit!” I stammered.

Jax’s face had turned white. “That was too fucking close.”

Leven didn’t fly us into the sky, but he brought us down in slow motion, leading us to an open patch of land. The sleigh bounced about and shook beneath me. My knuckles were white as I gripped the railing and sat back down. Every part of me tensed, and my stomach turned to stone.

With a heavy thud, we hit the ground and I bounced in the seat before we came to a final halt. Thank god!

A guttural roar echoed in the distance, and I shuddered and scanned the woods. “What was that?”

Jax scrambled out of the sleigh and rushed to cut Leven and Tatum from the tangle of cords and harnesses. Tatum broke free and already trembled, his body shrinking, his fur vanishing, and clothes magically appearing over his body.

I staggered out of the sled, sinking in snow that quickly climbed halfway along my shins. Being shorter had disadvantages out here. Jax and Leven weren’t struggling.

But my sights landed on Tatum cradled by a cocoon of white, and I trudged over to him as fast as I could, my veins turning to ice from dread that he was gravely injured.

I dropped to my knees at his side and reached for his neck. He still had a pulse, and I exhaled loudly. “What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s stunned,” Leven said. “I felt the effect when I first crashed into him. It’s as if he’d been electrocuted.”

A painful moan came from Tatum, and I leaned over him, cupping his face. “Are you okay?”

He nodded, and instinct had me kissing his mouth, unable to stop myself as relief flooded me. I tasted peppermint candy on his lips and smirked.

“I should get hurt more often.” He smirked.

Jax kneeled on the other side of Tatum, laughing as he scooped his arms under his back and knees, then picked up his friend. “We know now how Krampus brought down Santa and his guards.”

“He tampered with the sleigh,” I answered, following him as he carried Tatum toward the sleigh and put him inside.

“We order parts from around the globe,” Jax explained. “We’d recently undergone a huge reconstruction of the mechanics in all the sleighs at the Workshop, but the other sleds are getting refitted and out of commission, so he could have infiltrated one of our orders. And the part seemed to only go off when we took a sharp dive to land, which is how Santa would normally come in from a flight.”

Leven stood nearby, dusting his clothes, then walked over. He collected me into an embrace and kissed my brow. I twisted in his arms to face the sled, my back pressed to Leven’s chest, soaking in his warmth and affection. If this was the start of something, hell, I was in, boots and all. Even better if it involved all three men, as none of them seemed too bothered I showed affection to each of them. Which surprised me in the best possible way.

My teeth chattered, and Leven rubbed my arms. Around us was a winter wonderland, perfect for a postcard, but in real life, my body was morphing into an icicle.

Jax lifted the seat in the sled and pulled out a couple of blankets when another guttural howl exploded around us. It sounded much closer that time.

We all froze and exchanged worried glances.

Leven took my hand and rushed me toward the sleigh just as the ground shook beneath us, and the distinct pounding of footfalls in snow escalated.

Panic clung to my ribcage like a ticking timebomb about to detonate.

“What’s going on?” I asked, my voice quivering and my gaze swinging left and right.

“Get in the sled and lie low,” Leven ordered, already picking me up. He walked me to the carriage and dropped me into the back compartment, alongside Tatum, who was in a sitting position, rubbing his head.

Jax hopped down and joined Leven, both broad-shouldered, wearing worried frowns, and hands fisted.

A rich, low warning growl came from our right, and we all turned.

The biggest son-of-a-bitch moose, towering over all of us, burst out of the woods. Enormous antlers were sharpened at the tips, and the blood drained from my body.

The moose’s long face drew my attention to its muzzle, where lips peeled back over teeth that looked ready to chew through metal. A chestnut flap of skin matching its fur swayed beneath its throat as it charged toward us.

The hairs on its hump rose. Were we on its territory? Was that why it was so angry?

Fear shackled me on the spot, and I could barely take a breath.

Leven was already in reindeer form and attacked, both animals colliding head on, the clash of their antlers reverberating through the woods. I cringed on the inside at how much that much have hurt. Leven held his ground at first, their antlers locked. But the moose drove him backward.

A shadow rose behind me.

I jerked around to find Tatum in reindeer form. Did it hurt him to transform so quick after what had happened to him? If he was in pain, he didn’t show it. He leaped and slammed a shoulder into the moose’s side, forcing it away from Leven, breaking skin. Blood sprayed the white snow.

Smacking its lips and clicking its teeth, the moose whipped its head back like a horse. It grunted, hot mist floating from its flaring nostrils.

There was movement at the corners of my eyes, and I froze. What now?

Three beavers darted out of the woods, frothing at the mouth, grumbling and barking.

“Are you freaking kidding me?” I mumbled. What’s wrong with these woods?

I searched for a weapon inside the sleigh but came up blank. Jax kicked a beaver away, but it snarled in retaliation and scrambled toward him while two others jumped on his back and dug their teeth into his neck. He cried out, ripping at their fur.

I jumped out of the sled and grabbed a stick off the ground, only to have it crumble in my hand from being so brittle. I grasped another and ran to him. I lifted my stick and swatted one creature off his back, then the other, knocking Jax in the head in the process. “Sorry.” But he’d survive.

A loud clang resonated as the moose locked in a battle with Leven and Tatum, both driven backward. How strong was that thing?

When something crashed into my thigh, I stumbled about. A beaver had attached itself to my leg. And the fucker bit down with razor-sharp teeth, tearing fabric and skin. “Get off.”

Instinct kicked in, and I drove my stick across the creature’s head, sending it flying. Jax kicked another, driving it into a tree, while he punched one with red eyes and saliva dribbling from its mouth.

Jax ran to the sleigh as I fought another critter that had lunged for me, my pulse morphing into an inferno.

He held something in his fist and rushed over to the other men, darting right in front of the moose that was shaking its head. Jax was damn fast. He blew what looked like sprinkles into the moose’s face and sprinted out of the way.

The animal snarled and seemed to stop mid-movement, locked in place.

There was another sharp bite on my calf, and I screamed. I swung around to remove the little beaver shit, just as the ground thundered once again.

I glanced up to find two more moose charging toward us from deeper in the sparse woods.

Everyone backed away, and death stared me in the face. What was going on here? Were they Krampus’ minions?

Tatum grunted something toward Jax, who looked my way, then down at his hand with the glitter he’d used on the moose. Tatum and Leven charged toward the oncoming onslaught while Jax marched toward a beaver rushing toward my feet.

I went to kick the creature just as Jax tossed his glitter. But the wind blew it into my face, and I inhaled a lungful of the cinnamon smelling powder. I choked, panic slicing me.

“Shit, I swallowed it.” I faced Jax. “What’s going to happen to me?”

“Fuck!” He grabbed something from the sleigh and leaped toward me.

Everything happened too fast. My body started to feel stiff, and a numbness rose through me. Panic curled in my chest, and I screamed, my voice clearly still working.

“I need to get you to safety,” he said. “And now.”

Jax looped a cord over and above my chest, then uner my arms, and positioned me to stand behind him. He drew me against him as he tied me to his back.

“Oh my god!” I cried, convince if I could feel anything, I might be in a corner rocking on the spot.

With me lifted off my feet, he clumsily stumbled to a nearby tree covered in low branches. He heaved me up there, gasping for air. Behind me, the sounds of clanks, expelled breaths, and cries filled the air, but I couldn’t turn to see. Were the men dying?

I crumbled on the inside, and even if I could feel my body, I was icy cold from terror. “Isn’t there antitode?”

“The potion will keep you warm against the chill while you’re stiff. It’ll only last a short while until it wears off. For now, I need you safe because I’ve got to get me some beaver.” Jax chuckled at his own dumb joke while I drowned in fear. He hauled me across an oversized branch ladened high with crystalized snow. He pressed my back to the trunk and undid the tie, keeping us bound. Fast to spin around, he worked the rope around the tree and me, tying me in place.

He proceeded to scoop armfuls of snow and piled them around my legs, then upward.

“Don’t bury me. Please,” I pleaded.

He hurried, covering me to my neck. “Didn’t you ever want to play snowman? Just pretend it’s that.” He glanced down to the ground at the fight, but I couldn’t move my head to witness the battle. Tears welled in my eyes. What if they died while I was tied to a tree?

He kissed me, stilling my words, and whispered, “Just remember, sweetheart, I adore you.” Then he covered my face with snow, leaving my mouth and nose uncovered.

Moments later, I was alone. I was a snowwoman being hidden in the tree, while three men who were somehow crawling into my heart, making me care about them, were facing deathly danger.

The sounds of a battle ensued, and I stood there, immobile, hating the hopeless feeling. How the world seemed to close in around me. Why the fuck couldn’t Jax have at least poked out holes for my eyes? I was furious that the man had covered me in snow when I’d experienced plenty of danger my entire life. And I’d always gotten out of any sticky situation.

I had no idea how much time had passed, but the silence stretched out, and I doubted anyone was with me anymore. Or were the men all dead, lying on the ground, having drowned in their own blood?

It wasn’t long before a prickly sensation crawled through my body. My feeling slowly returned, and I cheered on the inside, willing myself to move my arms. But it all came on in slow motion, as if like snakes slithered over my flesh before I finally gained back mobility. I pushed the snow off me, the icy cold creeping over me.

I wiped my face clean, staring down to find only the sleigh below. No animals. No bodies. Even the frozen moose was gone. Where was everyone?

Patting my body, I found the cord around my waist and pulled at the knot that unraveled at my touch. My gloved hands trembled, and my teeth chattered. But I had to move and find the men. I hurried down the tree, studying the mosaic of footprints, and it was clear they all led away from the site, toward the mountain range. Which meant one thing. Krampus was behind this, and he’d captured not only my sister, but my men.

Fury replaced my earlier fear, and I wanted Krampus to suffer. To pay for hurting those close to me.

I climbed into the sleigh and pulled out the blanket before wrapping it around my shoulders. Overhead, the sun peeked out from behind the curtain of clouds. I stared out into the distance, well aware I had to somehow save everyone, not to mention, save Christmas.

I snorted a laugh at how ridiculous that sounded and dug around the front seat of the sleigh for any weapons I could use.