Chapter 1
Rhys, lead reindeer and head of North Pole Security, shoved the shower curtain aside and grabbed the towel hanging on the hook. After rubbing his short hair a few times, he wrapped the towel around his waist and walked across the tile floor of the shared bathroom to the sinks.
“Ready for tonight?” Declan, his second-in-command and the Dancer position on the sleigh team, asked as he glided a razor across his jaw.
Rhys, the Dasher position on the team, nodded as he unzipped the leather case holding his toiletries. “Yeah. You?”
“Sure,” Dec said.
Something about the way the male was staring at Rhys made him turn away from the mirror to stare at his friend.
“What’s up?”
“I don’t know. I feel like something is going to happen tonight.” Dec ran his razor under the thin stream of water from the faucet and returned the blade to his cheek where he finished removing the shaving cream.
“Of course something is going to happen tonight. It’s Christmas Eve.”
Dec splashed water on his face and dried it with a towel. “No, I mean, I feel like something else is coming. You know what happened two years ago.”
Rhys knew exactly what Dec was talking about. Two years earlier, the newest addition to the sleigh team – Arian, who became the Blitzen position – had fallen from the sleigh when his harness broke and plummeted to the ground. He could have died, but instead he’d woken up in the arms of his fated mate. Arian had opted to stay with his human mate, Charli, but the following year they had come back to North Pole City to live, along with their beautiful baby girl, Hope.
Rhys shook his head. “No one is falling from the sleigh this year. We’ve taken the necessary precautions to ensure that each team member is safe.”
Dec snorted. “You know I’m not talking about that. I just have a feeling that things are going to change again.”
Sullivan, the Prancer position, opened the bathroom door. “SC just sent a message to the team. Everyone’s to report to the stables as soon as possible.”
“Why?” Rhys asked.
“He’s got an announcement,” he said and stepped away from the door, letting it close.
“Interesting,” Dec said. “Wonder what’s up?”
Rhys quickly lathered his face with shaving cream. “Doesn’t matter. The boss has called and we’ve gotta answer.”
“I’ll see you there,” Dec said, grabbing his toiletry bag and heading out of the bathroom, leaving Rhys alone.
As Rhys quickly shaved, he thought about what Dec had said. He could admit that he hadn’t slept well the previous night. He had been a member of the sleigh team for twelve years, so he knew he wasn’t nervous about the upcoming flight. He’d woken up in his room feeling unsettled, so he’d meandered in his favorite shifted form – the polar bear – but hadn’t felt any better. Usually, when he felt off, going out in his shifted form helped center him, but it had done little to calm the strange nervous energy coursing through him. That Dec, one of the more serious males on the team, was also feeling like something was going to happen tonight made Rhys wonder about SC’s announcement and whether life around NPC might be changing. Finishing shaving with a few more swipes of the blade, he rinsed off, grabbed his bag, and headed to his room.
The unmated males shared a dormitory in North Pole City. The sleigh team all lived on one floor of the dorms, and each male had a large room with a shared bathroom and living area. As Rhys dressed in trousers and a shirt, he wondered if Mrs. C had decided it was his time to be given a mate. Males in NPC had to wait for Mrs. C to choose their mates for them. Although not as magical as her husband, Mrs. C had a special magic all her own, which allowed her to match up unmated males and females in NPC. There were more males than females in the hidden city. Shifters were always males, but the elves could be male or female. Mrs. C would use her magic to bring together a male and female. If it was his time to be given a mate, maybe that was why his beasts were feeling unsettled. Maybe they had an animal instinct about what the night would bring that Rhys wasn’t privy to.
“There’s only one way to find out,” he said to himself as he opened his door and stepped out into the hall.
“Yo, wait up!” Jack, the Donner position, called.
Rhys waited while Jack jogged to catch up to him.
“Any idea what the announcement is?” Jack asked.
“Nope.”
Jack hummed. “Something’s in the air tonight.”
“You too? Dec said the same thing earlier.”
“It’s Christmas Eve.”
“And?”
With a shrug, Jack said, “Interesting things happen on Christmas Eve.”
* * *
Mrs. Claus’s heart was pounding a mile a minute, but she did her best to appear calm. She had a plan, and timing was of the utmost importance. Her husband was preparing for his annual trip around the world, so he was distracted, but he did have a sixth sense about things, and she didn’t want to tip him off that she was up to anything. Truly, it wasn’t bad. She wasn’t trying to escape from North Pole City, but she wanted to get a gift for her husband on her own. She could have easily asked one of the workers in the toy department to secure the gift for her, but this year she wanted to do it personally.
Her husband, who did so much and asked for so little, loved the dark chocolate truffles from a chocolate shop in New York City. A Little Bit of Heaven stayed open until two a.m. on Christmas morning. After her husband and the sleigh team left for the night, she would use her magic to travel to the city where she could buy a box of the truffles for him.
Once upon a time, she and her husband had traveled to New York City at dawn on Christmas Eve. Their magic allowed them to leave North Pole City for twenty-four hours every year. After dawn on Christmas Day, NPC was closed to all except Santa, who was powerful enough to come and go as he pleased. It was her plan tonight to leave and get back before anyone knew she was gone.
She stood next to her husband while he made his announcement to the sleigh team – that the first mated member of the sleigh team, Arian, who was the Blitzen position, and his human mate, Charli, were expecting their second child. Mrs. Claus focused on calming her nerves and following their normal routine. She followed Santa to the sleigh and told him not to eat too many cookies, and then he made a veiled sexual reference to her about presents, and she rolled her eyes and blushed. She was almost one thousand years old, but he could still make her blush.
When the sleigh was gone and the stable hands were busy cleaning up, she hurried outside and disappeared into the woods, drawing her thick coat around her. Keeping the address of the shop in mind, she let her magic take her away in a gust of glittering snowflakes.