Chapter 3
“Damn it,” Santa muttered as the sleigh hovered somewhere over the Pacific.
Rhys cracked his neck and looked around. The air was crisp, and the ocean was a darker shadow in the dark night. Next to him, Dec snorted in curiosity.
“Mrs. Claus is missing. She’s not in NPC,” Santa called.
Rhys and the other reindeer bellowed in alarm.
“I’m calling the security team to find her. She was wearing her heavy coat, and there’s a tracker in it. What in all the stars was she thinking?” Santa grumbled. A long moment later, Santa had tasked the remaining members of the security team with locating Mrs. Claus and bringing her back to NPC.
“Let’s get done quickly so I can have a chat with my wife,” Santa said. He was clearly upset that she’d gone missing, but Rhys had known her his whole life, and he didn’t think there was anything sinister about her leaving. He hoped it was as innocent as he thought it might be. She had magic and could get herself home, unless she were hurt. Which he hoped to hell she wasn’t.
He and the team pushed themselves to finish the toy delivery faster than they ever had before. All of them were anxious to find out why Mrs. Claus had left the safety of their city and gone out on her own, and most importantly, to make sure she returned home safely.
When they landed in the stables two hours later, the stable elves hurried and unhooked their harnesses from the sleigh, and each reindeer headed to his stall. When Rhys had shifted back into his human form, he grabbed his trousers and tugged them on. A shadow fell over him, and he looked up to see Max and Khramer from the security team standing in front of the stall.
He didn’t like their expressions. Guilty and worried.
“What?”
“There’s a problem,” Max said with a low voice.
“With?”
“Just come on,” Khramer urged.
Rhys shoved his feet into his boots and grabbed his shirt. He pulled on the shirt as he followed the two males from the stables and toward the unmated males’ dormitories.
Curiosity and genuine worry over what was going on prompted him to follow them closely. “Did you return Mrs. Claus? Is she safe?”
“She came back on her own, and she’s fine,” Max said.
“Why did she leave?”
“She wanted to get some candy for SC. She’s waiting for him in their home,” Khramer answered.
“Then what’s all this about?”
Khramer glanced over his shoulder as he stopped in front of Rhys’s room. There was an angry shout and the sound of something heavy hitting the other side of the door.
“What the fuck?” Rhys demanded, shoving open the door.
To his surprise, a brunette woman stood against one wall, holding a piece of broken wood in one hand, which she swung like a club. He looked around and saw his desk chair was broken, and she was using one of its legs to defend herself. Her face was streaked with tears. The red dress she wore was torn at one sleeve, and she was missing a shoe.
Herbert and Zeke, two other security team members, looked at him sheepishly.
“We made a mistake,” Herbert said.
“Take me home right now, you loons!” the woman yelled.
“What exactly did you do?” Rhys asked, not taking his eyes off the woman. He scented the air and found her to be human, but instead of warning bells going off in his mind that a human was in his bedroom, all he could think about was how beautiful she was, even in her fury.
“We followed the tracker, pulled Mrs. C into an alley, and brought her home,” Zeke said. “When we got here, it wasn’t Mrs. C, but a human woman dressed like her.”
“How could you make that mistake?”
“Mrs. C told us she put the tracker on this woman because she’s special. She told us to find you when you got back and that you’d know what to do,” Khramer said.
The security team filed toward the door.
“Wait, what?” Rhys asked.
Max shrugged. “She’s your problem now. Mrs. C said so.”
The door shut, and Rhys turned to fully face the woman. Her hand trembled as she gripped the chair leg. His beasts were rolling under his skin, anxious to get close to her.
“My name is Rhys. What’s your name?”
She blinked impossibly blue eyes at him. “Take me home.”
He glanced at the clock on his nightstand. It was just after one a.m. If she didn’t leave NPC in five hours, she’d be trapped for a year and be unable to leave. The magic of their protected city ensured that it was only open for twenty-four hours a year.
Fudging the truth slightly, he said, “I can’t right now.”
Her mouth turned down, and she stumbled backward, smacking into the wall. The chair leg clattered on the hardwood as she sank to the floor and put her head in her hands.
His beasts roared at him to comfort her as the scent of her tears filled the air. He cursed under his breath and moved slowly to her. Squatting next to her, he laid his hand on her shoulder and inspected the rip in the sleeve of her dress. His fingertips brushed her skin, and he saw a light scratch.
“How did you get hurt?” he asked softly.
She scrubbed at her face with her hands and exhaled a shaky breath. “When we got here, I pushed those guys away from me, tripped over a bucket, and scraped my shoulder on the corner of a stall.”
“Let me tend to your wound. Are you injured anywhere else?”
She met his gaze, and he felt a connection between them snap into place. He wasn’t just in the presence of a beautiful human woman – she was his fated mate. The one woman in the world made just for him. Until his friend Arian had found his fated mate, Rhys had always thought that fated mates were a legend. Shifters and elves relied on Mrs. C as a matchmaker to help them find their mates. Fated mates were special and revered. Immediately, he knew he couldn’t take her home; he’d never survive the separation.
“No,” she said.
“No, what?”
Her brow arched. “No, I’m not hurt. I’m pissed and scared.”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“Oh? Do you kidnap innocent women on the streets of New York often?” Her mouth quirked up at the corner in a wry smile, and his heart pounded.
“It’s my first kidnapping. How am I doing?”
Her nose wrinkled. “Splendid.”
He stood and offered her his hand. “I swear on my life that you’re safe here. I’m sorry that you were brought here the way you were. It must have been terrifying.”
“That’s putting it mildly.” She looked at him, her gaze traveling slowly up his legs and torso until she finally locked eyes with him. She took his hand, and electricity jolted through him. “What are you, Rhys?”
The question was simple and complicated at the same time. He knew he would be breaking a million NPC rules if he didn’t immediately take her to SC and have him wipe her memory and take her home, but there was no way in hell Rhys could do that.
“Let me show you. But first, I need to get you out of that dress.”
“Excuse me?” Her voice rose slightly.
He scented her panic. “No! Damn it.” His cheeks heated, and she started to chuckle, her panic disappearing. “I mean, you’re wearing a dress and missing a shoe. I’d like to take you outside, but it’s cold.” He moved to his dresser and pulled open the drawers until he found a warm shirt, trousers, and socks. Grabbing a pair of leather moccasins from the closet, he gave her the items and headed for the door.
Giving her some privacy, he stepped out into the hall and found Declan and Sullivan standing outside. His hand tightened on the knob as he saw their matching looks of concern and suspicion.
“We heard there was an issue in New York,” Dec said.
“I’m handling it,” Rhys answered.
Sullivan’s brow rose. “I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, but there shouldn’t be any handling of anything. She’s a human intruder, and she needs to be turned over to SC immediately. The longer she’s here, the more memories he has to wipe. That’s not good for either of them.”
Rhys bit back a snarl. “I said I’m handling it.”
Dec looked at him calculatingly. “What’s really going on?”
Guilt flashed through him at not telling his best friends more about the situation, but protectiveness for his mate quickly overshadowed those feelings.
“I’ll talk to you later. Right now, I’ve got a scared human to attend to.” Rhys opened his door and slipped inside, wanting to be in the same room as his mate and also to keep her away from the unmated males.
He knew he was acting irrationally, but he couldn’t dwell on that right now. Figuring out a way to get her to agree to stay in NPC for a year so they could get to know each other – and doing so within the next five hours – seemed like a stretch, but he was up for the challenge.
She stood next to his dresser wearing his clothes. The trousers were far too big for her, and she had gathered the waistband with one hand to hold them tighter. He was more than six feet tall, and she was probably closer to five foot four.
“You never told me what you are,” she said.
“You never told me your name,” he countered.
She hummed. “Merri Blevins.”
When she spelled her name, and explained that her parents loved the holidays, he couldn’t help but smile. “I’ll tell you what I am, after I show you where we are.”
He handed her a belt and then took two coats from his closet and helped her on with one before putting on the other. He tugged a stocking cap over her dark hair and gave her a pair of gloves. His body ran warmer than humans because of his shifter nature, so he didn’t need the extra coverings. He offered her his arm and she took it.
“It’s the strangest thing,” she said as he opened the door, thankful the hallway was empty.
“What is?”
“I’m not scared.”
His beasts blew out a collective breath. “Good.”
He walked her down the hallway toward the back stairs, bypassing the shared gathering room where he was certain at least some of his friends were hanging out. After the Christmas Eve run, the unmated males tended to go to the bar to get a drink and celebrate a good night’s work. Sometimes they hooked up with the female elves, but Rhys hadn’t been interested in random hookups in a long time. After seeing Arian and Charli together, he’d decided that he didn’t want to keep settling for no-strings-attached sex, he wanted the kind of passion that came from finding a mate. That he was being gifted with finding his soul mate made him feel blessed on an epic scale.
He paused at the door that led outside. “Are you ready, Merri?”
“Are you going to send me hurtling through space again?”
“No,” he said, chuckling. “No hurtling.”
“Then I’m ready to see what you want to show me, Rhys.”
Inhaling deeply, he pushed open the door and ushered her out into the cold darkness. He wasn’t just stepping into the cold; he was wandering right into a wealth of problems if he couldn’t convince Merri to stay in NPC with him. How the hell he was going to accomplish that in what few hours they had left, he didn’t know, but he’d damn well try his hardest.