Chapter 5
“I’m an arctic shifter, a quad,” Arian said, as he cracked eggs into a cast iron skillet on the stove.
“What does that mean exactly?” Charli asked, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders a little tighter as she watched him make her something to eat. It was a little cooler in the kitchen, away from the fireplace, and she hadn’t wanted to get dressed, so a blanket around her shoulders was enough to keep her warm.
Tossing the egg shells into a wastebasket, he pulled more eggs from the carton. “Well, being an arctic shifter means I can transform into arctic animals. The quad means that I can take on shifts for the four arctic animals – polar bear, fox, reindeer, and snowy owl.”
Her brows rose. “You can be a bird?” She leaned forward slightly and looked at him strangely. “Where does your body go?”
He snorted out a laugh. “What?”
“Well, you’re six-and-a-half feet tall and muscular. An owl is so…small. What happens to your body? What is your shift like? Does it hurt?” She chewed on her bottom lip. “I wrote a story about a wolf shifter, and I imagined it was very gruesome and torturous for his big human body. I just assumed it was painful.”
He wiggled the spatula under the eggs and flipped them gently. “If it hurt, no one would want to shift. I don’t know how to explain how it happens, it just does. Call it magic or supernatural forces or whatever, but it’s part of our lives. The animals are inside me, part of my consciousness. When I need or want to shift, I simply call on one of them, and I become that animal. I’m still myself in the shift, but I have more animalistic urges.”
“What’s your favorite animal?”
“The fox, because I can run fast.”
“Can I see you shift?”
“Of course, but we need to be careful. I trust you explicitly, but if another human were to see me shift, it could cause untold problems for you and me, and for my kind. The truth of shifters is a secret that must be maintained.”
“My closest neighbors are a couple of miles away. It takes me thirty minutes to get to the nearest town. I picked this place because I liked the seclusion of it, but it does get lonely.”
He rubbed her knee. “You’re not going to be alone anymore.”
She smiled sweetly. “Okay, so you started shifting when you were eighteen. Are there shifters who can’t shift into all four arctic creatures?”
He nodded, placing the eggs on two plates and adding buttered toast. She hopped off the counter and picked up two mugs of coffee and followed him back to the pile of blankets in front of the fire. There was a couch, but he liked sitting with her by the fire. “There are some males who can only shift into two or three animals. Only a true shifter – a quad – can be part of the sleigh team.”
“What do the non-quad shifters do for work?”
“Because we’re stronger than other supernatural creatures, we work in areas where our strength is needed. Before a spot opened up on the sleigh team, I split my time between working in the barn and working for the security team. There are only twelve quads in NPC now, and only one who is younger than me who would love to be part of the sleigh team.”
“It’s a position of honor?” she asked as she cut a wedge of egg with her fork and lifted it to her mouth.
He nodded. “When we’re young, we’re told that the sleigh team is the ultimate job for a shifter.”
“Tell me about your parents,” she said.
“My mom is an elf. Like all female elves, she works in the commissary, although when she was younger, she was allowed to work on the toy line, which is what she loved the most. My dad was a quad. He died when I was eight. There was a fire in the stables, and he was killed when a beam fell on him.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, reaching for his hand. “My parents are gone. They died in a wreck when I was a teenager. My sister, Kerri, and I went to live with our aunt, but she died a year ago, so it’s just the two of us.”
“I don’t have any siblings. It must be nice to have someone you can rely on.”
“We’re very close. She thought I was nuts to move out here, but now I feel like the reason I fell in love with this cabin is because I was meant to be here on this night.” She chuckled. “I can’t believe I’m living a paranormal romance novel.”
As they ate, they talked about her books and her sister, the people she’d met in town, and her love of the cabin and the woods that surrounded her. He could see why she enjoyed the home so much. NPC was noisy at the best of times, but here in the woods it was peaceful.
“Was your dad tall like you?”
“Yes.” She got a strange look on her face, so he asked her, “Why?”
“I’m just picturing an elf and a big guy like you, it seems like the height difference would be too great.”
He blinked for a moment and then put down his empty plate with a laugh. “You’re thinking of the human idea of an elf. Elves are normal size like humans – some are shorter than others and some are quite tall, and they all have pointy ears. In North Pole City, there are elves and shifters. Only elves are born both male and female. Shifters are always male, so a male shifter has to mate with a female elf in order to have young. The young could be either male or female, but only the males are able to shift.”
“Do your people come down and have sex with humans?”
He coughed on his sip of coffee and put down the mug before he splashed it on their bedding. “What?”
“You said there weren’t a lot of females, and that Mrs. Claus is the one who decides who gets to have a wife. So how do you get to, you know, have sex.” She whispered the last word and it made him smile.
“Not all of the females are mated. There’s a gathering place where all the single males and females go when the workday is over. There’s food and music, and the males approach the females for sex, and if they’re receptive, then they adjourn to a private room.”
“Could someone pick an elf to be his mate if he wanted, instead of Mrs. Claus choosing?”
“If they were fated mates, yes. But they would know right away that they belonged together. That electric shock between us – that’s what being a fated mate is all about. A truly mated male would never allow his female to continue to have sex with other males, or to be in a place where she was surrounded by them like at the gathering place.”
“So you already knew that you didn’t have a fated mate, because you’d never felt drawn to anyone before.”
“Exactly. When I became part of the sleigh team, I would have been given an opportunity for Mrs. C to act as matchmaker on my behalf. She has some magical powers because of her mating to SC, and she can choose mates who will be good together.”
“That’s sad.” She blinked her big brown eyes up at him, and he frowned.
“Why is it sad?”
“Because you don’t have a chance to fall in love on your own. Either you find your fated mate or you wait for Mrs. Claus to be your matchmaker. Where’s the romance? Where’s the excitement of the first date and the first kiss?”
“It sounds like you’re thinking like one of your stories. Humans have billions of potential mates in the world. It’s not the same for my kind. We’re a small population, and we’re stuck in NPC except for the twenty-four hours from sunrise on Christmas Eve to sunrise on Christmas Day.”
“What happens if you’re outside of the city after sunrise?” She glanced past his shoulder toward the window.
“Then we’re banished from the city. For lack of a better term, the city locks down three hundred and sixty-four days a year. No one can get into it – supernatural or otherwise – and no one can get out of it. It’s for our protection.”
“You’ll be stuck here?”
“Yes. In order to get back to the city, I’d have to be picked up before sunrise today. Otherwise the city won’t be open for me until next Christmas, and even then I’d still have to request a pick up by the security team.”
A small, nagging worry over the response from the security team to his request to remain with Charli flitted through his mind, but he shoved it away. He and Charli were fully bonded. Not only had he had unprotected sex with her, but he’d marked her with his bear’s fangs. After he had tasted her blood, he had nicked his tongue and pressed some of his own blood into her wounds, and then he’d sealed them by licking them. She now had a perfect mark where her neck and shoulder joined, pale against her lightly tanned skin. He could feel her like something alive inside him. Their connection, whatever it was that made them fated mates, was strong. Because of the mating bite, he would be able to find her anywhere.
“I’m glad you’re stuck, Arian.”
“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”
She put down her coffee mug and leaned over, brushing her lips over his. He pushed the blanket from her shoulders as she whispered, “That is the sweetest most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”
He would remember that she liked to hear those things. He wanted to be the best mate to her. As their lips met in a way that was still so new but yet so familiar, he vowed to do everything in his power to make her happy for the rest of their lives.
* * *
Arian gazed down at Charli as she slept in his arms. They’d spent hours talking and making love. He’d told her everything about his life and had listened intently as she shared about herself. She was a creative soul and passionate about her writing. He found it amazing that in spite of humans not knowing that supernatural creatures existed, she had written many stories – romances she called them – about shifters, fairies, and witches. It made him wonder if other shifters and supernatural creatures had found their mates in humans. He’d never heard of it happening before. He was surprised that his mate was human, but it also felt completely right.
Charli said that if there were arctic shifters, then surely there were other types of shifters in other parts of the world. When she started naming animals that lived in various parts of the world – yeti shifters for the Yukon, dolphin shifters for the ocean, sheep shifters for Ireland – he hadn’t been able to stop laughing. It was possible she was right, even if she was being purposely humorous. She said she liked his laugh, and he adored hers. He knew their life together would be punctuated with a lot of laughter.
She was so lovely. Her hair was the color of melted dark chocolate and fell past her shoulders in a thick wave. Her eyes were soft brown and fringed with thick lashes, and she had the most kissable mouth he’d ever set eyes on. She was petite and curvy in all the right spots. His beasts purred in contentment inside him, which made him happy from head to toe. He was the luckiest male on the planet because his buckle had broken.
He didn’t know what he would do for a job. He knew that humans earned money, and although Charli said she made a good living with her writing, Arian didn’t want her to be the sole support of their family. He wanted to be a vital part of their life together, not just hanging on for the ride.
He glanced around the cabin. It was small and perfect for them as a couple, but after talking about having young together, he realized that the cabin was not big enough for a family. He had no idea what their children would be like – would they be able to shift into any arctic creatures or would they be non-shifters and take after Charli? It didn’t matter to him either way. The idea of having children with Charli had filled him with longing.
He was good with his hands and enjoyed building. If he hadn’t been a quad, he would have wanted to work with the elves in the building department because he enjoyed working with his hands. He hadn’t seen outside the cabin, but according to Charli, she owned ten acres of wooded land and although a lot of it was hilly because of the mountainside, there were flat areas where he could build a barn, add an addition onto the home, and even fence in some areas for livestock. As long as he marked the territory in his bear form to warn off predators, they could have any number of animals to provide for them.
Feeling like he had a handle on how he could provide for his mate and their children, even if he couldn’t work in the human world, he closed his eyes and took a last, deep inhale of Charli’s sweet scent before he drifted off to sleep.
* * *
Something bright flashed and woke Arian from his sleep. He blinked a few times, glancing at the fireplace in case something had sparked, but a sinking feeling in his gut told him the bright light wasn’t from inside the cabin.
He eased away from Charli who was still sleeping soundly and gathered a light blanket to tie around his waist. Securing clothing hadn’t been a priority for him, and nothing Charli had would fit him anyway. Unfortunately, he would have to face whoever had come for him from the security team with only a blanket to cover himself.
Arian walked to the front door, pausing to look back at Charli. He considered waking her, but he didn’t want her to be upset. Once he explained to the security team that he had mated and marked Charli and they were fated mates, the team would be on their way and Arian could get back to bed before she woke.
The lock clicked much louder than he expected, but Charli didn’t stir. He eased open the door only wide enough for him to move through, and then he closed it silently. The night air was brisk, and his beasts rose to the surface, finding the source of the intrusion to their first night with their mate. On the snowy front lawn, four males stood in their security garb, their arms crossed over their chests.
Arian ignored the bite of the snow on his bare feet as he walked off the porch and approached the males. Immediately, he recognized his fellow sleigh team members – Rhys, Declan, Jack, and Sullivan - but they didn’t appear happy, so Arian didn’t relax. They had been friends their whole lives, but Charli was the most important person in Arian’s world now, and no one would take him from her.
“What the fuck happened?” Declan said, snarling.
“A buckle on my harness broke from the main support and I fell.” He knew there was no point bullshitting. “You already know that I found my fated mate. Why are you even here?”
Rhys shook his head. “Why do you believe you’ve found your fated mate? I know it’s been a while since you were with a female because of training, but just because you found some willing piece of human tail doesn’t mean she’s meant to be yours.”
Shock tore through Arian as he stared at the head of security. And then the rage came. All four of his beasts were furious. His fangs descended so quickly he cut his lips as he snapped his teeth together, and the thick claws of the polar bear sprang from his fingertips. He growled, a sound that was all of his beasts combined, and the males stepped back.
Rhys snarled. “You will stand down, Arian.”
“She’s mine. Mine!”
Jack put up his hands. “Rhys, look at his eyes. I think he’s bonded to her.”
“Damn it!” Rhys yelled. He turned away, lifting his wrist to his mouth and speaking in a quick whisper.
Something metallic clicked in the air, and Arian’s gaze zeroed in on the weapon that Declan now pointed at him. “Calm your beasts down or I will tranq you.”
Arian was so enraged by their assertion that Charli wasn’t his fated mate, enraged by the idea that they might try to take him away from her, that he couldn’t make his beasts recede.
He was vaguely aware of the front door opening and the sound of the tranq gun firing. Arian shouted for Charli to get back inside the house as the dart embedded in his shoulder and everything started to go black.