~

 

“Maybe we should find a stocking for you and hang it…” Rex motioned toward the fireplace and the other stockings that the females had hung on that.

“Around your neck — really tightly?” Christie offered back with something of a sickly sweet smile, but her tone was dripping with acidity, and Rex more than got the message.

“I take it you’re not a Christmas, loving witch?” Rex looked as if he’d been sucking on a very bitter lemon.

“I’m a witch,” Christie offered back. “We don’t do Christmas.”

“Some of you do…”

“Look, if you have some Christmas hangup of your own, please don’t reflect that on me.” Christie offered a small shrug of her shoulders and a smug smile to her mate.

“I don’t like Christmas.” Rex frowned.

“See that great big sparkly, glittery, twinkly, gaudy, thing over there by the wall — that says differently,” she tossed a look towards the tree.

“That’s a female thing,” Rex offered back.

“And how many females live here?” She challenged him with a hard stare.

“She got you there,” Tom chuckled.

“This is where we have the Christmas party,” Rex explained.

“So, no females? You live here with your brothers?”

“Jonathan and I both have our own cabins — but we were planning to spend the night here in our old rooms.”

“Oh, you have your own rooms,” she chuckled. “For a moment there I was picturing you all in one bed, snug, with three pairs of feet sticking out the covers at the bottom, you know – having one last sleep before Christmas.” She babied him.

It didn’t help matters when the vampire and the elder were spluttering chuckles at her words. Rex sighed.

“My, that is a pretty picture to imagine,” Jake chuckled.

“Maybe little Christmas hats with bells on the end on their heads,” Christie offered the image that her mate didn’t appreciate.

“Pointy elf slippers on their feet?” Jake snorted laughter.

“Why are you still here?” Rex growled at the vampire.

“Oh,” Christie looked shocked. “Did he touch a nerve?” She grinned.

“I do not have pointy elf slippers,” Rex growled.

“But you want some,” she offered him a look of sympathy and babied him once more.

“I do not want pointy elf slippers,” Rex growled. His beast was unimpressed by the teasing as well.

“Maybe some reindeer antlers with bells attached?” She couldn’t help herself.

“I’m good — thanks,” Rex bit out on a dry tone.

“Beta’s — no sense of flare or adventure,” Jake chuckled.

“Go home, vampire,” Rex growled.

“Why are you picking on the vampire?” His mate asked, and he shot her a curious look.

“He’s a vampire,” Rex said as if that answered the question in full.

“So you’re racist against vampires?” Christie offered back.

“Vampires aren’t a…” Rex had to think about that for a moment. “Okay, they are a race — kind of loosely meeting the criteria — but I’m not racist about vampires.”

“Just a little prejudiced?” She asked narrowing her eyes at him, and he suddenly felt under the spotlight of her gaze.

“What? No!” Rex bit out.

“Well you seem to have a problem with — him,” she teased.

“I feel — oppressed,” Jake milked it for all that he was worth.

“That’s because he’s — him,” Rex couldn’t understand what she was getting at.

“And you don’t like him — do you?”

The tone of her voice made Rex feel as if he was doing something wrong. The vampire seemed to manage to get in enough shots against him over the years, it was just how it was between them, and it was just how it had always been.

Why did he suddenly feel so guilty under his mate’s scrutiny?

“He’s a vampire — what’s to like?” Rex growled back.

“Do you see what I have to live with?” Jake slapped his hand against his chest and bowed his head slightly. At the sound of Rex’s angry growl, he shot a look at the man from under his brow and grinned from ear to ear.

“I will kill you,” Rex growled.

“And now death threats,” Christie tossed up her hands, shook her head in dismay, and walked away from her mate.

Rex couldn’t see the big beaming smile that spread across her face, but Jake could. The vampire offered her a smirk in return.

“Boy, did you just get done like a kipper,” Tom chuckled.

“He’s a vampire,” Rex said in disbelief.

“Yes, I am! But that doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings too,” Jake chuckled.

 

~

~

~

 

When Doug followed his nose to his mate what he found wasn’t a good sign. Saffy was in his bedroom staring out from the window at the winter wonderland that any child would be thrilled to see when waking on Christmas morning.

While it was true that she wasn’t a child, nor was it Christmas morning, it was the fact that she didn’t look happy that was his biggest worry. That needed to change.

“They say; let it snow, right?” Doug offered and noted the way that her shoulders tensed slightly at the sound of his voice.

“They sing it too. Looks pretty — it would look a lot prettier from my bedroom window,” Saffy lied.

Her bedroom window looked out onto the back of an old cobbled shed, hardly the same view that she had right then of the valley with its rolling countryside, pine trees, and the cabins with their pretty Christmas lights lighting the snow.

“Even if I had a mind to drive you home, you couldn’t go home tonight in this,” Doug said.

He wouldn’t risk it. If it was just him making the journey that would be different, but to drive through a snowstorm with his mate in the car would be neglectful of everything that he stood for. Keeping his mate safe was his top priority.

“I know, and I’m not asking.” There was a time and a place to be stubborn, and she didn’t believe that this was one of them.

Saffy didn’t like driving in snow, and she wouldn’t ask anybody else to do it either. Being a passenger was just as bad in her book, so yes, for better or worse she was stuck where she was — they all were.

“You know, I’m not the big bad alpha that you expect me to be,” Doug tried to explain, but that wasn’t exactly true.

He was the big bad alpha when it called for it, but sometimes it wasn’t necessary, and he welcomed those times when he could just be a normal man. Well, aside from the whole shifting into a wolf thing.

“I know that too,” Saffy said, and his words sparked a small fire within her.

She’d heard what he was telling her loud and clear, and what he’d said as they were standing by the Christmas tree. Those words kept coming back into her mind — pinging around and tapping against subconscious for attention.

He’d been sweet, and she didn’t know if he knew it at the time or not, but those words had left a mark too.

“So, you don’t think I’m a — wolf — with a sore head?”

Saffy shot a look back over her shoulder at him — probably not the best thing to do when he was standing there looking hot, sexy, and the fantasy man from any woman’s really good dream.

Another little spark of excitement ignited within her, and she tried to bash it over the head with a really large stick, but it wasn’t going anywhere, and she knew that.

She also knew that she needed to get used to it. He was her mate — sure, in the grand scheme of things that probably meant way more to him than it did to her right then — but she did know that it meant to be mates.

Fated mates.

One true mate.

One true love.

Forever.