~

 

Both witches looked shell-shocked.

Then mortified.

Then shell-shocked again.

They turned to look at each other. Their mouths fell open, and their eyes widened.

“Huh?” Natalie said before she swallowed down a good portion of her tongue that felt dry and swollen.

“Why are you asking me?” Saffy rushed out with a tone that closely resembled panic.

“Huh?” Natalie said again.

She was sure that she could hear Christmas Bells — or the bells of doom — something was definitely ringing in her ears, or maybe it was in her brain.

Maybe she was dead and being called to heaven — maybe her old belief system had been wrong for all those years — she knew one thing – she just wanted to go home. Curling into a ball in the middle of her bed seemed like an appropriate action to take and didn’t scream to her of overkill.

“Ask him not me!” Saffy said as she turned an accusing finger on the alpha and the man snapped to attention, flexing his muscles as he did, and sending her brain in a completely different direction.

“This is your fault!” Doug growled out as he pointed a finger back at the witch.

“How is this my fault?” Saffy snapped back.

“All you had to do was open the damn door!” Doug growled.

“You couldn’t open the door?” Natalie bit out in disbelief.

“Oh no!” Saffy took a step back and shook her head. “You two are not laying this at my door — feet! — door! — oh, sod the bloody door!”

“That door that you should have opened?” Natalie grumbled back.

“Now hold on a minute!” Saffy raised her hands out in front of her to silence the both of them. “Who is your — mate?”

“Does it matter?” Natalie hissed back.

“It matters to me!” Saffy snapped at her.

“Okay, so it matters — I’ll give you that one,” Natalie grumbled again. She wasn’t entirely sure which planet her brain was hanging out on, but it wasn’t on Earth.

Both witches looked at the alpha with expectation. Doug grumbled a growl.

“I don’t speak wolf,” Natalie snapped at him.

“There’s a problem…” he growled back.

“I see it standing right in front of me, and it’s big and naked!” Natalie snapped again.

“I don’t know!” Doug tossed up his hands in the air and let them fall back to his sides with a slap of skin against skin.

“What do you mean – you don’t know?” Saffy demanded.

“How can you not know?” Natalie bit out.

“I seem to have a — malfunction,” Doug scowled at the thought of it.

“What does that mean?” Saffy demanded.

“I can’t smell anything,” Doug admitted to his shame. An alpha without a sense of smell was like a clown without stupid hair, big feet, and a big red nose.

“Oh,” Saffy said. Then her eyes widened, and she flicked a guilty look towards Natalie. “Oh!”

“That’s…” Natalie considered it for a long moment. “Unfortunate.” She shot Saffy a warning look to keep her silence, and Saffy scowled back at her.

“Unfortunate?” Saffy asked.

“That he can’t sniff each of us and see which one is his mate,” Natalie explained with another glare of warning for her friend.

Saffy finally caught on to her meaning. For now — both, and yet neither witch was his mate – just like that stupid alive-dead cat in a box that smart people talked about.

Perhaps they could use that to their advantage.

“It’s not that I can’t smell — it’s that I have the damn smell of bacon fat up my nose that I can’t seem to shake,” Doug said almost to himself.

Saffy grimaced and swallowed a guilty look that might have given the game away. But when she looked at Natalie, there on her face was the biggest faux look of sympathy that she’d ever witnessed.

“And you, an alpha,” Natalie said with a small shake of her head.

Saffy twitched with something that fast approached annoyance when Natalie shot her a look of pure glee. Not because she was playing the damn wolfman, but because she’d offered her that exact same look of sympathy when Saffy had discovered that her favorite singing mug – that Natalie hated – had somehow been put in the dishwasher and had broken.

Oh, when they got home Saffy was definitely going to have words with her best friend!

 

~

~

~

 

“Let’s do Christmas, she said…” Natalie mumbled to herself as she trudged through the snow, following the taut naked backside of the alpha that was the best view she was going to get all night. She was cursing at the thought of all those stupid Christmas decorations that were in the back of the car. “It’ll be fun, she said.”

“Keep grumbling like that, and you’ll fit right in with the alpha,” Saffy whispered.

“Let’s see how the other half live, she said…” Natalie mimicked her friend.

“I never meant a bloody wolf pack,” Saffy hissed.

“Does the phrase; be careful what you wish for ring any bloody bells?” Natalie hissed back.

“I think I might have heard that somewhere,” Saffy’s tone was dripping with sarcasm.

“A witch that doesn’t want to use her magic. An alpha that can’t sniff his mate — and Christmas! Oh, joy! Christmas!” Natalie grumbled again.

“Well, as this is our first Christmas, maybe we should have expected a few hitches along the way,” Saffy grimaced.

“Hitches?” Natalie shot her a look of disbelief.

“Bumps?” Saffy offered back.

“He’s not a bump, he’s a bloody mountain,” Natalie tossed up a hand towards the man leading the way. “This isn’t a hitch; it’s the fecking nightmare before Christmas. And don’t even get me started on bloody stupid Christmas itself.”

“Grouch!” Saffy bit out.

“Yes, I’m the Christmas grouch!” Natalie sneered. “Why couldn’t we just burn a Yule log like every other witch?”

“Right now, I’d settle for some Mistletoe,” Saffy whispered back.

“I heard that,” Doug tossed back over his shoulder.

“Occupational hazard of having big ears, Mr. Wolf,” Saffy tossed back.

“You know better than most that mistletoe is poisonous for wolves…” He growled.

“And dogs and cats, but are they complaining?” Natalie offered back.

“Maybe just a little wolfsbane then – or a pinch of some nice belladonna would do the trick,” Saffy hissed out in a whisper.

“I heard that too,” he grumbled.

“Is it my fault that you have two satellite dishes strapped to his sides of your head?” Saffy snapped out.

“No, but it is your fault that we’re here in this snow-globe-ian, miserable wilderness with sad-sack over there,” Natalie reminded her as she pointed a finger at the alpha.

“I’m sorry. I’ll just conjure up a spell that takes away the last few hours, shall I?” Saffy tossed back. “Oh wait! That’s impossible, but don’t let it stop you flogging a dead horse.”

“I won’t.” Natalie shot her a smug smile.

“And why do I get all the blame for this?” Saffy stopped and scowled at her friend as she tossed her hands onto her hips.

Natalie stopped on a sigh and turned back to her.

“You’re the one that had to have a Christmas tree,” Natalie reminded her.

“And, being a witch and all, did you never hear of – oh wait, what is that rarity, ah yes – fate?” Saffy demanded.

“Well, sure, Sparky. What’s your point?”

“Even if I hadn’t wanted a Christmas tree, which I did, but that’s so not the point — then don’t you think that fate would have found another way to get us here? A little workaround?” Saffy reasoned.

But Natalie didn’t feel the need to be reasonable. She felt the need to deny everything – even stupid fate.

“Maybe we would have dodged that particular bullet,” Natalie offered back.

“Can you two save the arguments for when we get inside?” Doug growled.

“You wait your turn,” Saffy grumbled at him as she held up her hand to silence the man. “So, fate would have just given up?”

“You never can tell. And now we will never know,” Natalie shrugged.

“The house isn’t that much further away,” Doug offered. He was naked in a snowstorm after all.

“Just wait!” Saffy snapped at the man. Then she turned her attention back to her friend. “ Of course we know. Fate is fate. It’s like death; it can’t be avoided.”

“People avoid death every day…”

“Only because fate lets them…” Saffy shot back.

“It’s just through those trees,” Doug lifted his hand and pointed, but neither witch was paying much attention to him.

“Fine. We’ll be there in a moment,” Saffy tossed up an absent hand back at the man.

“Well, I don’t see it that way,” Natalie tossed back. “It’s not called dodging a bullet for nothing.”

“Fine. Here’s a bullet to dodge,” Saffy grumbled before she turned towards the alpha. “She put a spell on you so that you couldn’t smell anything but bacon fat.”

The sound of Natalie gasping in a shocked breath made Saffy turn a smug grin on her friend. She folded her arms and tipped her head to one side.