Knight opened his first, and he beamed brightly when he pulled out the taco hat. “OMG, I love it! I’m wearing it everywhere.”
“Not if you still want me to kiss you,” Arthur mumbled under his breath as he pulled out the hunting knife. His eyebrows raised and he inspected the knife like it was made of gold. “Nice serrated blade. Good weight.” He flipped it over and started to smile. “I like it.”
Then Balthazar discovered his package of powdered donuts, and he looked so happy to get them. “Donuts! I love donuts. They’re my favorite.” He came to me and gave me a slow, deep kiss. “And you’re my favorite too.”
“Offended,” Knight said as he put the taco hat on. “I’ll remember that the next time you want to snuggle.”
Arthur pocketed his new knife and stole me from Balthazar for a hug. “I love my knife. I know I have enough of them to fill an entire dresser, but this one is the best.”
“And you, Miss Wifey,” Knight added, hugging me from the other side. “I love this hat. You know me so well.”
“There’s one issue.” I stiffened, thinking I’d done something wrong, but Arthur stroked my hair to reassure me. “We didn’t get you anything. Mostly because you told us you’d put a pillow over our faces if you even smelled a present in the house.”
I pulled back and looked up at his icy blue eyes. “I don’t need a gift. I still hate holidays. But I will enjoy them if I get to be with my family and friends.”
“What friends?” Knight asked, muffled against my hair.
And on cue, someone knocked on the door.
Balthazar went to answer, letting in Jaz’s entire posse, including her husbands, Letty, Letty’s boyfriends, Josephine, Lucifer, and a few other people I didn’t know. Right behind them was my three parents, and then Cameron, Merrick, Dom, Olivier, and Renard.
It was a full house on Christmas.
Jaz and her group had brought various Christmas dishes that they started arranging on the table, and the house was filled with laughter, good food, and people we loved.
With my husbands occupied over getting some plates from the kitchen, I walked to my mother and put my arms around her from behind. She clasped my hand with hers, watching our friends serving each other food, and seeing them passing presents around before they’d even begun to eat. It was everything the Christmas movies made it out to be.
“You never had this growing up, Erzsébet,” Anastasia said. “I’m sorry about that.”
I caught my father’s eye over his wife’s shoulder, and I knew he was thinking the same thing. “I have it now. That’s enough.”
Knight brought over a loaded plate, holding it out for Anastasia. “Here, mom. I got you some pie, I know you like it.” She took it, giving him a kiss on the cheek, and she went to join everyone else. My tall, gorgeous husband pulled me to him, tilting my chin up and kissing me. “I’m so glad I get to be here to celebrate Christmas with you.”
I got up on my tip toes, wrapping my arms around his neck so I could kiss him properly. “You’re getting me a present next year.”
He chuckled, stealing another kiss. “Yes ma’am.”
Even though I still disliked holidays, I disliked Christmas a little less, just to see my family happy. And that was the true meaning of a vampire Christmas, so suck it, magic book!
* * *
The End
Enjoyed this story? Be sure to leave a review! You can also pick up book one in this series Knight of the Hunted, NSFW Born Vampire Book 1.
About the Author
Elizabeth Dunlap is an award-winning author of several fantasy books, including the Born Vampire series. She's never wanted to be anything else in her life, except maybe a vampire. She lives in Texas with her boyfriend, their daughter, and a very sleepy chihuahua named Deyna.
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Read More of Elizabeth’s Books
The Born Vampire Series, a reverse harem paranormal romance
The Neck-Romancer Series, a reverse harem paranormal romance
The Ecrivain Academy Series
The Grumpy Fairy Series
The Longest Night
Edeline Wrigh
About The Longest Night
Monica’s on her way home from a holiday performance when she crashes. But it’s the longest night of the year, she has no idea where she is, she has no one to contact, and she’s surrounded by wolves.
Then she’s saved. Her rescuer? A man who claims he’s a vampire and they’ve got to get to safety lest a spell on the dead be broken.
What does the longest night of the year mean for the ones who rely on darkness and full moons? What does it mean for a woman who finds herself among them? Find out in The Longest Night!
The Longest Night
Monica Lorraine was a violinist, and it was a cold winter's night a few days before Christmas, so she left a concert several hours after the sun went down. She loaded it into her old car, trying to ignore the way the wind blew across her skin and warned her of an impending storm.
She shouldn't have taken the gig. She knew that, yet it'd been a hard year, and she needed the money. But she was several hours away from home and her eyelids drooped dangerously, so she chugged the cold coffee from the souvenir travel mug her parents had sent her two days ago from whatever tropical resort they'd decided to spend the holidays at instead of with her. Then she set off.
There wasn't enough coffee in the world to keep her alert behind the wheel. On a sunny day with clear skies and empty roads, perhaps she would have fared better, but the storm set in about halfway through her journey and before she had the sense to pull over to rest. She hit a bad ice patch, her tires slid across the street, and her car tumbled off the road and into a tree.
Her heart beat loud and painfully in her chest as the adrenaline kicked in, but the snow fell faster, and any hope she'd had of making it home in a reasonable time was lost. She was... fine. As in, her entire body shook, and tears coated her face, and she couldn't get her car to move, but she wasn't injured. At least, not that she could tell, so if she was it couldn't be serious.
She breathed in through her nose, letting the air through her nostrils. It was getting colder already, she thought, but perhaps she was imagining it in the accident's aftermath. She rifled through her purse for her phone, finally finding it next to an old Cheez-It, then dropped a loud "Fuck!" that reverberated through the vehicle.
Her phone was dead. Served her right for spending all that time before her performance glued to Facebook instead of trying to build personal connections or something, right?
She'd planned ahead: she kept a charging cable in her car for times like this. She grabbed it from the glove box, plugged it in, and... nothing.
"Fuck!"
Yeah, it was definitely getting colder now. She clenched her hands into fists, watching her knuckles turn white as she did so. Then she released, trying to stretch the fingers as far the other direction as possible.
Somewhere, she thought she'd stashed cotton gloves for occasions like these, but where they were, she wasn't sure. Not in the glove box, she could tell, since all it had was the car's manual she hadn't opened in several years now. They also weren't in her door, though at least there was an extra pack of cigarettes she'd stashed for emergencies. Figures. Of course she'd done a better job preparing for a nicotine shortage than an actual car accident.
She couldn't think though, so at least the nicotine might help with that. And at least her lighter worked. She lit up, hitting the button to lower the window as usual, only to find nothing happened. Because of cour
se not. Because of course her car would be so totaled that even that wouldn't be working right now.
When her parents had bought her this car, they'd made her promise never to smoke in it. She'd done so in earnest, grateful for their ongoing support of her efforts to turn her passion for her violin into something that resembled a career, but things had gotten worse over the years. And this year had been so bad she'd given up on that promise, though not entirely; she made another promise, this one with herself, that she wouldn't smoke in the car with the windows down. So far, she'd kept that one, but now faced with the decision to let out the heat or keep the door shut...
Well, the car was totaled anyway, right? Might as fucking well. But she took the first drag, pulling in and letting the smoke fill her lungs, then exhaled, staring at the fumes that rose off the cylinder in her hand, sighed, then opened the door.
It was a mistake.
A gust of wind blew snow into her face, stealing her breath and making her cigarette burn brighter. At this rate, she would go through the whole damn pack in an hour. She turned back into the car, slamming the door and shivering until she no longer felt like her face was going to freeze off.
She took another hit of nicotine and tried to assess the situation: car, destroyed. Phone, dead. Location, unknown. Cigarettes, plenty. Parents, out of the country, so they wouldn't notice she didn't arrive home, and they wouldn't send her texts to worry about a lack of response to.
Not that she responded to their texts, anyway. She was a grown woman and didn't need her parents up her ass about her comings and goings. That she was nearly 30 and still living with them was a non-point in her considerations; financial struggles weren't the same thing as a lack of responsibility.
At least, necessarily. Hers probably were.
Her hand was jittering now. Because of nicotine or caffeine or cold or nerves, she wasn't sure. She didn't know how long the storm would last. Between her phone being dead and her car's system going haywire, she had no idea what time it was. She thought of the Rolex her older sister had given her—a beautiful, expensive thing she couldn't bring herself to wear lest she somehow destroy it—sitting on her bedside stand. If she trusted herself more, maybe she would know what time it was.
But she didn't.
It occurred to her she could probably lean her seat back and sleep until morning. Maybe then it'd clear up and she could look for help, assuming no one found her first. But she wasn't sure how long the heat in her car would hold out, and for whatever reason—exhaustion, perhaps—she thought she'd be better off wandering through the snow than hoping her rescue would come before the cold got to her. Besides, she couldn't get the image of someone finding her frozen corpse out of her mind, even though she also knew the chances of that happening were almost zero. So she puffed away at her cigarette instead, listening to the wind howl and rattle the windows, hoping for it to let up.
Or was that the wind? She paused, watching the embers move on her cigarette, and listened. It sounded like... wolves. Did wolves even howl over the winter? She didn't think so, but she also knew very little about them, so maybe that was the problem.
It'd be just my luck to become wolf food right before Christmas. All the more reason not to leave the damn car.
She couldn't decide. She wanted to call her mother and ask for help like she'd done the time she'd wrecked a car in high school. That time had been different; she'd stolen it to go to a party despite being 15 and having no idea how to drive. They had grounded her for three months after that, sure, but at least she'd just been stuck reading books cuddled in bed instead of stuck on the side of the road surrounded by wolves.
Her cigarette was dead. She sighed, opened the door to drop the butt on the ground and winced at the cold, and fumbled in the door for the pack. She hadn't put the lid on well enough and they'd started slipping out. Great. She grabbed one of the few that hadn't, since she figured there was no point in picking up a mess in a car that was already gonna be scrapped, and lit up.
Yup. Those howls were definitely from wolves. That didn't bode well. She slammed the door shut, even more determined to wait it out now, when someone tapped on her window.
She blinked. Hadn't she just opened the door? How had she not seen the guy approaching? Had she been so lost in her thoughts and so distracted by her cigarette she hadn't noticed him?
No. For him to approach this quickly he would have had to be within maybe five feet from her car when she'd closed the door. She definitely would have seen him. Right? Yet he was here and she hadn't. She yawned. Probably should have opted for the nap.
His hands hit the glass near her head. Tap tap tap. Right. This had been the whole point of waiting, hadn't it? That help had arrived sooner than she expected was a blessing.
She waved her hands toward him, and he took a few steps back. The cigarette pack fell from her lap onto the ground as the door opened. Fuck. She'd forgotten to put the fucking things back in the door after lighting up.
She inhaled a drag before standing or addressing her rescuer. She needed to calm her nerves before she would be able to problem solve with him. Or she needed to have enough lucidity not to snap at him out of grouchiness. Whatever. Her excuses were flimsy and she knew that, but she also didn't want to waste the one still in her hand while trying to figure it out.
She sighed, pushing the door open. The wind smacked her face, taking her breath away again. In the night she saw nothing but a long, snowy road, with flakes falling in a flurry, their spiraled descent illuminated by stars and the full moon. Not that the full moon wasn't something of a blur given the weather, but still she could see it, shining hazily through the snowfall.
She blinked and looked again. What she didn't see was another vehicle. No car, no truck, no bicycle. She glanced at the road behind her, having long forgotten what she'd recently passed, and saw nothing but trees and open fields. There might have been a farm a mile off, she supposed, but even if there was, this didn't seem like weather someone would take a walk in, and she didn't think anyone lived closely enough to have heard her crash.
And besides, this guy didn't look like a farmer. Looks could deceive, sure, but he stood upright, confident, a look of amusement under a face twisted into concern. He had a crisp leather jacket like a movie star, but it didn't look thick enough to shield him from the weather, and it certainly didn't explain how he appeared impervious to its impact on his face and neck.
"Are you okay? It looks like you had a pretty bad accident."
"Yeah." No shit I did. "I'm fine. It just. It's cold. And the car won't start. And my phone's dead."
The weather had calmed down somewhat. She thought it had, anyway. Maybe it was wishful thinking. She definitely still heard howling in the distance, but the wind didn't bite at her face quite so much, and she could look at her surroundings without wincing.
There weren't even tire tracks on the road, she realized, finding herself looking for a vehicle once again. She didn't see a motorcycle in the shadows, either, just a single set of footprints extending from the woods and leading to the man who stood in front of her, still looking entirely too concerned.
"Let's get you someplace warm," he said, slipping his coat off and offering it to her. Oh-so-chivalrous.
It was beginning entirely too much like a meet-cute for her liking, and she was angry when the coat both fit neatly over the winter coat she already wore and actually seemed to help cut down on the weather's ability to penetrate through to her skin.
"I can't-" she started, but he shook his head at her instead.
"Your car is totaled. I'm no expert but it's not coming back from that."
She fought the urge to roll her eyes at the dude. "No, I have to get my violin. I can't risk it staying here."
He cocked an eyebrow. "Where were you going?"
"Home."
"From?"
"A concert. Look. Just let me get it. Then we can go wherever you have in mind."
She searched her pockets for her keys, her hand
roving around in emptiness before she realized she was digging through the pockets on the jacket he'd given her instead. She maneuvered around it, finally into her own pockets where her dead cell phone and a leftover candy wrapper from the performance venue were reassuringly hers, fighting off a panic when her keys were most definitely not there.
She heard a jangling and spun around. The guy, in nothing but a long sleeve t-shirt and a pair of jeans now, had dodged past her, into her car, and pulled out her keys from... somewhere. Probably wherever the fuck they'd fallen when they'd vanished from her pocket. He pushed past her, one muscular arm brushing in front of her face as he moved, then deftly unlocked her trunk and grabbed her instrument.
He smiled. It was charming; one side of his mouth lifted a little more than the other, showing off a perfect dimple that accented his square jawline perfectly. She really should start dating again, she thought in passing. Or "dating," as it were.
Or maybe she should get her life together instead of lusting over mysterious men rescuing her from herself. It'd be a hell of a "how we met" story to tell at parties, wouldn't it?
The trunk slammed shut. She blinked and looked up.
"C'mon," he said. "There are werewolves in these woods and it's a full moon."
Werewolves? That didn't make sense. But there was the howling again, and she shivered, again not sure if it was from fear or cold or just exhaustion at this point. And maybe it was a joke? He didn't say it like one; though Monica couldn't be sure. He came off as if he was, at the very least, on high alert.
Holidays Bite: A Limited Edition Collection of Holiday Vampire Tales Page 12