by Anthology
“You’ll be great,” Rhys said as he stopped in front of Arian’s stall. “Just remember your training.”
When it had been revealed that Arian was a true arctic shifter, able to shift into so many forms, his training had begun for the sleigh team. If he hadn’t been able to shift into the all-important reindeer form, he would have been trained for the security team only. All those years of training were paying off tonight. He felt electricity in the air. He knew that by the time his first flight was over, he would be a completely different male. He relished the knowledge.
Declan gave a nod to Arian, and the two males walked back toward the front where their stalls were. Arian’s fingers trembled as he undid his trousers and let them fall. It took a moment for his nerves to calm enough for him to be able to claim his shift. His body stretched and his bones snapped and reformed as he became a reindeer. He stamped his hooves and snorted.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Oliver, one of the barn elves, said as he hurried into the stall and attached the ancient harness around Arian’s body. He patted Arian on the haunches and smiled. “Good travels, Blitzen.”
Arian snorted, trying not to prance out of the stall like some kind of show horse. Oliver led him to the sleigh, and the red painted wood shined under the light of the candles glowing brightly in the barn. Arian took his place, right in front of the sleigh and was attached to the main harness. Donner, his fellow shifter Jack, was next to him, and the male nudged Arian with his horns. Arian would have grinned if he’d had the ability.
SC, otherwise known around the world as Santa Claus, strode into the barn, his cloak billowing around him. Mrs. C, his wife, hurried next to him, clucking under her tongue as they had an argument that Arian had heard many times over the years.
“What if you just ate the cookies at every other house?” she asked.
“It’s important the kids know I was there.”
“The presents aren’t an indication of that?”
SC stopped next to Arian and put his big hand on Arian’s head, scratching him lightly just under the horns. “Good flight tonight, Blitzen.” Then he turned to his wife and drew her close, kissing her soundly. “You worry for nothing, sweetheart.”
She sighed. “I love you.”
“I’ll eat only a bite at each house. How does that sound?”
“Better.”
“And I’ll bring home a special cookie for you,” he said, his voice low and filled with lust.
Mrs. C giggled. “Stop it, you old horn dog. Safe journey, Santa Claus.”
“Until the dawn, Mrs. Claus.”
SC climbed into the sleigh and the barn doors were thrown wide. The elves cheered as SC picked up the reins and with a mighty shout, cracked them in the air. The two lead reindeer started them off, and Arian found himself caught up in the rush. His feet were moving before he could focus on the need to move, and he was thankful that some part of him was working on autopilot. As the North Pole dimmed in the distance below them, he blinked and found himself rushing through time and space.
The stops at the houses were so brief that they barely touched down before SC was back in the sleigh and they were moving on. Arian lost himself in the blur of the houses, focusing on doing his job and keeping the team on time.
The world was theirs for the night. The sleigh raced across the sky, invisible to human eyes, through the magic of SC. Arian was running high on adrenaline, happy to finally take the job that he’d longed to do for so many years.
He heard a clicking sound, like the ping of metal against metal, and as they flew through an expanse of wilderness, the buckle holding him against the main harness gave way. He bellowed in alarm and tried to grab the harness with his teeth to hold himself to the sleigh but his jaws snapped on air and he was falling. Down, down, down, through frigid air that took his breath away. Then he was being slapped rapidly by trees, before he hit the ground. His whole body cracked against the earth, and his brain rattled in his skull.
He remembered nothing else.
2
Charli tugged her fleece robe a little tighter around her body as she stared out the front window of her home. It was 11:30 on Christmas Eve night, and she should have been asleep. There was a part of her that still believed that if she weren’t asleep by midnight, Santa wouldn’t come by and visit. Leftover childhood beliefs. As an adult, she knew that the parents were the ones who brought the presents for their kids, and she’d had many happy Christmases as a youth wanting to stay up late but being too afraid of missing out on presents to do so.
She glanced at her tree in the corner. She’d cut it from the woods herself, the small, three foot tall tree had been just the right size for her own holiday decorations, and she’d gone all out – popcorn and cranberry garland, her favorite ornaments, and a beautiful golden star on top.
She yawned. She’d spent the better part of the last two hours trying to fall asleep, but every time she closed her eyes, she found herself uneasy and unable to rest. She wasn’t a night owl by any stretch, and she had a long drive in the morning to visit her sister for Christmas Day brunch at her apartment, so Charli had tried to go to bed early, with no luck.
“If I go to bed now,” she said to her reflection in the window, “I’ll get six hours of sleep. That’s not bad. I get less than that on a deadline.”
She paused and sighed.
“Great, I’m talking to myself. Out loud. And now I’m pointing out the obvious. I need to get a boyfriend. Or maybe a dog.”
She looked at the fireplace and decided she could toss another log on the fire and get some work done. Her laptop sat at her small desk in the corner, but the last thing she really wanted to do was sit down and write. She hadn’t been able to come up with a new story idea in a few weeks. Her idea to move into the middle of butt-nowhere so she could write uninterrupted had gotten her a big fat goose egg when it came to inspiration. Her muse, it seemed, had taken a vacation.
Unable to draw herself from the window, she stared into the woods that surrounded her cabin. She wondered, not for the first time, if she’d made a mistake. When her favorite aunt had passed away a year earlier, she’d left Charli and her sister, Kerri, a small fortune to share. Kerri had put the money toward paying for her culinary degree, and Charli had bought the cabin in the woods. It had been heaven for the first few weeks but now, as the winter thundered down on her and she found herself missing human contact, she thought maybe she should take Kerri up on her offer and stay with her for a couple of weeks to recharge and get her writing mojo back.
She began to turn away from the window when something that looked like a falling star plummeted toward the woods. She shoved her feet into the boots she kept at the front door and grabbed her coat and a flashlight from the hooks by the door. Bitter wind bit at her cheeks as she stepped onto the porch and put on her coat. Her heart was pounding in her ears as she gripped the handrail and stepped off the porch, the recent snowfall fluffing up around her. She turned on the flashlight as she made her way toward where she thought whatever it was had fallen from the sky.
She realized she was being silly, because her perception of where the object had fallen could have been distorted from her view through the window. The falling star, or whatever it was, could have hit the ground miles from here.
Something she couldn’t explain propelled her to keep going. As she trudged through the snow, her boots filled with the icy fluff, and her bare legs were freezing as her robe billowed around her while she moved as quickly as she could. The light bobbed ahead of her, and she scanned the darkness for a sign of something, anything. Her mind raced as she moved into the trees, wondering what it was that had fallen. As a long-time lover of fantasy and science fiction movies and books, she had a mind full of all sorts of wild thoughts. A fallen star. An angel who lost his wings. An alien spaceship. Immediately, a storyline popped into her mind, and she wished she were back inside her cabin so she could write the idea down before it slipped away.
And the
n everything froze inside her as the yellow glare of the flashlight landed on a very large animal. Its hooves were askew, its head thrown back, its eyes shut, and blood pooled on the white snow under its open mouth. A reindeer. Something about seeing an injured or possibly dead reindeer on Christmas Eve made her even sadder than she would have been to see any living creature in a similar situation.
As she moved closer, she swept the flashlight over the body and stopped on its torso. The beam of light illuminated what looked like a harness. The thick leather was stamped with some kind of lettering she didn’t recognize. The buckles were bright, shiny gold. She stared at the reindeer’s chest, watching for the rise and fall, to see if it was still breathing. Her eyes began to water as she tried not to blink, worried she would miss a sign of life.
Tears blurred her vision. The reindeer was dead; she was sure of it. Dropping to her knees, she ignored the sting of the snow on her skin and laid the flashlight beside her.
“I’m sorry you…fell. I hope you have a safe journey to wherever reindeer go when they die.” She laid her hands on the creature’s chest and closed her eyes as the tears fell. She didn’t know why she felt so strongly, but she couldn’t control her emotions, and she didn’t fight them. As crazy as it seemed, she felt like she was meant to be here at this moment.
When her palms touched the coarse fur, she felt a connection flash through her, and she gasped as the fur beneath her hands twitched. She opened her eyes and watched as the reindeer’s body contorted violently and began to glow. Her heart swelled as an inexplicable feeling washed over her – like love at first sight on steroids.
She couldn’t pull her hands away, even when the reindeer’s body shifted from beast to man and she was touching smooth flesh. The reindeer-man rolled onto his back, and her hands skimmed over the taut flesh of his abs that were chiseled in a way that made every feminine urge inside her go woohoo.
He groaned and his eyes opened, the brilliant blue orbs zeroing in on her and making her heart seize in her chest.
“Likli fanna,” he growled and then his eyes closed and he went limp in the snow.
Her hands flexed on his skin, and she blushed sharply, realizing how close she was to a very erect part of his anatomy.
Don’t stare, Charli, she chided herself.
She bent and rested her ear over his heart, finding the steady rhythm comforting. Whoever he was – he said likli fanna, was that his name? – he was alive, and she knew she needed to get him into her cabin and get him warm before he died from exposure.
Glancing upward as she pulled off her coat and laid it on the ground next to him, she wondered how he’d wound up in her backyard. It took a few tries, but she managed to roll him onto her coat and then she grabbed the arms of the coat and tugged. It took all her effort and then some to get his body moving, but once the coat was sliding along the snow’s surface, she moved him with surprising ease.
By the time she had wrangled him into the cabin, she was covered with sweat and exhausted to the core. Her hands were chapped and ice cold and she couldn’t turn the doorknob to lock the front door. Cursing at herself for letting the fire die down, she hurried to the wood pile and placed several logs on the grate. Her cheeks streamed with tears as she shivered from head to toe, the coldness feeling like it had seeped into her veins.
As the fire blazed back to life, she rushed to her bedroom and pulled all the blankets and pillows from the bed and dragged them into the family room. The fire crackled nicely, and she shivered as she dropped to her knees and arranged the pillows and blankets so the man was more comfortable. She rolled him onto the comforter and tucked a pillow under his head. Then she covered him with an afghan and two quilts. After changing into a dry pajama shirt, she warmed her fingers by the fire, and then she wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and sat next to him.
She gently pushed one of the blankets down his body so she could unbuckle the harness. She laid it on the floor next to him and covered him back up. As she inspected the harness, she saw that a very large buckle was broken, and immediately she thought of Santa’s sleigh.
“Now you’re just being crazy,” she whispered. She didn’t believe she was staring at one of Santa’s reindeer. Except…how else could she explain a reindeer with a harness falling from the sky?
She glanced at her Christmas tree and saw something she hadn’t noticed before. Her hand tightened on the harness and she stood, walking over to the tree and touching an ornament that she had never seen before. A delicate glass snowflake shimmered on the branch. She knew for sure she didn’t have a snowflake ornament.
Looking back at the unconscious man, then at the harness, and then at the ornament, she wondered if she were actually asleep and having a vivid dream. But she knew she wasn’t because she was still cold, the harness was heavy in her hands, and there was a naked, unconscious man in her cabin.
Had Santa visited her little middle-of-nowhere cabin and left her an ornament?
She laid the harness under the tree, on the red velvet skirt with the embroidered poinsettias, and moved back to the unconscious man. He was handsome. Gorgeous, really. His hair was light brown and cut short, his nose was straight and his lips were full and totally kissable. He was well muscled, and even though she’d only seen him lying down, she could tell he was tall. A tattoo of some kind peeked over the edge of the blanket, and she pulled it down and stared at his bicep. It was as intricate tattoo of some kind of scrollwork with curving flourishes and sharp points. She brushed her fingers lightly over the tattoo and then covered it up with the blanket again. Curling herself up next to him, she yawned and closed her eyes. She couldn’t believe that a man had fallen from the sky and was now in her house. Maybe her Christmas wish to have some company had come true.
Thank you, Santa.
3
Arian sat upright with a growl, his beasts roaring at him to protect his mate. The thick, black claws of his polar bear slid from his fingers and fangs punched from his gums. A feminine gasp reached his ears, and he knew immediately that it was his mate.
“Where is it?” he said, a growl rumbling in his chest as he scanned the room. He crouched, ready to stop whatever was coming to harm his mate. Nothing was familiar, and he wasn’t sure why he was here or where exactly here was.
“Where is what?” a soft voice asked, panic threading the words.
He lowered his gaze and saw a female clutching a purple blanket around her. Brown eyes like the finest chocolate were wide with fright and she was trembling.
“Danger.” He couldn’t get his brain to work right. He could smell her fear, and his beasts were anxious to protect her.
She scooted from him, but he reached for her, grabbing the blanket and tugging her close. She squeaked in alarm. “I won’t hurt you, I promise! I found you in the woods. Oh shit, please!”
He closed his eyes and inhaled, letting his beasts sort through the scents and listen for any signs of intruders. When he found only the scent and sound of his mate, he relaxed and forced his beasts to stand down. His fingers and teeth returned to normal, and he released his hold on the blanket.
He eased from his crouch and sat on his heels. “I know you won’t hurt me. I thought you were in danger.”
She blinked and brushed a tear from her cheek. “Oh. I…your eyes were yellow, and you had fangs and claws.”
She moved and the blanket wrapping her parted to reveal a smooth expanse of lightly tanned thigh. His beasts roared at him again and images of himself and the female lying naked together filled his mind. The images dissipated as quickly as they came when he saw that she was upset. Her heart pounded and her hands were white-knuckled as she held the blanket in front of her.
He didn’t like her being upset. She should never be afraid of him. “My name is Arian. What’s your name, beauty?”
She blinked. “Charlotte, but everyone calls me Charli.”
He smiled and her gaze dropped to his mouth, her tongue darting out to wet her lips. He barely stopped
the growl of happiness from his beasts as they scented the subtle shift in her scent, from fear to arousal. Resisting the urge to do anything that might frighten her again, he said, “Do you know what happened?”
“You fell from the sky.”
She chewed on her lip for a moment, and he sensed her hesitation.
Arian reached out and cupped her cheek. She sighed softly and leaned into his touch.
“What is it, beauty?”
“You were a reindeer. I thought you were dead, but when I touched your fur, you shifted into a human. You said likli fanna and then you passed out. I know I must sound crazy, but it’s what happened.”
He stroked her soft cheek and tried to remember what had happened. He remembered being part of the sleigh team, and then something breaking on his harness, causing him to fall through the night sky, but then his mind went blank.
“You don’t sound crazy, Charli. I did fall from the sky. I’m part of the sleigh team, or rather, it was my first time with the team and something happened to the harness and I fell. I’m lucky to be alive, and I’m doubly lucky to have been found by my mate. You saved my life.”
He leaned toward her, intending to find out how soft her lips were, when she leaned away and put her hand up between them.
“First of all…sleigh team? Like Santa’s sleigh?”
He nodded and kissed her palm.
“Oh man, I’ve completely lost my mind. I’m so lonely out here in the middle of nowhere that I hallucinated a gorgeous naked man who’s not only a reindeer shifter but is also part of Santa’s team.” She pinched her arm and then squeaked in pain. “Ouch. Damn it. Am I dead?”
Arian chuckled and moved closer. She didn’t shy away. “You’re not dreaming, Charli, or dead. I’m real and so are you. Where is this place?”
“You’re in my home, outside of Jonah Woods. Do you really know Santa?”
“Sure. I’ve been working for him since I turned eighteen and took on my shifts, but this was my first flight.” Something flickered through his mind, and he stood up and strode to a window. Looking out at the night sky, he asked what time it was.