Alphas for the Holidays

by Mandy M. Roth

  Clenching his jaw, he looked over toward the palace, at the twin towers standing tall and foreboding off in the distance. Could he really trust her? Were the children truly okay?

  “What game do you play, Ice Queen?”

  When he turned to look at her, he was shocked to discover that she stood mere inches from him, so close that he took an involuntary step back even as he inhaled her sweet scent deep into his lungs.

  The air was ripe with the heady fragrance of pine and frost and sugared berries. He shook his head, telling himself not to let her get under his skin that way. It was likely some strange enchantment of hers or something else dark and devious…

  But one thought brought him up short.

  Weren’t the Ice Queen and the Under Goblin mortal enemies? All the stories said so.

  And yet…all the stories also said she was a monster with the form of an angel.

  Again, she did that strange birdlike movement with her head and neck, blinking her large, gorgeous eyes up at him as she, too, tried to make sense of him.

  And once again, he felt his skin flush from head to toe, felt himself standing on that cliff’s edge of darkness that dropped down into eternity if he so much as blinked.

  Grunting, he shook his head, sure that he was being ensorcelled somehow. But no matter how much he thought it, he couldn’t shake the fact that his heart and pulse and body felt completely off kilter anytime she looked at him.

  “I do wish you’d transform yourself, male.”

  There wasn’t a bite to her words, they simply were.

  “What are you?” He found himself asking the question before he could censor his thoughts. “What are you doing to me?”

  Goddess, she needed to turn those luminous eyes off him. She needed to not look at him as she was. His insides were rioting, but why? What was happening to him?

  Pragmatic to the core, as all centaurs were, he couldn’t understand the strange and novel feelings surging through him like a hot tidal wave, slamming into him powerfully and making him feel as though he couldn’t take a proper breath.

  She took a step closer to him, and again, he found himself dancing back but not sure why. He was drawn to her against his will, knowing deep down that what was happening to him should never happen to a centaur, but he couldn’t seem to resist her spell.

  And that thought made him angry and gave him the fire to ask, “What does it matter to you if I shift or not? And what role in this twisted game do you play, Ice Queen?”

  Chapter 5

  Luminesa

  Why did it matter to her? She couldn’t say.

  Maybe it was because she wasn’t comfortable with males who walked on only two legs. Or possibly it had to do with something else.

  Truth was, she hadn’t a clue. All she knew was that from the moment she’d been sucked into that strange world, she’d felt an undeniable pull to the male. That when he’d looked her in the eyes, she’d felt as though she was tethered to the ground by the merest thread of string and that one strong gust would snap it in half and she would float away.

  That when he came close to her, all she could smell was the beguiling scent of freshly shorn hay and pure, powerful male. That her heart thundered like horses’ hooves in her chest and that she was terrified because she hadn’t felt emotion that powerful since the moment of her rebirth.

  All those things she felt and more, but none of them seemed capable of falling off her tongue.

  Watching him through the looking glass, she’d felt a spark of life flow through her, a strange, tingling warmth that’d robbed her of breath.

  And even as she craved more of that spark, she was also terrified of feeling again. Not just feeling for a man but feeling anything at all. For so long, she’d shunted off those emotions to the point that she’d thought herself deadened to them.

  Her heart was rimmed in ice, and that was how she liked it. Her only worries had ever been for her children—the creatures that roamed her icy forests, the animals she called friends and companions.

  Maybe as his horse, she’d not feel that anymore, that strange curiosity and yearning for something long dormant.

  He shook his head, causing the long ends of his black hair to swish down around his thick, barrel chest. Piercing green eyes the color of pine stared back at her with a heavy frown.

  “Ice Queen, will you not answer?”

  Her pulse stuttered. He was upset with her. It shouldn’t bother her that he was. It’d never bothered her before. She’d angered many creatures in her time, and none of it had fazed her, until then…until him.

  She swallowed. “My name is Luminesa.”

  His green eyes—far prettier than they had any right to be on a male—blinked. Long lashes fanned along the tops of his honey-colored cheeks. She couldn’t help wondering whether his centaur half was the same shade as his flesh.

  Inhaling deeply, she turned her face to the side, not sure why she’d offered him her true name when she’d done it so rarely in her life. Why had she come there? She could say she hadn’t known what would happen when she finally touched the glass, but that would be a lie. Because deep down, she’d suspected the true power of the glass rested in holding it.

  Baatha hadn’t wanted to come. Even then, she felt his resentment at being forced to. He did not enjoy people. Like her, he, too, had been hurt by outsiders. He could not understand her desire for coming. And in truth, neither could she.

  If she could return home, she probably would have. But she’d already tried. She was as stuck there as the three of them. Confused and irritated by her own strange emotions, she made to turn, to head for the castle and a room farthest away from all of them, when suddenly, she felt the roll of warm magic pulse against her.

  Luminesa stood perfectly still, hardly able to breathe as she gazed up at the centaur male. As his half horse, he’d grown, standing several heads taller than her.

  And her guess, that he’d be that same velvety honey color on his flank, had been right. Steam rose from off his withers, curling foggy white fingers through the chilly sky.

  She found it hard to see much more of him with his cloak on, and as though he understood that, he reached up, unclasped it, and dropped it casually across a forearm.

  He was glorious. Strong, sinewy cords of ropy muscle and smooth, toned flesh. Like his sister, he was also furrier than the typical centaur breeds of the great plains. His kind had clearly bred themselves to handle the harsh living conditions of her home. He wore leather wrist braces that buckled and a dark halter on his back, no doubt to hold a weapon of some sort. The male was a warrior through and through, and she felt her pulse skitter in her chest.

  She’d not been around a male, of any species, that exuded such an air of raw, primal masculinity the way he did.

  But it was his eyes that drew her gaze over and over again, a blazing green that seemed unnatural and that studied her as intently as she studied him.

  “I am called Alador.” He said it softly but proudly.

  She had already known that. Haxion had referred to him as such, but hearing him say his name with that strong, gravelly inflection caused her flesh to break out in goose bumps.

  By the gods, he was a thing of beauty.

  The winds began to pick up in intensity again. Sleet and wet flakes of fat snow dripped from pregnant clouds. Alador shivered. Clearly, the cold did affect him.

  Luminesa frowned, wishing she could help ease his pain a little. But her powers seemed to go only so far in that place. The magick hadn’t completely quelled her ability to manipulate ice and snow, but it’d lessened it to an almost laughable degree.

  “Let us go inside before we drown in this.” She said it slowly, sending out a mental projection to her creatures to go and seek shelter, as the night was only bound to get worse.

  She did not trust that place. At all.

  From the corner of her eye, she caught Alador frowning. “Are you not controlling this?”

  Holding up her hand, she flicked h
er fingers, causing a swirl of flakes to dance ahead of her. “I can control the elements in here but only a little. The magick the Goblin used is very powerful. I cannot turn this weather off completely.”

  Baba Yaga was a true force of nature. Her powers of darkness were legendary, and feeling the wave of her dark magick rolling through the enchanted night, Luminesa feared that the worst was still to come.

  The tingling force of power undulated along her flesh like a prickling caress.

  How was she ever supposed to release them from that place?

  Alador trotted gently beside her, tossing occasional curious glances her way. His forehead furrowed with frustration, and his lips would thin or tighten up. She knew he wanted an answer to his other question, the one about what part in the game she played.

  Luminesa debated answering or simply letting him draw his own conclusions, but she felt a queerness of spirit, a restless anticipation for something…though for what, she had no idea.

  By the time they’d reached the courtyard made of glass-like ice, she still hadn’t a clue what to say. She’d not been forced to carry on a conversation in some time. The tension between them grew thick and made her anxious.

  Alador cleared his throat once they walked through the entryway toward the main part of the castle.

  She’d purposefully designed it to look like her own ice palace back home, with multiple rooms hewn from thick blocks of blue ice that sparkled and gleamed like cut diamonds in the noonday sun. She’d injected the ice with a form of bioluminescence that would always glow, day or night, so that lights weren’t a necessity.

  Honestly, she was surprised the magick inside that place had allowed her to design the castle. And while it was tempting to be happy that she could, she suspected that the palace was merely an illusion of safety.

  Her stomach twisted in tight knots of apprehension as her mind dreamed up a million different things that could happen to them that night. But it was all speculation, and the last thing she wanted was to stress any of them out worse than they’d already been.

  She looked at Alador. He was staring at the palace with wide, curious eyes. Luminesa couldn’t help wondering whether he liked it or thought it cold and sterile.

  He bowed deeply. “I will find a room. But first, I’d like to visit the children.”

  It’d never occurred to her that he might want to. She frowned. “Why?”

  And though his nostrils flared, his words were gentle. “Because they are children, Ice Queen.”

  She frowned harder. He’d called her Ice Queen again. It shouldn’t have bothered her. Biting down on her back teeth, she swallowed the question on the tip of her tongue, the one that demanded to know why he still refused to use her true name after she’d gone to the effort to give it to him.

  Then, surprising even herself, she pointed her thumbs in opposite directions. “The girl, if she is now done eating, would be sleeping in the west and the boy in the east.”

  His hooves clacked against the ice as he moved toward the west. She watched him go, her eyes as wide and round as saucers. But he stopped and turned to look back at her.

  And again, her heart did that stupid, stuttery beat in her chest. She curled her fingers against her breast, wondering what it was about the male that discombobulated her so.

  “Do you feel anything at all? Or are you chiseled from the same ice as this palace?” he asked.

  His arm gestured wide, encompassing the whole of the place, and Luminesa could only blink as her thoughts continued to try to suffocate her.

  Though his words stung, there was no bite or condemnation to them. Merely curiosity.

  Luminesa felt tongue-tied and unsure of herself or how to even answer him. All she could do was breathe and swallow and stand there like a fool.

  Grunting, he shook his head, and on his face was a look of such genuine disappointment that she felt it as keenly as if he’d slapped her. His handsome visage twisted in a deep scowl, Alador turned and left without saying another word. She watched him go, standing like a statue even once he was long gone.

  Clutching her fingers to her breast, she told herself that he was nothing. That those people were nothing to her. That she was there for one purpose only, to thwart the Goblin’s plans for her.

  She swallowed hard, wondering why there was such a strange lump in her throat of a sudden.

  Baatha’s shrill cry finally caused Luminesa to turn.

  He circled her head, once, twice, and then a third time to let her know he wished her to follow.

  And like an automaton, she did, but her head was aswirl with a jumble of thoughts. How was she was supposed to set about freeing them? Why had the Under Goblin done as he’d done, and why did Alador’s words continue to echo through the recesses of her thoughts?

  He’d asked her if she felt.

  Did she feel?

  Looking back through her new life, she tried to spot a moment where she’d really felt something. A spark of anger. A spark of desire. Fury. Fear. Curiosity…but everywhere she looked, she came up empty.

  There’d been annoyance and irritation, but those had been very low-lying emotions, hardly even skin deep. The one time she’d really felt something was the day she realized how truly evil the Under Goblin was, but even then, her conviction hadn’t been crushing.

  But all of that paled in comparison to what she’d felt the moment her eyes had landed on Alador’s, that quivering, soul-stealing thread of anxiety that’d tunneled like a hot little worm through her lower stomach. And how her frozen heart had beat so hard in her chest it’d felt like pain the first time it’d happened.

  Baatha wound up a spiraling staircase; she knew where he was leading her after a moment—to the study in the upper tower.

  Dragging her fingers along the blocks of ice, she inhaled deeply, allowing the cold to seep into her veins, to turn her pleasantly numb again. She smiled as the burgeoning pain, worries, and questions slowly eased out of her, the ice taking her fears and giving her back that blank emptiness. The peace of feeling nothing again, that familiar emotion of stark barrenness where nothing hurt. Nothing pained her, and nothing could ever hurt her again.

  She landed on the top step, turned, and opened the ice door of the study. She’d not built a roof on that part of the palace, and so she stood out in the open, staring at the sky that danced with millions of flurries, losing herself in the peaceful tranquility of darkness that blanketed the cursed place.

  Baatha landed on her shoulder, his talons digging deeply into her, causing blood to trickle down her icy frame in red, frozen rivulets.

  Above, the lights of night danced, a painting of neon green and vivid blues that undulated through the sky like the belly scales of a snake.

  Inhaling the frosty nip of the air, she quieted the jumbled thoughts in her head and simply allowed herself to become one with the ice and blackness.

  No more doubts. No more questions. She would be methodical. Cold. Calculating. She would work out the Goblin’s riddle, and she would send the three home, and then she would leave and never look back, never wonder about the centaur with eyes as green as spring.

  Alador

  He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to find when he reached the first tower. The children huddled into themselves, perhaps, crying out from pain and hunger and begging for him to save them. He was shocked when he opened the door and instead found Kai bundled under several layers of thick, dark fur.

  The room was softly aglow with a strange sort of flame from the corner hearth. The fire was crystalline in color, a shifting rainbow of shades as it burned and gave off its heat, making the room warm and comfortable.

  He twirled and stared at a table laden with fruits, cheeses, and nuts. Pitchers of juice sat there as well. Frowning, he walked over to the table, picked up a square of yellow cheese, sniffed it—it smelled slightly grassy and nutty—then popped it into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully.

  It was delicious. Soft but not too soft, with a sharp nip to it.
Clenching his teeth, he turned back to look at the boy.

  The towheaded child had his hands tucked beneath his cheek, his rosebud lips slightly parted as he breathed deeply without the strain of a frown between his brows.

  His hooves muffled by the plush, tanned carpet covering every square inch of the floor, Alador made his way over to the bed and laid his fingers against the boy’s forehead. He was warm.

  Lifting the furs just a little, Alador noted a new pair of nightclothes on him too. The Queen had given him new clothes?

  Keeping his thoughts to himself, Alador turned and quietly left the room. He walked the long distance between Kai’s room and Gerda’s and arrived several long minutes later. And again, he found the same arrangement.

  Frowning in puzzlement, he stared at the blond-haired, pixie-faced girl who slept as peacefully as her brother. Why had the Queen treated them so kindly?

  Her hatred of humans was legendary. She’d banished the children without so much as a backward glance. Alador had expected the worst, expected to see them blue and shivering from the cold, or near to death. Not contented, not with full bellies and sleeping soundly.

  He’d not expected to walk into their rooms and feel warmth. To see fire. Not from her. Not from a Queen who cared for no one and nothing. Not from the woman who’d not deigned to answer a single one of his questions, the cold woman as beautiful as she was harsh.

  He’d accused her of feeling nothing, and she’d not even defended herself. Why?

  Exhaustion laced every inch of his bones. He desperately needed sleep. Needed food. But his brain would not stop wondering, couldn’t stop wondering, why she’d done that. Why she’d come for them.

  After leaving Gerda’s room, he walked down several winding halls before stopping to stare out the icy window at a night that seemed to stretch into eternity. The borealis danced with fairy light, hypnotizing him for a moment.

  The palace was enormous, grander than any space he’d been in before. A centaur’s home was little more than a nest of hay to bed down into for the night. When the weather turned bad, occasionally, they’d build a hut to keep the worst of the snow off them, but that was it.