The Christmas Dragon's Love

by Zoe Chant

  With sudden sadness, he thought of the way his family had always gathered for the holidays.

  He remembered waking up early on Christmas morning when he was ten and teasing his sister, telling Maya that he’d seen Santa and that she’d just missed him. He remembered building snowmen with her, having snowball fights, and using their dragon powers over snow and ice to cover the house with glittering icicles before their relatives arrived.

  He remembered the simple comfort of sitting in the kitchen with Maya, the air heavy with the scent of cinnamon and sugar, listening to her tell him about the man she’d met. The shifter who was her mate.

  Back then, he’d been jubilant for Maya. He’d imagined their life would continue the way it had been. That there’d be more Christmas mornings to come where they’d hang out in their pajamas in the kitchen, clutching a steaming cup of coffee as they caught each other up on their lives. That in a few years, he’d have little nieces and nephews to shower with presents.

  Instead, he’d not only ruined his own life, but almost hers as well.

  He missed her, he suddenly realized. He missed her and their parents with a sharp ache that took his breath away.

  Having Angel was more than he’d ever thought he’d have—but he’d never stopped loving his family. The ice he’d hidden in had dulled the ache, but Angel hadn’t only thawed his body. She’d also thawed his heart.

  And his heart still longed for the family he’d been forced to leave behind.

  ***

  They convinced the Mitchells to return with them to Snow Castle for a day.

  Once both Reed and Sean had been dealt with, they relaxed in Henrik and Dara’s private wing in the large mansion. From the windows, they had a perfect view of the frozen lake where people were still skating. Faintly, they could hear the sound of music and laughter.

  Dara and Angel were bent over Dara’s laptop, giggling softly and trying very hard to be secretive.

  But then, it was almost Christmas, and he hadn’t yet found a present of his own for Angel.

  Jonathan had hoped he would, by now. Not just a present, but also a home. Of course, then Reed had interrupted his plan...

  Angel looked incredibly pleased with herself when she shut the laptop at last.

  “All done for today,” she announced. “What’s next?”

  For a moment, Jonathan considered keeping it a secret after all. He could fly her over on Christmas Day. Make it a real, secret Christmas present.

  But that seemed wrong. If this was going to work, it had to be something they both chose. Something they both wanted from the start.

  “If you can excuse us for a while, there was something I wanted to show Angel before the dire wolf emergency interrupted us,” he announced.

  “Oh,” Mona said, eyes gleaming. “Don’t let us keep you.”

  “But make sure to tell us all about it when you get back,” Clara told Angel with a wink.

  “You’re not going to turn this into a movie, are you?” Angel asked, looking startled.

  The two women laughed without a hint of guilt. “We’ve been thinking about producing a Christmas movie together. We had someone offer us a script last month, actually.”

  Clara wrinkled her nose. “But I didn’t like the hero.”

  “And I hated the ending,” Mona said.

  They looked at each other again, then grinned. “But with a different hero and a different heroine, and a different ending, and a different title...”

  “Just a few small fixes,” Clara said brightly. “I can already see it so well.”

  Jonathan laughed. “We’d better be careful about what we tell you from now on.”

  Not that he cared if they wanted to add dire wolf or dragon shifters to their movies. Everyone would think it was just another fantasy movie. No one would realize it was all real.

  Unless my sister sees it...

  He’d deal with that if the movie really went ahead. He already had too many problems to worry about fictional ones.

  And right now, there was something he wanted Angel to see.

  ***

  This time, the flight was uneventful. By the time they reached the sprawling, empty mansion, the afternoon sun reflected off the plains of snow beneath them, so that it looked as if they were flying across an ocean of gold.

  And when he landed in front of the building he’d last seen ten years ago, the sun made the windows gleam. The icicles hanging from the roof were shining as bright as diamonds.

  To his relief, he saw that the building didn’t look as bad as he’d feared. They must have tried to keep it in shape, hoping that it would sell eventually.

  The building was an architect’s nightmare—or secret dream. It was a mansion with playful towers and strangely shaped walls and roofs. Inside, Jonathan knew that it would look just as strange, with some rooms that were triangular, and others that were perfectly round.

  “What is this place?” Angel said. To his great relief, she sounded amused instead of put-off.

  “It looks like an architect got drunk and then went crazy. I’ve never seen anything like it.” She giggled softly. “I love it.”

  “I’m not sure if he got drunk—but the man who designed it definitely went crazy with his designs. He wasn’t family exactly, but everyone I knew just called him Uncle Jeremy,” Jonathan began to explain.

  “He wasn’t a dragon shifter. He was the son of magpie shifter parents, but couldn’t shift himself. He made up for it by collecting pretty much anything he could get his hands on. Inside, it’s a museum—literally. He didn’t just collect paintings, or statues, like some people. He also collected weird inventions, and everyday objects from the days before modern technology. Like two hundred year-old doll houses, barrels for churning butter by hand, a handwritten book by his great-grandmother with her favorite recipes... It’s all there.”

  As he looked at Angel, he saw her eyes widen. There was a sudden spark in them as she eyed the house thoughtfully.

  “Has it all been cataloged, do you know? Do they maybe need an assistant to help with that? Someone to organize tours for school classes? Or maybe just someone to run a little gift shop?” A moment later, Angel sighed. “Never mind, I know places like this have no money to hire anyone. I’ve got a pile of rejections from a hundred places like this. Usually, they can barely pay for their own upkeep.”

  “You’re right,” he said softly. “When Uncle Jeremy died, one of his cousins inherited the house—but only on the condition that he not tear it down or sell the collection. For a while, they were trying to turn it into a small, local museum. But upkeep was expensive. And in the end, he didn’t want to spend his entire life out here, looking after this house.”

  “What a pity,” Angel murmured wistfully. “That was always my dream. Spending my entire life looking after a place like this. Teaching children about the history of this place. Making it interesting for them.”

  “Really?” Jonathan felt something heavy lift from his shoulders. All the way here, he’d told himself that it was a stupid idea. That his plans never worked out. That she wouldn’t want to spend the rest of her life inside a museum together with him.

  “Of course. What’s not to love?” Angel gestured excitedly towards the roof. “Look at that little turret! I’d feel like a real princess, living here.”

  “A princess living here with her own dragon?” he asked hopefully.

  In response, she laughed and gave him a loving look. “Of course. If the dragon wants to live in a run-down museum, of course, instead of a fancy high-rise apartment in the city.”

  Jonathan swallowed. “Then it’s probably the time to admit that the house is still up for sale. It’s been for years, because they can’t find a buyer willing to sign a contract that states that the house can’t be torn down, and that the weird collections inside can’t be sold off. And that they have to be made available to the public, too.”

  Angel tilted her head at him, as if she was trying to figure out what he wa
s suggesting.

  “This could be your home,” he said softly. “Don’t say anything right now. Let’s go inside and take a look around first. But if you could imagine sharing this place with me... I’d love to see this place come back to life. And I don’t ever want to sleep in the ice again. I want a home that’s warm and full of life. And in the winter, when there’s snow outside, we’ll spend the evenings in front of a warm fireplace.”

  “And during the school year, we’d open the collections so that school classes can tour it. Maybe every now and then, we’d have a researcher show up. Or maybe a grad student who for some reason decided to write a thesis about butter churning.” Angel laughed, turning away from him to survey the house once more, her hands on her hips.

  “It’ll be a lot of work,” she said slowly. “I’m not a dreamer. I can see what we’d have to do. Years of work. But that’s exactly what I’ve always wanted.”

  He stepped forward, close enough that he could wrap his arms around her from behind and press a kiss to her hair. “Then let’s go in and have a look around.”

  Chapter Twenty-One: Angel

  By the time they returned to Snow Castle, the sun was already low in the sky. To their relief, Clara and Mona were still there, currently decorating cookies for Dara, who’d left to tuck Leo into bed.

  “We’re leaving tomorrow, first thing in the morning,” Clara announced. “Sorry, but we really have to.”

  “No rest for the wicked.” Mona grinned. “And we had to make up a family emergency to cover our sudden escape from the press junket. I haven’t dared to check the celebrity gossip sites yet to see what they’ve come up with.”

  “I guess we did lose a dog and have a house nearly destroyed,” Clara said. “We’ll just leave out the bit where our dog Diego turned out to be a known criminal called Sean.”

  “Ugh.” Mona shook herself. “That’s it. No more strays for us. Maybe next time, we could just let Lola choose...”

  “Lola liked that bastard,” Clara said wryly. “What if she picks another criminal?”

  "What if you pick another criminal?" Mona gave Clara a pointed look.

  A heartbeat later, the door opened, and in raced a tiny puppy, yapping happily as Lola followed behind.

  "Stop! Not so fast!" Sarah gasped when she came in through the door, trying to grab hold of Lola's leash again.

  "Oh! You're all here—I'm so sorry. Lola made a new friend, and then I couldn't figure out who the puppy belonged to, and a second later it was racing off, and Lola following—"

  Sarah was still panting, and Angel had to bite back a smile as she watched Lola's latest dog-sitter try to grab the leash again—and fail when Lola jumped forward to race after the puppy once more.

  Hastily, Jonathan closed the door just in time, so that the dogs were trapped inside with them.

  "Lola, sweetheart—look what I've got!" Angel pulled the little bag with treats from her pocket, making them rattle.

  Lola paid her no attention. Instead, she nudged the little puppy, which had finally stopped running, with her nose. The puppy flopped down on the floor in response. With a blissful expression, Lola began to lick the puppy's face.

  "Seems as if Lola's made the decision for us," Mona said and laughed. "Though a puppy as adorable as that will have a home, Lola. I don't think we can keep it."

  "We're definitely not keeping that puppy," Clara said immediately, her voice sounding strangely tight.

  "But isn't it adorable?" Mona gave the old spaniel a loving look. "At least this time it's not a criminal out to rob us. Look at how cute they are together."

  "It's not a criminal, no," Clara said slowly. She shook her head. She looked as if she couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. "Lola, where the hell did you find him? And where are his parents?"

  A moment later, the door was flung open, and a teenaged boy stumbled in, looking completely out of breath.

  "Damn it, Ethan," he gasped. "Just wait until I tell Mom about this!"

  "Ethan?" Angel frowned. Then she looked at the puppy again. “Wait—do you mean—"

  All of a sudden, Lola sat up with a confused bark. And where a moment ago, the puppy had been, a child was crouching. It was a boy, no older than five or six, with unruly black hair and a wide grin on his face.

  "You aren’t supposed to shift and run without me!" the teenager said.

  "You're too slow." The child stuck out his tongue. "Catch me!"

  Then he shifted again, racing straight between Mona's legs and through the open door out of the kitchen.

  Barking excitedly, Lola rushed after him—and Sarah, the dog-sitter, threw herself after the trailing leash, only to miss it by a hair's breadth.

  "Oh no," Sarah moaned. "Sorry, I'll catch her. Don't worry!"

  "I hate children," the teenaged boy said glumly. Then he shifted too, his clothes pooling on the floor as he joined the hunt in the shape of a Border collie.

  A moment later, the kitchen was silent again.

  Angel looked at Jonathan, then at Mona, who looked just as shocked as she did.

  "I think," Clara said dryly, "we've just decided that no matter what, we'll definitely not let Lola decide."

  "You could have warned me," Mona said. "What the hell just happened? Are you telling me that our Lola kidnapped a child?"

  "I think you'll find that the child kidnapped our Lola," Clara pointed out.

  "As if that's going to make a difference to a judge."

  Angel smiled as she watched the couple playfully argue.

  Despite their glamorous life that involved constantly jetting from one corner of the globe to the next to advertise their latest movie, Angel recognized something familiar in the way they interacted.

  They communicated wordlessly with a single glance or a touch. And they always seemed to know what the other was doing or thinking.

  Even now, Angel could feel the fragile beginning of a similar connection between herself and Jonathan.

  The mate bond.

  What would it feel like to be truly mated? To carry that connection with her forever, a bond as strong as diamond? To know that he’d always have her back—and to know that there were uncounted winters to come, during which they’d decorate cookies together, haul in a tree, and spend evenings in front of a fire sipping eggnog?

  “Hey. You all right?” Jonathan’s hand gently slid up her arm, his fingers warm even through her comfy sweater.

  “I couldn’t be better,” she said, leaning against him for a moment.

  Angel smiled as she looked at the cookies he’d painstakingly decorated. There were the usual stars and trees—but there were also lots of dragons.

  Angel decided then and there that they’d have to invest in dragon-shaped cookie cutters as well before the next winter.

  Jonathan had been creative with the colored icing and sugar pearls. There were red dragons, blue dragons, rainbow dragons.

  And there was one dragon he’d covered all over with simple white icing, decorating it with white and silver sugar pearls.

  “It’s always the same. Never any wolf cookies,” Clara complained with a smile.

  Angel laughed and quickly grabbed the ice dragon cookie before anyone else could reach for it.

  “I bet you can find wolf cookie cutters online somewhere.” Angel tilted the cookie dragon, admiring the way the sugary pearls glinted in the light. “Anyway, this one is mine.”

  “I made it for you,” Jonathan said, laughing softly. “And there’s a fire dragon for Leo.”

  “It’s almost too pretty to eat.” Angel kept admiring her edible ice dragon. “A pity it wouldn’t keep.”

  “Go ahead, try it. We’ve got enough cookies to last until Christmas now.” Jonathan leaned closer until he could whisper into her ear. “I’d rather taste something much sweeter myself...”

  Angel felt heat rush to her face, glad all of a sudden that her skin hid her reaction.

  Even so, Clara and Mona gave them a knowing look.

  �
�I think we can finish off the cookies for tomorrow on our own,” Clara said helpfully.

  “Just in case you two would like a stroll through the snow, or something.” Mona’s look made it all too obvious that she knew just what the something was that was on Angel’s mind.

  ***

  Only a few minutes of cleaning later, Angel allowed Jonathan to pull her out of the kitchen.

  Even now, when she’d spent all day by Jonathan’s side, their hands and shoulders brushing as they worked on decorating the cookies for tomorrow’s party, she still felt that constant ache for his touch.

  Now that she knew what it felt like to fall asleep in his arms, to wake by his side, to have those powerful hands explore her body with such tenderness, she couldn’t help but want more of it. No matter how many nights they spent together, something inside her kept yearning for more.

  Even now, with the connection between them still so fragile, she could feel the distant thrum of his own desire. Like a flash of lightning illuminating the sky, it brought with it a sudden vision: his hand sliding down her side as she arched, his tongue circling a nipple, the way his strong body tensed all over when he finally slid inside her...

  She almost gasped out loud there in the corridor, then swallowed thickly. Was that her own subconscious teasing her—or had she caught a glimpse of Jonathan’s thoughts?

  Does it even matter at this point?

  They both wanted the same thing. She was barely able to keep her hands off him, but even though they were in the private part of the Snow Castle that was off-limits to guests, she forced herself to walk steadily by Jonathan’s side.

  This is ridiculous. I’m not a teenager anymore.

  Of course, even as a teenager, she hadn’t ever wanted anyone or anything with such desperate need.

  Jonathan was the best thing that had ever walked into her life, and her heart knew that she’d have to be an utter fool to let him go.

  She sneaked a small look at him.

  Jonathan looked flushed. Against his pale blond hair, she could definitely make out the heat that warmed his skin.