A Shifter's Christmas Box Set

by Emilia Hartley

“After I finish off your boyfriend here, you’re going to lead me back to your family. They’re going to give me Robert, so I can track down my daughter once and for all.”

  “Did she leave you?” Holly bought them time. “I can see why she wouldn’t want to live with a murderous bastard like you.”

  The bear shifter she’d shot fell back onto his knees. He didn’t have the strength to fight. The wolf was staggering on his feet. His muzzle was covered in blood, Claus’s blood if she had to guess. Beside him, the gorilla shifter was missing an eye. Claus’s claws had left gashes down his face. They were knitting together, but shifter healing could not bring back what was lost. He would forever be without an eye.

  “Is that why you want my cousin? Did Robbie do something nice for once?” Holly laughed. It was daring, a show put on to not only vex the man behind her, but to summon a bit of courage for herself. “You managed to be so awful that you made a Carter shifter feel bad. You should be proud of yourself. The Carters are a bunch of assholes.”

  “Be quiet, woman, or I will kill you, too.”

  “What’s the point in living if you’re going to take away the only good thing that’s ever happened to me?” She met Claus’s gaze. His eyes pleaded with her, filled with sorrow and grief.

  No, don’t do whatever you’re about to do. I can’t lose you. I can’t watch you die.

  Holly had nothing left to say. She’d found something worth living for, worth dying for, too. She summoned her martial arts training and brought the heel of her foot down on the man’s foot. The arch crunched under the impact. He hissed in pain. She gripped his arm and ducked her shoulder.

  His feet left the ground. She heard the dress tearing but didn’t stop. The man’s back hit the asphalt, and she heard the air whoosh from his lungs. To her surprise, none of the other shifters moved. It gave her the time to leap for the dropped gun. She grabbed it before jumping back to her feet, spinning toward the shifters.

  They all watched her with a bit of awe. The wolf’s jaw was even slightly agape. The first one to move was Claus. He stepped toward the man she’d dropped to the ground and put his foot on the man’s chest. For a long moment, he stared down at the man.

  Holly couldn’t tell where this was going to go. Was he going to kill him? Let him run back home?

  Then, the moment passed. Claus put all his weight onto the man’s chest as he reached forward with bear paws. She cringed and looked away. The sound of snapping bones filled the air. When she looked back, the man’s neck was crooked. Claus had made it quick.

  He stood tall and looked back at the others. They did not seem inclined to challenge him. There was a reason the now-dead man had brought three giant shifters to fight Claus. Apparently, it had not been enough, either.

  She let out a breath, her shoulders dropping. The gorilla gathered the bleeding shifter into his arms, the one she’d shot, and gave Claus a lingering look. It seemed to promise retribution for the lost eye. Then he and the wolf turned to disappear into the darkness.

  ***

  “Damn,” Claus mumbled. His body thrummed with the change. The fight had left his blood pumping, and now that it was slowing, so was he.

  The world around him swayed, but one thing steadied him. Holly was a sight to see. Her gold dress fluttered around her bare thighs. She gripped a handgun, aiming it toward the ground as if she’d been taught by a professional. Clearly, she had been trained, if the man moaning on the ground was any indication.

  Claus stumbled toward her. She turned her body so that she could catch him with her empty arm, the gun carefully pointed away from him. He tried not to put too much weight on her.

  “You threw a mob boss on his ass. I’m so proud of you.” He rested his cheek on her head.

  She was fine. She was in one piece. His mate had survived the night. And, so had he.

  His mind reeled, suddenly realizing how their future had been blown open. All the things he’d wanted yet told himself he could not have, were now at his fingertips. No, he slowed himself down. He was not yet sure of how she felt. Holly might have saved him, but he did not know if she could forgive him.

  When he leaned back to look down at her, she gave him an appraising look. He was fine, but she still worried about him. It gave him hope.

  “I, ah…Would you…” He shook himself. “Could you ever…forgive a man like me?”

  Silence filled the space between them. Each passing second, his hope sunk lower. He waited for her to turn back to her car and run back to the Carter abode, done with him once and for all. He didn’t deserve what she’d already given him. Forgiveness was asking for too much.

  “It’s a lot to work through,” she admitted. “But I think we can take this day by day. Don’t get me wrong, there are going to be a lot of volunteer hours in your future, but I don’t think you’re past redemption.”

  He hugged her tight. He didn’t deserve her. This was the marker for a new life, a new direction in which he could become the kind of man that deserved the love of a woman like her. It would be a long journey and there would be hiccups here and there, but he was willing to give it his all.

  She tugged him into a kiss until a car drove by and blared its horn at them.

  “We should leave before they call the cops,” she whispered once they broke the kiss.

  “That’s a good idea. I don’t want to stick around here much longer. How far away is Raleigh? Do you think we could stop at a gas station and buy all their beef jerky?”

  Holly laughed, but he was serious. He wanted to go back to the place where she was happiest. That was his new home, he decided. He would call Elise and ask her to have his Challenger towed. He knew, when Holly told him it was a ten-hour drive, that he would have more than enough time to think of a way to blackmail her into helping.

  “Let me drive,” he asked. “If you grab beef jerky and some cheap sweets at the next gas station, I’ll let you sleep the whole time.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  She jumped to kiss the dimple on his cheek before running around the car to the passenger seat. She was careful with the gun, emptying the magazine and clicking the safety before locking it in the glove compartment.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Holly lounged on her couch. The soft, suede fabric was familiar and comforting. She leaned back and enjoyed the soft glow of the Christmas lights she’d strung the night before. Never before had she been one to celebrate Christmas. It had been almost a dirty word in her life.

  Since coming home, she’d made a last-minute trip to the department store and grabbed a small kit to put up her own Christmas tree and lights. They filled the living room of her Raleigh apartment with soft light. She let out a content sigh, sipped her coffee, and leaned her head against her hand.

  In the next room, a massive man snored on her bed. He was rightfully exhausted after what they’d gone through. Not only had he survived an ambush, but he’d driven the ten hours back to Raleigh while she’d slept in the passenger seat. There was no way of telling when he would wake, but she was content to wait.

  It wasn’t like she had a package to open on that Christmas morning. Fate had given her an early Christmas present. Claus was more than she ever could have asked for. Sure, he wasn’t a perfect man, but no one was perfect. To ask for perfection was to ask for something that would never work.

  She hungrily anticipated the grumpy mornings where they would fight over the coffee maker, the late nights where he would try to get her to put a riveting book down, and the long days where they would fall into each other’s arms and know the world was alright after all.

  There was a groaning sound in the bedroom. The bed creaked, and Claus appeared. He rubbed his eyes and blinked at the tree, at the lights strung around the room. A smirk appeared on the corner of his mouth. He shook his head and stalked toward her, gathering her into his arms after he sat.

  “When did you have the time to do all this?”

  “While you we
re snoring,” she answered. “Do you like it?”

  There was no gaudy green, red, or gold. Her version of Christmas was a rainbow celebration. It was all cheap and might not last them very long, needing to be replaced in a few years, but she wanted to celebrate the season that gave her a mate. Not the way her parents celebrated, with flashy dinners and extravagant parties, but in her pajamas with the man she loved.

  It was strange to think that in only a few days she’d fallen so thoroughly for Claus. She looked down at the ring on her finger, the family heirloom he’d stolen for her. Her coworkers would call her crazy for bringing home a man she met days ago. Some of them would try to talk her out of it.

  Holly knew that there was no greater love than the love of a mate. No one in the world would ever convince her otherwise.

  “Oh, man. Do you know what would make this even better?”

  Claus’s snoring paused as he stirred awake once more. She twisted in his arms to look at him. His eyes were heavy with sleep, but he looked content. Happier than she’d ever seen him despite the bruises that still marred his face.

  “We should get a shifter to take our engagement photos, so I can ride you and look like a frost queen.”

  He snorted. “You’re crazy, but I can live with that. How do you plan on explaining the photos to your human friends?”

  She grinned. “Photo editing software, of course.”

  It pleased her to know their life would never look like her family’s. She wasn’t going to have an extravagant Christmas wedding like everyone else. She wasn’t going to wear fancy gowns to late night dinners. This was their messy and complicated life, and she was going to love every second of it.

  Even the moments when he snored in her ear.

  A SNOW LEOPARD’S CHRISTMAS

  Emilia Hartley

  © Copyright 2018 by Blues Publishing. - All rights reserved.

  The contents of this book may not be reproduced, duplicated or transmitted without direct written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Legal Notice:

  This book is copyright protected. This is only for personal use. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  Chapter One

  Ellie found peace in her work. In the kitchen, she could combine flour, butter, and sugar and it became a fluffy cake each and every time. Her hands fell into the rhythmic motion she’d made thousands of times before, the whisk creating fluffy mounds of egg whites that would become the structure of the cake. Creamy, white fondant could be rolled flat and pearlescent balls of sugar could be placed with precision to create snowflake patterns. Everything was precise and predictable.

  Unlike Ellie’s everyday life.

  “Mom!” a voice screeched from above her.

  She felt her heart shudder and her eyes jerked upward. Her son, a boy no more than four years old with dark hair that reached his shoulders, hung from the door of an open cabinet like it was a vine and he was a wild man in the jungle. Ellie’s jaw clenched, and she darted around the counter to reach for her boy.

  The kid laughed and skittered away from her reach, hauling himself into the narrow space between the cupboards and the ceiling. Every year, she thought he would outgrow the narrow space. Like a cat, every year, he proved her wrong.

  Before Ellie could put her hands on her hips and find her Mom voice, another person rushed into her sanctuary. Ellie’s mother reached up and coaxed the boy off his high perch, releasing him onto the floor, where he let out a high-pitched laugh before scampering into the living room.

  It was her mother’s turn to place her hands on her hips and turn an expectant look toward Ellie. A week ago, her parents had called to tell her they were leaving Florida and coming up to the Adirondacks to spend Christmas with Ellie and their grandson. It was a warm gesture that had excited her. It wasn’t often Casper got to see his grandparents and her sitter had just unexpectedly called it quits.

  Well, it wasn’t that unexpected considering her rambunctious child. Ellie couldn’t blame the sitter after she’d come home to find the house a mess of flour, the stuff floating in the air like a hazard cloud and clinging to every surface in the kitchen. But, it made work difficult for the single mother. There was a wedding reception coming up and a custom cake that needed to be on the center table before the happy couple even begun their vows.

  With her parents present, it should have been a breeze, but Ellie found her work harder than ever. More than once, she’d wished for a space of her own. She wished for a commercial kitchen away from her house, with giant convection ovens and an abundance of silence.

  Instead, she was still corralling Casper when his wild streaks brought him into her kitchen. She was fending off her mother’s reprimands for rearing such an energetic child, trying her best to smile and nod as her mother listed off a number of options to tire the boy by the end of the day. Half the time, Ellie kept her mouth shut and avoided pointing out that she had little time for the tips her mother shared. The other half the time, Ellie gave her mother a look that said it all.

  See what I mean? The word tired means nothing to him.

  Tired meant a lot to Ellie. It meant collapsing on the couch while Casper tied her hair in knots or micro naps at the counter while her cake layers baked in the oven.

  Ellie’s mother rolled her eyes, clearly not impressed with her daughter’s attempt to be a mother. Ellie waited for her mother to turn away before sticking her tongue out at the woman, yanking it back just as her mother turned back.

  “Next year, he’ll be the right age for kindergarten.”

  Ellie nodded. Preschool had been an option this year, but despite her child’s energetic nature, she hadn’t been able to part with the boy just yet. She figured what was one year.

  “Your point is?”

  Her mother leveled a glare at her. “My point is the teachers won’t be able to handle him. The boy will be in trouble most of the time and that is an awful way to start his school career.”

  “School isn’t a career,” Ellie said, reaching for her bowl once more. The egg whites had deflated some, meaning they weren’t quite stiff enough.

  “It doesn’t matter what you call it. If Casper starts with a bad experience, each year it will get exponentially worse until he’s in juvenile detention.”

  “That’s a bit of a stretch,” Ellie said even as her stomach turned with worry. Bile burned the back of her throat when she even thought about her child in that kind of trouble. She couldn’t imagine the sweet boy doing anything so awful. “Casper is a good boy. I just have to get him checked for ADHD or something.”

  Putting her child on prescription pills was the last thing she wanted, but if she did identify the source of his energy, there might be coping mechanisms in place. Ones that worked better than her mother’s suggestion. If not, Ellie would just have to resort to building a jungle gym in her living room. Maybe that would keep Casper off her cupboards. One of these days, he would climb them and his growing weight would bring it all crashing to the floor.

  Her mother opened her mouth to say something, but she was cut off by a knock on the front door. Both of their heads shot up.

  “Were you expecting anyone?”

  Ellie shook her head. “It might be another order of Christmas cookies. No one knows how to bake anything that doesn’t come out of a tub or a tube anymore.”

  Ellie wiped her hands on a
stray kitchen towel and smoothed her hair, trying to tame the frizzed braids before she opened the door. Her mother retreated into the living room just as something crashed to the floor and Ellie’s father let loose a hearty laugh. Ellie cringed, her hand reaching for the doorknob.

  Her thoughts of whatever broke in the living room vanished when she laid eyes on the man on the other side of the door. He was clearly not there to order more cookies, she thought as her throat bobbed.

  Nolan McCaffery was not what she wanted for Christmas.

  ***

  Years ago, he’d passed through this very town. At first, it looked like just another small town, a place nestled in the Adirondack mountains of New York, shops catering to the tourists that came to see the small mountains. Yet, years ago, he’d experienced the night that had stayed with him no matter how far he strayed.

  And he strayed as far and wide as possible. His path had led him from one coast to another, brought him to a plane that had taken him overseas and back. But, the entire time, the single night he’d spent in the small town had filled his dreams. He remembered the smooth curves and rich laughter of a woman he’d laid with. Every now and then, he could smell her scent in the air like the ghost of a memory.

  She’d wafted honey and cinnamon, claiming she was a baker while downing shots of cinnamon whiskey and hard cider. To be honest, it was a miracle he remembered her at all. A part of him feared she wouldn’t remember him, especially as his feet led him up the steps to her front door.

  It was new, not the little apartment above the laundromat that smelled of fabric softener all the time. The door before him wore a Christmas wreath made of multi-colored ornaments, wound with frilly ribbon that scratched his knuckles as he reached forward to knock.

  “What do you think you’re doing here?” Ellie hissed, spinning to quietly shut the door behind her.