Page 6 of Christmas with a Cursed Werewolf

Before I can get the words “Why bother?” out of my mouth, Nolan rushes over to me, his arms barely managing to carry agarland of tangled lights. “We’re making it better!” he exclaims, eyes wide, reflecting more enthusiasm than I have the energy to smother right now. His small arms shove the coils of wire at me, and I just catch them before they hit the ground.

“Better?” The word drips from my tongue, heavy with skepticism, but the kid just grins anyway, oblivious to my tone.

Giselle, endless in her serenity, straightens from wherever she’d been bent over. “Sometimes it’s worth trying,” she says carefully—as if the world hasn’t already tried to bleed me out. Whatever retort I have dies on my tongue under her quietly knowing gaze.

“Fine,” I growl, more to myself than to Nolan, who beams like he’s just moved a mountain.

Briar bites back a smile as she reaches for her box of ornaments. There’s a hint of a challenge in her eyes. She likes that she’s dragged me into this.

I hate that too.

I stand awkwardly off to the side while the others work on transforming the grand hall through sheer force of will. Giselle instructs Nolan on where to hang sparkly snowflakes, her voice soft and warm. It's almost charming, if you ignore the fact that nothing here lasts long, not in this place, not under this curse. But they don't seem to see it—the way the cold creeps in despite the fire in the hearth, the way the magic slips through the cracks the way blood seeps from a fresh wound.

Briar comes up beside me, untangling a string of lights with the casual grace of someone who shouldn't be comfortable here, in this ruin masquerading as a home. "It's not that bad, you know. Just needs a little attention," she says as if she's talking about more than the tree.

I glance down at her, my hands holding the dozen knots that once used to be a strand of lights. “Attention won’t fix what’sbroken here.” Every word is delivered with just enough force to remind her that she’s not cracking through. Not today.

"Maybe." She shrugs, still working on her half of the disaster. “But we could try. Can’t hurt to make things… better, even for a moment.”

Her optimism grates against me like iron nails on stone. She doesn’t understand. That’s the poison in all this. It doesn’t matter what might flicker to life for the evening; it’s all rotting from the inside, same as the castle’s walls. Same as me.

Yet in a moment of weakness—or insanity—I find myself kneeling next to her, methodically working through the tangles. The lights are cold to the touch. Everything is cold now.

When I’ve barely made a dent, Briar taps my hand lightly. The touch jolts, small as it is, but electricity snakes up my wrist all the same. For a second, her fingers linger just there. Too close.

"This kind of thing isn’t usually this hard. But maybe..." She smiles, the corners of her mouth curving upwards in something far too gentle for my current mood.

I release the lights abruptly. “If you insist on fixing whatever pointless wreck this is, do it right," I mutter, passing her the bundle and rising to my feet. The odd warmth stirring within me is more unsettling than the cold that refuses to leave my soul.

Nolan’s laugh echoes across the room, the boy climbing a ladder to drape tinsel on the tree's higher branches. He teeters slightly, and both Giselle and I lurch to steady him. But Briar is closer—she’s there in a heartbeat, her hands ready if he needs catching. She flashes me a look, a blend of gratitude and… something else.

Damn it, I shouldn’t have looked.

The tree begins to take shape—a shadow of something festive, something alive that once stood proud in this cursed hall. For the briefest moment, I catch a flicker of warmth, a tinypulse of light from the Christmas lights wrapped around Briar’s wrist. I blink, and the magic retreats, like always. Too fleeting to matter—too false to mean anything.

But just long enough for me to notice. Longer than it should’ve been.

"Do you even celebrate Christmas?” Briar’s voice drifts up from where she’s kneeling, sorting through a box of sad ornaments, some chipped, some broken.

I take a slow breath. The innocent question feels like a dart in my back. "Not lately." I hadn’t meant to sound so curt, or maybe I had. Either way, her fingers still for a split second before she continues pulling ornaments from the box.

“So, growing up, then? What was that like?” Her tone isn’t pushy, and I can tell she’s trying to draw me out. God knows why.

"Before the curse?" The words are surprisingly bitter, even to my own ears. I silence myself for a moment with the weight of that. Years ago… no, decades now… there was laughter, warmth. My parents' most elaborate celebrations were held right here in this hall. But what does it matter now? That boy is gone.

Gone with the part of me that could still feel joy.

“I remember,” I finally answer, surprising even myself. “Once—Rurik... my brother—he... convinced the staff that decorating wasn’t enough. We needed to make it perfect by cutting down our own tree.” Ghosts of half-remembered scenes filter through my mind. The laughter. The cold—so much like now—but bearable then. “Rurik got stuck halfway up a tree, covered in sap.” I can’t help the faint smirk that forms, not when I picture my brother, back when he was still someone worth saving.

Before everything went straight to hell.

When I glance at her, Briar is smiling softly, like she can picture the whole thing. “That sounds... wonderful.”

I shrug, immediately regretting the openness. That life is dead now, burned to nothing. I remember the sounds of cracking bone, the curses on our family... the sickening wrongness that took everything. And I can never have it back.

Too much truth rests between us. Too many dangerous emotions want to claw their way past my carefully erected walls. But Briar’s still smiling, as if believing there’s more to find here, as if the smile wasn’t ripped from me along with everything good, years ago—no,agesago.

I say nothing else, turning back to the tree, but I can feel her watching me. Waiting.

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