Page 32 of Rescued By Her Guardian

He was not about to lose her to fucking Jack Frost.

The rush of footsteps told him they’d walked into an ambush, but he didn’t care. He only cared that Ivy was hurt and he had to stop it.

As the people with him went to battle, he unsheathed the knife and raced forward.

Ivy’s upper body was covered with the dark purple glow and she’d gone limp in Frost’s hold. Letting the knife loose, he threw it at Frost’s chest. At the last second, Frost knocked it out of the air with a swipe of his magic, but it was just the distraction Knox needed. Grasping a handful of icy snow, he launched a snowball at Ivy’s head, knocking her free of Frost’s grasp. She fell to the ground in a heap, covered with snow and glowing purple.

Frost snarled. Knox touched his cat for speed and power, his claws glinting in the light. He swung and hit nothing.

Frost was gone, and the door to his lair was shut and had been cloaked by magic. He knew where it was, but he couldn’t see it.

Lifting Ivy into his arms, he growled at the strange scent coming from her, like sulfur and burnt wood.

“Alder! Marcus!” he yelled as he raced back toward Northernmost. “I need you!”

“We’ve got your back, let’s go!” Alder shouted, shoving an evil follower down and stabbing it in the heart with his blade.

He ran back to Northernmost as fast as he could, worry for his mate overriding everything else. Could he get her to safety? Could Santa help her?

Would she be okay?

Santa waited at the perimeter of Northernmost. Sound carried very well up at the top of the world, and he could hear the fighting in the darkness beyond, his people against his brother’s. He rubbed the space over his heart.

There had been so much death and destruction. So many lives lost.

His wife. Jack’s wife. Elves who’d once been his friends now serving his brother and filled with dark magic.

Jack would continue to come for him with the intention of killing him to take over the Well. It was something that Santa couldn’t allow. If Jack got control of the Well, life as they knew it would be over. Dark magic would rule.

Not only Jack and his followers, but Nightmare and his dark dream walkers and Grim and his dark Reapers. Well, Grim wasn’t dark, he was neutral, but he was friends with Jack and had a group of dark reapers who enjoyed wreaking havoc for evil’s sake. Their counterparts—Sandman and Mother Nature—did the best they could to keep the evil at bay, but it was a constant struggle. One that Santa knew very well.

Good magic kept the world in balance. Jack didn’t like balance, he liked evil and darkness.

His heart panged as he saw a purple glow in the distance that was drawing closer.

Oh, no. Frost had taken Ivy’s magic.

The process wasn’t fast, it took quite a while to drain an elf or other magical person of their good magic and replace it with his own. Once they were turned, they couldn’t be unturned, lost forever to the darkness that corrupted them from the inside out. No longer the friend and loved one they’d been, but a new creature loyal only to Jack and his darkness.

As Knox raced toward Northernmost with Ivy in his arms, Santa prepared to tell the male the bad news.

It was perhaps too late for his beloved mate.

It had taken them less than an hour to get to Frost’s lair in the first place, but now Knox was running as fast as he could. He was exhausted, but he wasn’t about to stop moving. Ivy was limp in his arms, still glowing with purple and smelling of sulfur and fire.

“Santa! Santa, please!” he yelled.

Next to him Alder and Marcus ran, never stopping or speaking, a steady presence that he desperately needed. If he fell, he knew they’d carry her forward, but he wasn’t about to let that happen.

“Damn it, no!” Marcus yelled.

“What?” Knox asked, his footsteps faltering for a heartbeat before he kept going.

“Followers!” Alder shouted, veering to the right. “We’ll take care of them. Get her to Santa!”

Knox doubled down, his feet numb in his boots and his face chapped from the cold wind.

Santa was standing near the perimeter. Behind him, Knox heard the sounds of fighting, but he didn’t stop. He reached the perimeter, but when he hit the barrier, he bounced back, landing hard on his ass.

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