Page 34 of An Avalanche Hero Christmas

Lance could feel his anger growing.

“Weak,” Boris said with a smirk. His green eyes bored into Lance, daring him to attack again. “And foolish. All you have done is sacrifice yourself. And for what? One of thefae?”

“She doesn’t deserve to die,” Lance snarled.

“And who gets to decide that?” the hunter replied evenly. “You?”

Lance struck again. This time, Boris didn’t dodge but launched an attack of his own. Lance had barely enough time to dodge the blade. He parried the attack, struggling to maintain his balance, a single thought repeating itself in his mind:Mallory must not die.

For her to survive, Boris had to die.

There was no way around it, Lance realized, as he and his opponent continued to battle, slashing and stabbing at each other while Mallory watched in horror. As long as the Fae Hunter was alive, his targets were in mortal peril. If he ceased to exist, everyone was safe. Not just Lance and Mallory, but hundreds, maybe thousands of other fae scattered across FrostMountain. For them to be free, for them to live without fear of being murdered, the hunter had to go.

And that was where the problem lay.

Lance ducked again, dodging a strike that would have taken his head clean off his shoulders. He swept his blade in an arc, but Boris was quicker, leaping backward before Lance could hit him. The hunter delivered a swift kick to Lance’s chest, sending him crashing into the snow.

“No!” he heard Mallory cry.

Lance’s weapon tumbled out of his grip. Before he could reach for it, a heavy boot came down onto his arm, sending a throb of pain to his shoulder. He grunted.

Boris climbed atop Lance, straddling him, and Lance felt his chest constrict. As he struggled to draw a breath, the Fae Hunter lifted his weapons: twin blades that gleamed in the morning sun held just above the head of the man who would end his life—the last image he would ever see.

“If only you’d had the sense to stay out of my way,” Boris said.

He lifted the blades a little higher.

And then he froze.

Lance sucked in a deep breath, following the man’s surprised gaze. Protruding from Boris’ chest, glistening with his blood, was a silver blade. One of Lance’s. And standing behind the man was Mallory. She had a wild look in her eyes, her hair swept across her face, and she was panting like she’d just jogged up the mountain.

Boris’s green eyes widened. The blades slipped from his hands and landed in the snow on both sides of Lance’s head. The Fae Hunter shuddered and fell onto his side, his fingers clawing at the weapon buried in his back.

“No…” he muttered. “No…”

A few seconds later, he was perfectly still, his eyes unblinking.

Lance’s gaze slowly drifted back to Mallory, who was still panting.

“Is he dead?” she asked. “I was aiming between his shoulder blades, figured I could try to puncture a lung or something—oh!”

Lance had shot to his feet and wrapped her in a tight hug. She was stiff against him for a moment. Then, slowly, almost tentatively, she put her arms around him.

“Thank you,” she said. “You saved my life.”

“And you saved mine,” he told her. A grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. “We’d both be dead if it weren’t for each other, the way I see it. A good reason to stick together.”

Boris was dead. If the body weren’t lying in the snow next to them, Lance wouldn’t have believed it. The irony of the situation didn’t escape him. The Fae Hunter had died at the hands of none other than his prey.

Mallory pulled away all of a sudden, her eyes brimming with tears. “I’m really sorry, Lance. I shouldn’t have left the cave. I guess I just panicked.”

So she’d left the cave on her own. No wonder he was still alive. “Panicked?”

She nodded. “I didn’t want you to get hurt because of me anymore. You’ve done so much already, risking your life over these past couple of weeks. All to protect me. I…I didn’t want you to feel like you were going through the same thing as with…you know.”

Lance frowned. “You mean Julia?”

Her cheeks turned crimson.

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