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"Lass, he too was hidden in the human realm." She shook her head like I was missing something important. "But somehow the Mouse Queen pierced the veil and has taken Friedrich to her bosom."

Fritz? A tainted prince?

Would he betray me? Abso-fucking-lutely.

The DewDrop Fae Prince Falls in Love

Tau

Iknew the moment Mother Gingerbread told our ClaraMarie about the betrayal of her brother. Greedy bastard. It was spies from the Land of Flowers that had risked their lives to bring us the information about the Mouse Queen's liaison with the lost Prince.

I battled with my guilt over not telling her myself. Now her pain was mine to bear as well. The surge of angry power was quite the opposite of the luscious swell of her magic I'd felt when I kissed her there under the glowing Christmas trees. Yet, it had the same effect.

Even in her hurt, her beautiful soul could do no harm, and healed instead. Her magic sparkled across my wounds and bites. In an instant, my energy was restored, and with it, my lust.

"Whoa," Leb said. He looked at me and then his own arms and legs where the bites disappeared. He patted his side where the slash mark from the Konig's sword had cut him open. There was little more than a thin white line left. "Fuck, she is powerful."

"She is." Would Zucker and Nuss heal from that deluge of her magic too? Both my heart and my cock hoped so.

The sliding wooden door creaked along its track, opening to the room where we'd laid them both to recover while our Princess restored her powers before trying to heal again. Zucker filled the doorway, looking hale and hearty again.

I jumped up from my bench and wrapped my arms around him, holding him close, needing to feel his heartbeat against my own chest. "I thought we'd almost lost you."

He nodded and brushed his stubbled chin across mine. "Me too for a minute there. Where is she?"

"With Mother. She's just found out about her brother." Leb clapped Zucker on the shoulder, enough to make him stumble forward. "Ah, here's our Nuss again too. You need to quit dying on us. The Valkyries will become too fond of you one of these times and not send ya back."

Nuss leaned against the door frame, his one arm still limp against his side. But he gave us one of his lopsided grins. "Even they could not keep me from the Princess's side. If today has taught us anything it should be that we've got a hard battle ahead. We have to make sure she'd ready."

We wouldn't have as much time for training her as any of us had hoped. Even in the worst-case scenario, we thought we'd have at least the twelve days of Christmas for her to grow into her powers. And that meant we'd have to do something drastic to help her prepare. "Leb, how long do you think we have before the mouse army breaks through the stronghold's defenses?"

"A day, day and a half, maybe. Those little rats will chew right through each home here. Might as well poison every slab of gingerbread for them." He spat on the floor, disgusted with the thought of his home falling to the mice.

"But we have tonight?" My mind was laying out plans, examining them to see which was the best path forward and I kept coming back to the same one each time.

"Yes." He nodded. "Why, what is that strategic brain of yours thinking?"

Zucker sat on the edge of the table and pulled me to his side. He wrapped one hand around the back of my neck, and I leaned into him. After a close call like he'd just had, we both needed each other's touch, to feel the other was alive. "I know where your head is at. She isn't ready. The human world has instilled strange and strict values in her. You saw how uncomfortable she was even though she craved our touch, each of us."

Nuss came forward, stared across the room at her, but spoke for us. "She was set to marry a man there. I suspect he was a magician from the realm himself."

"Then, you're saying she may not even accept us as her consorts? That's bullshit. I can win her over with a landslide of orgasms." Leb always was a confident fucker. With each of his conquests, he'd always said he was just practicing to get good at bedding a woman so he was ready for the day we claimed our Princess.

It wasn't like any of us had stayed chaste for her. Well, except Nuss.

A grown Fae who couldn't fuck was only living a half-life. But once Zucker and I were with her, there would be only each other and her for the rest of our lives. Unless of course I could talk the pure and unspoiled captain of the Nutcracker Guard into fooling around between the three of us while Leb watched.

We'd all hung around the Gingerbread Kingdom long enough to know that when Vikings chose their bride, they dedicated themselves to one woman and one woman only, their entire lives. Leb had been the one to talk us into adopting his cultural norm of one woman with multiple husbands when I was sure the other five of us...four now would have torn each other apart to earn the right to become the consort of the lost princess.

Zucker shook his head and rolled his eyes at Leb. "You can't talk someone into letting you give them orgasm by giving them orgasms."

"Maybe you can't." Leb folded his arms and in that moment the four of us were all focused completely on sweet Clara.

Mother Gingerbread took her arm and we watched as she made Clara take a few deep breaths to calm down. I could still feel the heat rolling off her emotions and I did my best to push cooling thoughts back to her. Because we weren't yet bonded, I couldn't use my gifts to the full extent, but she still seemed to feel my calming presence and her powers ebbed and waned until she was breathing normally again.

Leb rocked from foot to foot. "It's killing me to sit and do nothing. I'm going to march over there in a minute and throw her over my shoulder and--"

Zucker held up his hand. "She'll come to us when she's ready. She won't be bullied into being with any of us."

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