Page 86 of Never Kiss a Krampus
“It’s a piece of the frost I used to destroy the darkness,” he said, his tone uncharacteristically soft. “I infused it with warmth. As a reminder that even the coldest winter can contain a spark of heat.”
I looked up at him, my vision blurry with tears. “It’s the most beautiful thing anyone has ever given me. Put it on me?”
He lifted the necklace and my hair away from my neck, his claws carefully avoiding my skin. As he fastened the clasp, the crystal touched my skin and a wave of warmth spread through me. Not a burning heat, but a gentle, constant glow of contentment.
“You will always carry a piece of me with you,” he murmured, his lips brushing against the nape of my neck. I shivered as he kissed the sensitive skin.
“You make it very hard to focus on accounting,” I whispered as he gently bit the curve of my shoulder, and he turned me around to face him, his expression serious. “This is not the only gift, little light.”
“There’s more?”
“The Good Deeds Extravaganza didn’t just save me,” he said, a slow, smile spreading across his face. “It saved your shop. Your bills are paid.”
“What?” I stared at him, certain I hadn’t heard him correctly.
“All of them. The mortgage. The past due bills. Everything. The town’s collective joy, when channeled through your… enthusiastic marketing… manifested as something more than just a magical transference. It manifested as prosperity.”
I just stared at him, my mind trying to process the magnitude of what he was saying. I wasn’t just getting a reprieve. I was free.
“So I don’t have to go to the bank?”
“No. You can take that ridiculously festive outfit and go start your pancake breakfast.”
Tears of pure joy streamed down my face. I launched myself at him, wrapping my arms around his neck and burying my face in the warm fur of his chest. “I love you,” I whispered, the words muffled against him.
“I love you too,” he rumbled, his arms tightening around me. “Now, let’s go feed your town. I believe there’s a Community Carol of Carbohydrates that needs organizing.”
EPILOGUE
The last caroler’s voice faded into the winter night.
I locked the door behind Mrs. Henderson, who clutched a hand-knitted scarf I’d wrapped for her grandson, and sagged against the frame. The shop glittered around me—tinsel cascading from every surface, ornaments catching the fairy lights, wreaths hung at perfectly imperfect angles. Evidence of controlled chaos. My controlled chaos.
Two years running. We actually pulled it off again.
The second annual Good Deeds Extravaganza had been even bigger than the first. More people. More laughter. More cookies consumed than should be humanly possible. My feet ached in a way that suggested I’d paced the entire length of Main Street at least seventeen times, and there was frosting in my hair. Again. Somehow, I always ended up with frosting in my hair.
But the shop was saved. The whole block was thriving. Mr. Grinchly’s proposed development had collapsed spectacularly after his departure. The empty lot where his office had been nowhoused a community garden that somehow stayed green even in December.
Magic had a funny way of settling into places it liked.
I climbed the stairs to the apartment, each step a small triumph of will over exhausted muscles. The sounds of the celebration had faded hours ago, but warmth lingered in the walls—the kind that came from genuine joy, not just central heating.
The apartment door swung open before I reached it.
Bastian sat on the couch in his human glamour, all sharp cheekbones and dark hair that fell just so across his forehead. Still unfairly handsome. Still made my heart do that stupid flip-flop thing. But it wasn’t his face that stopped me in the doorway.
It was the tiny bundle cradled against his chest.
Our daughter.
Three months old, with downy dark hair that refused to lie flat and eyes that shifted between deep amber and warm brown depending on the light. She’d inherited my nose, thank goodness, but her father’s intensity. Even now, fighting sleep, she studied the world with an expression far too serious for someone who couldn’t yet sit up on her own.
Bastian’s large hand spanned her entire back, holding her with the kind of infinite patience that had surprised everyone but me. I’d known. From the moment he’d caught me that first time, pulled me against his chest with those too-sharp claws so carefully controlled—I’d known he had gentleness in him. He’d just forgotten how to use it for anything but judgment.
“She watched the whole thing,” he said, his human voice still carrying that faint old-world accent that made ordinary wordssound like pronouncements. “Didn’t cry once. Just stared at all those people with those enormous eyes.”
I crossed to them, unable to resist pressing a kiss to the top of her head. She smelled like baby powder and that indefinable sweetness unique to infants. “She’s her father’s daughter. Judging everyone already.”
