Page 88 of Never Kiss a Krampus
“Change,” I said.
He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me.” I stepped back, crossing my arms. “Change. I want to see you. The real you.”
Something shifted in his expression. Hunger flickered across his features, turning his human eyes molten. “Noelle?—”
“Please.”
One word. But it carried all those nights when he’d stayed carefully glamoured, worried that his true form would frighten our daughter. Worried that the horns and claws and inhuman features that marked him as other would somehow damage the perfect little life we’d created.
I’d tried telling him she didn’t care. That babies loved unconditionally. That she reached for him just as eagerly whether he had two legs or hooves, soft skin or dark fur.
But Bastian had spent centuries being feared. Old habits died hard. Even for immortal beings bound by love and stubbornness to a woman who refused to let him hide.
“You’re certain?” His voice had already dropped, taking on that resonant quality that vibrated through my bones.
“I’m certain I want my husband back.” I tilted my head towards the nursery door. “She’s asleep. And you’ve been wearing that face all day. You must be exhausted.”
Maintaining the glamour took energy. Not much—he’d had centuries of practice—but enough that I could see the tension in his shoulders by evening. The slight tightness around his eyes. Small tells that most people wouldn’t notice.
I noticed everything about him.
He reached for me, cupping my face between his too-warm palms. “You realize what you’re asking for.”
“Mmm. My Christmas present?”
“Your Christmas punishment.”
Heat coiled low in my belly. “Even better.”
His laugh was dark velvet and distant thunder. “You’re incorrigible.”
“You love it.”
“Against all reason and ancient wisdom.” He leaned down, pressing his forehead to mine. “Yes.”
The air shimmered.
Magic poured through the room like invisible water, raising goosebumps along my arms and making the star-lights flicker. It smelled of winter forests and cinnamon, of old power and older promises. The glamour didn’t so much fade as unravel, revealing the truth beneath layer by careful layer.
His hair lengthened, darkening from human brown to something closer to midnight. Fur sprouted along the backs of his hands, spreading up his arms in patterns I’d traced a hundred times. His features sharpened, became more angular, more feral. Dangerous in a way that should have terrified me but only made my pulse quicken.
Horns curved up from his forehead, dark and wickedly elegant.
His body expanded, growing taller and broader until he had to duck slightly to avoid the ceiling. Muscles rippled under fur andleather as he rolled his shoulders, working out the kinks of being compressed into human form for too long.
Chains jangled softly at his belt.
Those damn chains. The sound still did things to me. Made my breath catch. Made me remember the first time I’d heard them in my attic, the terror and inexplicable thrill of encountering something ancient and powerful and completely beyond my understanding.
Now they just meant home.
His eyes—amber and burning with an inner fire—locked onto mine. His tail flicked behind him, betraying eagerness despite his otherwise controlled expression.
“Better?” The word rumbled from a chest that could never pass for human.
I reached up, running my fingers along the curve of one horn. Warm. Ridged. Powerful. “Perfect.”
