Page 8 of Witch's Bells and Mistletoe

Even if it weren’t a normal part of our past, it wouldn’t have changed anything. I don’t need to mate with a dragoness to be happy. But Elis, and other males like him, will never understand why I’m happy with Katherine. Nor will they understand why I will never so much as touch the jewel with my bare hand because I don’t wish for any other but her. It is that obstinance, however, that makes me burn with anger and resentment that I can’t simply enjoy it in peace.

I’m not a fool. I know that he seeks to ruin my courtship of Katherine for his own ends because he thinks that will persuade me to work harder and faster. Elis is a fool if he thinks that will do anything but the opposite. If I lose Katherine… The idea doesn’t bear thinking about other than to acknowledge that that I would sink down into depression and likely find a cave to hole up in for a century or so and leave Elis to search for the damn mating jewel on his own.

As if sensing the dark direction of my thoughts, Katherine’s head tips back and she gives me a warm smile. It is rare to see her so happy. Her smiles are often strained with stress or because she has a great many things weighing on her mind. This carefree, sweet smile is such a rarity that I tuck it close to my heart with the memory of the way she laughed and looked at me during the Witch’s Ball. She has something of that look on her face now as the bus comes to a stop, and she stands eagerly and casts me a come-hither smile as she steps off of the bus and down into the snow.

I follow her with a smile on my face, my blood rushing hotly through me as if I were a young dragon again, trying out both my wings and pricks away from the parental nest.

The snow chills me the moment I join her. Despite hailing from a northern climate, none of my kin enjoyed snow, and me perhaps least of all. With our hotter core temperatures, the touch of snow sends a sharp prickle through my skin that has me shivering as I wrap my scarf around my neck. Katherine’s smile widens as she watches me dig out my gloves, her eyes dancing with a soft amusement that’s usually reserved for the coven’s young ones. I gather I must look a sight if she is regarding me with that expression, and I give her a sheepish smile in turn—as much as a dragon can manage.

“I’m afraid snow is not one of my favorite things,” I explain, and the corners of her eyes crinkle in response as she laughs softly.

“Then why pick a ski resort to hold your super-secret meeting? Why not Hawaii?”

I shrug. “Perhaps because no one would expect dragons of my clan to meet somewhere like this. It is a force of habit to hide,” I admit.

“And a wise one,” Elis interjects as he arrives at my side with a disgruntled glower. The look he gives my female is juvenile and downright pissy, however. “As for your question, I chose this spot for exactly those reasons. A dragon who trusts humans is a dragon who doesn’t enjoy the full length of their lifespan.”

Katherine’s lips curl in response, though her expression is otherwise neutral as she regards him. “Well, I can see that the young lady you were flirting with dodged a bullet with you then. I bet you don’t even cuddle with your bed partners after sex so not to risk being stabbed somewhere sensitive.”

Elis’s lips tighten with disapproval. “I’m relieved that the plight of our species over the centuries is amusing to you.”

I growl low in my throat, warning him to not take it too far. While it is true that our kind has suffered considerably and had our lives shortened even with hiding, none of this was Katherine’s fault—nor did it make her observations untrue. There was something quite hypocritical in the way my cousin and many of our kin slaked their pleasure with humans whom they wouldn’t trust to remain for even a moment longer in the same bed with them. It wasn’t flattering, but it wasn’t untrue.

I will allow them to verbally spar so long as it amuses my female to engage with him—gods know that it gets me hard watching her tongue in action. But the moment he steps over the line and says something to hurt her, I’m going to hand him his ass wrapped with a festive bow.

“Not at all,” Katherine returns, her eyebrow cocking at him in challenge. “I just find it funny that you are here flashing scales, horns, and tail—and berating Adeon for looking entirely human and hiding his dragon nature—and yet you’re behaving as if you are Secret Squirrel.”

A perplexed look crosses my cousin’s face and the male cuts a questioning glance in my direction, to which I shrug. We both look over to her expectantly, and my adorable female huffs. Crossing her arms over her gods’ blessed cleavage, though it is hidden beneath her sheepskin coat and scarf, she gives us both a disgusted look.

“Oh, for gods’ sake, don’t look at me that way. I’m not that old. That show was actually quite old when I was a child, but the reference seemed to fit in this case. The point remains—you aren’t doing anything to actively lay low other than go through the routine and talk shit about the same humans you fuck. Adeon is at least a gentleman, for the most part,” she amends with a wry chuckle that makes my heart fill with the warmth of dragon fire and other parts of my body come to life further. “He is at very least not a complete hypocrite and is here because he wants to be, whereas you are just tagging along to babysit and ruin our fun. I have to accept that, but I will insist that if you are determined to be our shadow you can at least keep your running commentary inside your head so that we can enjoy ourselves.”

With her decree dropped with the authority of a queen, she turns away—completely missing the dark look on the male’s face or the way it turns purple when I ram my elbow into his gut to check him. Instead, she breathes deeply from the cold mountain air and appears to be trying to study everything on the street at once as the other guests pass us and make their way down the cheerfully decorated lanes.

And they are beautiful. I can immediately see the appeal this has for her and why it was suggested when I asked the concierge what their guests enjoyed doing. The roads are small with neat little sidewalks that are shoveled free of snow. There are old metal street lamps wound with shimmering garlands that catch the snow and reflect the little bit of light they catch to make them sparkle, and patterns everywhere of red, green, and gold, and in some spots silver and blue. The latter is fine, but the red and gold appeal to me especially. Giant cheerful candy canes and enlarged plastic models of various candies that humans enjoy this time of the year frame shopfronts along with more of that mistletoe. Mistletoe everywhere, in shocking amounts.

I tip my head in confusion as I regard it. That is an unusually large amount of mistletoe. Sure, there is plenty of holly that is mingled among it, but the amount of mistletoe is shocking—unless the humans of this village are truly trying to encourage visitors to kiss everywhere they go. If so, then that seemed to be the aim of the hotel as well. I hadn’t been able to miss all the small clusters and even planned on luring Katherine beneath one once Elis wasn’t hovering and spoiling the mood.

It still strikes me as strange, but suddenly it matters little to me when she spins toward me with a look of pure delight on her face. It steals my breath and makes my chest feel far too tight. I’m still struck with mute wonder when she closes the space between us and loops her arm with mine as if we are just another one of the many couples walking through the village.

She rubs a hand on my arm that somehow manages to send fire curling through me with the contact despite the material separating us and nods to a nearby shop before giving me an impish look that makes my toes curl in my boots. Or perhaps it is the way the snow clings to her hair and eyelashes in such a manner that makes her look like an frost fairy. Assuredly one would steal her away and try to claim her if they caught so much as a glimpse of her.

“Shall we?” she murmurs softly as she angles her head to a display down the road that has already drawn a small crowd around what looks like a labyrinth of images carved from ice. “Small towns always put on the best displays, and then there is the shopping to be done.”

Behind me Elis groans, and I chuckle wickedly as I hug Katherine closer to me. “Of course, it would be a delight. Naturally, after walking so close to all that ice, you will wish to stop at the café for a moment before we continue.”

She makes a little sound of pleasure that makes my cocks jerk attentively with a sharp twitch. Leaning her head back, she gives me a contented smile. “You know me so well. It never ceases to surprise me that you would be the one.”

I feel a furious knot of emotion lodge itself in my throat. Pleasure at her sweet recognition, but also incredible sadness that it took one lonely dragon for anyone to take the time to get to know the very things she wanted and needed. How lonely my Katherine has been, perhaps even more than I since dragons tend to be more solitary among their kind aside from their mates and nestlings. Yet she was alone even surrounded by all her kin and had still been alone as she bent herself to the task of caring for them—a queen loved by her family and yet forever set apart by necessity.

How I wish I had found her so much sooner and had decades more of bringing such a smile and look of wonder to her face.

Ah, my sweet Katherine, I have so much lost time to make up for.

Chapter 7

KATHERINE

The village is incredible. The ice sculpture competition is remarkable. I’ve seen similar attempts back home, but the weather didn’t always cooperate very well for such things. Here, however, it’s another story altogether. This is a world of ice and snow, and if I pause in surprise as I spy the furry pelt of a frost fairy peek out from behind one of the sculptures to blow a blistering breath along a perfectly cut plane, I think it’s perfectly warranted. The frost fairy is pale gray and covered nearly everywhere with pale silvery fur, including its long fluffy tail and its long, pointed ears tufted with fur like a lynx. The fur thickens like a mane around a furless face with a slightly elven look, a nose that is a bit too large and broad and a mouth full of wicked teeth as it grins.

---