The Alien Reindeer’s Wish

A Winter Starr

*

Starr Huntress

Thanika Hearth

Copyright © 2019 Thanika Hearth

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

The following contains adult themes. All characters are aged 18 or over.

Are you a STARR HUNTRESS?

Do you love to read sci fi romance about strong, independent women and the sexy alien males who love them?

Starr Huntress is a coalition of the brightest Starrs in romance banding together to explore uncharted territories.

If you like your men horny - maybe literally - and you’re equal opportunity skin color - because who doesn’t love a guy with blue or green skin? - then join us as we dive into swashbuckling space adventure, timeless romance, and lush alien landscapes.

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Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Chapter One

Elle

“Ma’am,” a tired female voice rings out from above me as I sit, hunched over in my cramped seat. I’m desperately trying to get the sentence out of my head and onto my phone before I lose my flow. “Ma’am?”

“Mm,” I say, just typing out the final words. “Sorry, sorry. One second.” Dammit. I had a good alliteration that was really going to drive my point home. What was it? I—

“Ma’am, you really need to turn off your phone and buckle your seatbelt.”

But I don’t look up until my best friend in the world elbows me in the ribs. I yelp, glancing at her to my right and then sheepishly up at the flight attendant. “So sorry,” I say, and dare to grin up at her. She looks to be fighting the urge to roll her beautiful eyes at me, and instead gives me a tight smile and a nod as I buckle up.

I watch as she makes her way down the rest of the aisle, craning my neck to make sure she isn’t turning back, and then I unlock my phone again. Liara makes a noise of genuine irritation, and I hold up one finger. “OK, and … done!”

I shut it and let out a breath. “Now our vacation can begin,” I assure her. Liara is in full winter break mode already, with a fur-lined white parka and a thick book complete with a cute illustration of ice skaters on the cover.

“Elle, I’m serious. You have to promise me this is going to be an actual vacation,” she says, raising her eyebrows as she pushes her sunglasses off her nose and onto the top of her head. Liara is a knockout, honestly, with caramel curls that shine in the bright airplane lighting and permanently skeptical green eyes. I reach my hand back instinctively to check my own dark-blonde ponytail is still intact, and then lean back into my own seat.

“I promise,” I mumble, but my fingers are itching. I have the perfect line in mind for the piece I’m working on, and I don’t want to lose it. It’s the perfect combination of snappy and insightful! I worked really hard to get to where I am, working for this very prestigious news site, and I am more than ready to get started on gripping exposés and thrilling reveals for them.

Except Liara has this idea that we’re going to spend all weekend skiing in this idyllic Christmas-themed mountain town, doing nothing but hooking up with handsome men and then spilling the details over hot cider by the fireplace. It sounds fun, really it does, but the hooking up thing is not my usual MO. Neither is Christmas. I’ve never skied before, and honestly? I’m really not a fan of the snow, either.

Other than that, of course I’m willing to try my hardest to have a great time. It’s been a while since I’ve had some quality time with my college bestie, and I can’t wait for the promised fireplace gossip sessions.

“You really think you’ll find your soulmate in Nowhere, Colorado?” I ask as the airport begins to move backwards through the little windows.

A big smile spreads over Liara’s face as she flips her book open to her bookmark. “Soulmates. Honestly, Elle. I just think you need a little fun!”

I grip the seat as we take off, feeling that familiar onslaught of anxiety as we lift into the open blue sky — flying really is completely impossible, and yet no one seems to care? Everyone else on the flight is sitting perfectly still, watching their screens or reading a book or chatting away. I sink down into my seat, trying to stay calm as we rise higher and higher and higher. Tons of steel filled with dozens of human beings.

Then my eyes snap open again as something about my piece clicks together in my mind. An angle I hadn’t yet thought of! I pull my notebook out of my handbag, trying to ignore that my heart is in my throat — why did I agree to flying and not insist on driving? It’s only an extra … two weeks — and grab a pen.

Of course, I cast a side eye to Liara, who luckily is reading her book still, sipping on some water and enjoying the terrifying hellride that is takeoff. She isn’t suspicious at all.

‘The Monster of Seven Pines’, I write at the top of the page, and underline it. ‘Does something sinister lurk in the heart of this charming Christmas village?’ I cross out ‘sinister’ and try out ‘murderous’. Is that better?

I dare a peek out the window, and bite back my grin of excitement, despite my hatred of flying. This piece will probably make or break a career in shock journalism for me on this website. A terrifying monster terrorizing a charming ski resort at Christmastime? I can hardly think of something more fun to write about, and my new bosses over at the incredibly popular PressFeed couldn’t be more excited.

And I haven’t lied to Liara, not really. All I have to do is squeeze in some interviews, stake out the monster’s supposed hunting grounds, and get a couple of drafts written.

Sorry, Liara, I think. I’m sure I’ll have time for fun when I’m finished.

Chapter Two

Braxen

I lie in wait between the thick trunks of the evergreen pines. Snow makes it up to all four of my golden ankles, and my tail twitches and swishes in anticipation, head bowed low.

Above me stretches the long and winding ski slope, nicknamed the Seventh Pine by the locals to hint at its ultimate danger. The ‘final boss’ of the Seven Pines ski trails: the Seventh Pine.

These unsuspecting people taking off from the top and whooping all the way down? They have no idea. They know it’s a difficult slope to ski, but they don’t know the full truth. They don’t know exactly why there are rumors floating around that it should get shut down. These casual skiers only know that it’s the hardest slope. A famously difficult course.

And humans are so weird about that kind of thing. As soon as they learn something is the biggest, the hardest, the tallest, they can’t just appreciate it, oh no. They have to find a way to conquer it. Going to see famous landmarks all over their planet isn’t quite good enough — they have to climb to the top and stand on it before they’re satisfied, like some barglth perched proudly atop its eggs.

Here they come, cheering and gliding down the previously pristine white track, arcing and curving and spraying snow across the trees to either side.

They have no idea what’s to come. No idea why they should have stayed home.

I tense my legs and then leap out from the cover of the pine trees, flashing my teeth and leveling my gaze on the two skiers. I see my light reflect dazzlingly from their neon blue and orange ski outfits and they both hurry to slow down, screaming surprise and confusion. The man points to my right and they take a hurried detour down the side of the slope. A shortcut to the bottom, in fact. One that no one ever sees if I’m not here to push them to the side and into it.

They will take the lift back up to the top, and probably go home to tell their tale to anyone who will listen — about how the Seventh Pine ski slope is haunted, or terrorized, by a strange golden monster. Shapeless, distorted. ‘Or maybe … did it look like … a deer to you too?’

I lower the glare coming from my short golden fur, and toss my antlers as I trot back to the series of deep caverns in the mountainside where I make my home. I shift into a human form with only the slightest hint of a golden hue, and pull on clothes to protect my strangely hairless skin from the bite of Earth’s winds.

I feel the tumble and ache deep inside my soul as outside the avalanche begins, throwing thick blankets of snow down the ski slope and enveloping all life that dared set foot on the slope. Just on cue, just as I predicted. Those neon-clad humans are probably safely on the ski lift now.

I’ve done everything I can to stop people from skiing here, disguised as a human. I’ve gone to the mayor of Seven Pines, but he waved me off. I’ve contacted the media, but nobody listened.

Seventh Pine trail is steep, exhilarating, and a total tourist trap for this little mountain town. Nothing else I’ve tried has worked, and so whenever I feel the avalanche coming, rumbling in my soul, I head straight for the slope and chase and herd any humans down the shortcut before it hits.

Slowly, slowly, people might just stop traveling far and wide to ski on the most dangerous slope in the tri-state area. It is a desire of mine that humans will stop trying to tackle or best the most insanely difficult things their beautiful planet has to offer. Soon, people will figure this particular endeavor is just not worth it. These maddening, ego-ridden, silly bipedals. Then maybe my job here will be done.

The half-repaired device to my side shows no sign of movement, though. If I do enough good deeds, save enough lives, at my own cost, maybe that will finally do it. The device will fill with the right flavor of psychic energy. I will be able to power up a communicator with it, and my people can find me and take me home.

Maybe one day.

Chapter Three

Elle

I have to admit: the cabin we have rented for our trip is so completely gorgeous that I am at a total loss for words.

It’s a log cabin on stilts, essentially, as it sits only partially on a slope, with long sturdy beams attaching the front porch and steps to a lower level. All around are beautiful evergreen trees dusted with light, ever-falling snowflakes. Beyond the trees, and close enough to hear if I strain my ears, is the merry bustle of the Christmas-themed town.

I have no idea what Seven Pines is like the other ten months out of the year, but November and December are almost always booked solid because of its adorable Christmas fair and famous ski slopes. The skiing, I think, I may try to get out of. If I do have spare time on this vacation, I’d rather spend it catching up with Liara over hot drinks or reading a book and watching the snow outside.

“Oh my glur—!” Liara screams, the last word coming out as a guttural squawk as she bounces up and down and ‘pafs’ her gloved hands together. “This is crazy, this is crazy! A whole cabin to ourselves? Kinda last minute? How did you swing it?” She whacks at my shoulder and I give a coy shrug.

“Maybe I have connections in high places,” I tease. “You don’t know everything about me.” In fact, when my employers heard about sighting upon sighting of a ‘monster’ here, they spared no expense in booking me a place and sending me over here. There’s no way I can tell her that. She’s happy; isn’t that a good thing?

She laughs and then squeals with glee as she runs up the steps and peers over the railing to the back yard. Then she turns around, pink in the face, and just about faints dead down the stairs.

“What is it?” I ask, hauling my bag from the curb and up the steps behind her. “Is there something—”

We appear to have approached from the back of the place. There on the front driveway, the head of a snow-dappled cobblestone path headed through the pine forest, stands the most glorious shining red carriage I’ve ever seen. At the front, a young guy with a lazy grin and a woolly hat sits, holding the reins. And in front of him? Two gorgeous little reindeer, tossing their heads and eyeing us as we approach.

“What’s happening right now?” Liara just about screams. The guy gives a chuckle.

“You’re staying here at the Red Sleigh Lodge, right? Well, the owner runs sleigh rides through the forest. Everyone who rents the place out gets a free ride. You guys put your bags away and hop in, yeah?” He’s chewing a little loudly on some gum, and really eyeing Liara up. I glance at her and see she’s narrowed her eyes in a smile so sultry that I’m almost caught up in its waves of power.

I want to nudge her and whisper, ‘Really? The very first guy we clap eyes on?’ but actually he is sort of cute in a naive and skinny kind of way. And this might be a better out than any I could have planned myself.

“You take this one solo,” I say to her. “I’m honestly really looking forward to turning on the fire and taking a nap.”

She breaks eye contact with sleigh guy and her face turns confused and then thoughtful. “Uh, you sure? It’s reindeer. It’s a sleigh ride with reindeer.”

I laugh. “You know I get travel sick anyway. I’m really looking forward to some tea and a rest.”

“Looks like it’ll just be me!” Liara said, leaning in and giving me a sloppy kiss on the cheek. I laugh and wipe it away with my glove as my best friend hands me her bags and saunters up to the sleigh guy, allowing him to help her up into the seat. “On Donner, on Blitzen!” she cries, throwing her arms up into the air.

“Never heard that before,” the sleigh guy jokes. He gives me a friendly wink and whips the reins. The deer trot away, following the stone pathway and soon disappearing towards the tinkly Christmas music of the town.

I’m left standing there in the swirling morning snow, blowing snowflakes off the tip of my nose and weighed down by too many bags for the limbs I have. I struggle through the unlocked front door, and set everything down.

The first thing I do is click on the automatic fireplace — which is fine, but I’d been kind of looking forward to stoking and blowing and poking the embers until they lit. It was about the only fond camping memory I had from childhood — and check out the friendly note on the table welcoming us.

It mentions the website I work for, so I crumple it up and stuff it in my pocket.

The fireplace is at the central point of the homey, cozy lounge. I get comfortable on a squishy red chair on the mezzanine and gaze out at the Christmas fair setting up from my good vantage point. My laptop is taking forever to turn on, the piece of junk, so I plug it in to charge and run a brush through my hair.

When I return, it’s installing updates. No wonder it had been so slow. The familiar creeping dread of having to go without working starts to set in, but I bat it back and tell it ‘not today’. I can keep myself occupied in other ways.

My gaze drifts back to the stalls, and I think of sweet, bubbly Liara probably talking the ear off the sleigh guy as they take the tour of Seven Pines. I see a stand for steamy local espressos, and one for delicious creamy hot cocoas. There are pastries and pies, fresh bread and hot dogs, all dotted around among the trinkets and crafts and happy-looking customers.

It’s the food that really catches my eye, though, and I realize I’m starving. Resigning my laptop to its elderly fate of installing for the next hour, I empty out a tote and head to the fair to see if I can at least fill it up with gifts while I’m here.

See? I promised I was going to relax while I was here.

*

The sound of sweet voices fills the crisp air now and again as the local community choir tackles everything from fun contemporary music to old Tudor pieces. Right now they’re clapping along to their cheerful rendition of one of Wham!’s greatest.

I hide a smile as I step around a chattering kid and his mother, fused together by the gloves as they pause to look at Christmas outfits for cats. Ther’s a stall for everything here, and even though I don’t currently have a pet back home, I find myself pausing to admire a little Santa’s elf pet sweater. It’s things like this that go a long way towards melting my frozen anti-holiday heart.

OK, let me pause right here for a second. It isn’t that I hate Christmas. Very far from it. I really love the happiness in the air around this time of year; I love a good fireplace and a good book; I love that people get together with their treasured ones — though I haven’t had time to date since college — and I love the idea of giving people thoughtful and personal gifts.

I just don’t have it in me. That Christmas spirit. Not since I was a kid. I don’t think that’s abnormal, not by any stretch, but I miss it. Weaving my way through these stalls, crunching through a patch here and there of still untouched snow, and listening to the breathy coos of the choir … I do feel something.

But it’s more of a pang of nostalgia than anything else. A deep-down yearning for just a taste of the past. When mom and dad were still here. Still here and happily married. Mom would kiss the very top of my head and tell me she couldn’t wait for me to open my special gift. It was always a little post-card sized acrylic painting of her favorite memory from that year.

Oh, man. Seriously. My eyes are welling up, and I brush at them with the back of my gloves, but I don’t feel sad, per se. Just nostalgic. Maybe this is why Christmas kind of sucks for me. I lost my parents a little too young, and I don’t see any family of my own on the horizon. It’s not that I’m Scrooge. I just miss them.

The urge to go back and get stuck into my work again is overshadowed by the smell of creamy milk chocolate in the air, and my feet eagerly make a beeline right for the hot chocolate stand. She serves me a huge cup and compliments my scarf — which I made myself, so I accept it with glee — and tells me to come back at any point for free refills.

But the delicious drink, when it’s cool enough to pass through my lips, is just perfectly sweet enough that I know I’ll be done after one cup.

The sound of the choir and laughter from the others. The taste of sweet hot chocolate and the smell of snowy pines. Bright trinkets and handmade crafts, and bright, warm snow clothes. I feel almost more cozy out here than inside by the fire.

I pause by a stall of hand-carved toys and decorations, which wouldn’t normally catch my eye especially, but I’m drifting down memory lane and one of these creations is almost the spitting image of my old family cat.

With a gasp, I peel back the flap of my mittens and snatch it up to inspect the detail.

The stall owner appears as if from nowhere, looking me up and down with a small frown on his face, as if appraising my detail while I appraise his work. He clears his throat, gently, and I lower the cat and look at him. Up at him, since he is a full foot taller than me, and around a foot wider, too.

“Hello,” he grunts, and I give him a small, almost shy smile, feeling a little self-conscious about the way I grabbed his work and gawked at it without acknowledging him.

“This cat,” I say, wiggling it in the air as if he might be confused without some visual aid, “looks just like mine growing up. Sammie. She …” I twist my lips, realizing the problem. “Well, she only had three white paws, and this one has four. The last paw had a little white spot instead of a full sock. Almost in the shape of a heart.” I blink up at him. “Wow, I’m sorry. It just looks like her. I guess it’s the pose.”

He’s letting me speak, just go on, forever. I finally stop and clamp my mouth shut to stop myself from filling the silence, and the huge woodcarver’s lips turn up into an amused smile. “Don’t apologize. I make stuff to make people happy. It’s kind of the whole point.”

He lifts a steaming thermos to his mouth, eyes still on me, and I take him in. I found myself temporarily stunned by the man’s sheer size, but now that that’s settled, I’m noticing his open flannel shirt over a white vest. Sawdust flecks on his rolled up sleeves, and the light beard of a man who’s too busy to care give me some insight into what kind of man he is.

I think of my own high, tight ponytail, light but deliberate makeup, and carefully matched winter outfit, and wonder if I should feel embarrassed next to him. This man clearly doesn’t care much about the way he presents himself to the world. He cares about how he presents his creations.

The final thing to catch my eye is the fact that he clearly lives here, in the mountains in near-permanent snow, and yet he has an almost golden hue to his skin. Like a tan, but deeper than mine. He sets down his thermos and I avert my gaze, taking a few sips of my own hot drink as I peruse the rest of his wares. There are other adorable animals, some majestic carvings, and there is a whole half of the table dedicated to actually working wooden toys. Some puppets, some little bobblehead-type creations, and some large wooden rocking horses.

“Everything here is beautiful,” I profess, watching my cocoa-warmed breath curl up into the sky. “You do all of them by hand yourself?”

“Every single piece,” he says, his eyes never leaving mine, which stay adamantly on the toys. “All made from fallen pine in the forest.”

“This is amazing.” I inspect a rocking horse; the detail in the eyes, the mane, and the tail. I look up again, unwilling to walk away from something that took me back so instantly to my past. “How much for the cat?”

He shrugs. “You said it wasn’t exactly like your cat from home. I’ll paint a new one for you. It’ll be just like Sammie.”

I flush at his use of her actual name. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I know.” He gives me another genuine smile, which hits me just as hard as the first. It’s like his entire face changes. His warm skin even pinks at the cheeks, and I know mine do too. “I’m Braxen. Brax.”

“That’s not a name I’ve heard before,” I say, shifting around to stay warm. I don’t feel like walking away just yet. There’s something about this man, some quality I haven’t yet pinpointed, that makes me want to stick around and get to know him. “I’m Elle.”

“Lovely. Means ‘she’. Doesn’t it?”

I shrug. “Yeah, I guess, in French. What does Braxen mean?”

“It means shooting star.” He reaches up and rubs at the back of his head. His woolen beanie hat rubs against his forehead in unison, and he tilts his head at me. “Sort of, anyway. My mother tongue is a difficult one to translate.”

“Where are you from?” I ask, curious from the phrase. He has no discernible accent, but the warm glow of his skin stands out compared to everyone else who seems to live here in the snow.

He opens his mouth to answer, but pauses, and I find myself briefly mesmerized by the softness of his lips. The beard looks like it might be rough, but his lips look so full and soft.

“Mama!”

A kid’s cry makes us both look to the side, alarmed. He’s dragging his mother over to one of the creations. An intricately detailed robot, painted to look futuristic and cool, and yet a little more unusual and interesting than anything I’ve ever seen in a store. It’s like he had some source material for the figure that I’ve just never seen before.

“Yes, sweetie,” the tired mother says, smiling apologetically up at Brax. “It is absolutely beautiful.” Then back down at her eagerly hopping kid. “We’ve spent all the money for today, though. Sorry! Maybe some other time.”

She turns to leave, and Braxen’s voice kind of booms out of him, which I wasn’t expecting, and my cocoa sloshes. “Wait!” She spins around, surprised, as her kid attempts to pull her to the next shiny thing. Braxen holds out the robot, face stoic and still. “It’s yours.”

She shakes her head, face turning red, as she looks around to keep an eye on the child. “Oh. Thank you so much, but I couldn’t— I really..”

“I insist,” he says, and pushes it right into her protesting palm. The kid keeps pulling her, so she is soon lost in the crowd.

“Th-thank you!” we hear her cry before she’s gone.

I look back at Brax, and give him a smile, but he doesn’t look particularly happy about the exchange. He glares at his watch, which is a kind of strange neon green apparatus I have never seen the likes of before, and then looks up at me as if surprised I’m still there.

“No change,” he says under his breath. “Absolutely not a blip. It’s remarkable.”

I clutch my cocoa to my chest and look around, checking I’m not holding up foot traffic by lingering around this stall for so long. “Uh … what?”

He shakes his head, looking grumpy, but I’ve already come to figure that he isn’t as irritated as his expression might portray. “It measures positive energy nearby. I am absolutely certain it isn’t broken, and yet … nothing I’m doing seems to be working. It hovers at about the same, all the time. Sometimes it goes up, sometimes it goes down, but it just seems so random. Why didn’t she like the gift? They wanted it, now they have it. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?”

I shut my mouth, which was hanging open a little, and then realize … it’s a joke. He’s being ironic, or something. So I play along. “I’m sure she appreciated it.”

He taps at his watch screen. “She didn’t. I’m telling you, it didn’t make her happy. Why not?”

I raise my eyebrows, bizarrely intrigued by this enormous man who literally seems to glow with an energy I’ve never felt before in my life. This man who seems kind of crazily hellbent on spreading Christmas cheer. “Oh, um …” I begin, but then shake my head and smile, sipping my drink. “I guess I should—”

“What?”

Honestly, he looks pretty lost in this moment, and I feel a lot of warmth towards him. He didn’t know it at the time, but he almost recreated my childhood best friend in the form of pinewood. I feel a strange connection with him, and I’m unable to justify it to myself.

“It was a wonderful and generous thing to do, but …” He waits, brows furrowed, and I notice his eyes are the kind of icy blue that I could get absolutely frozen in, and never find my way out. “OK. Well, I think maybe she was a bit embarrassed. If you really want to know why she seemed awkward about it. Most people don’t feel comfortable with charity or uneven exchanges like that.”

“Uneven exchanges,” he mutters back to me, and then his mouth spreads wide in another happy smile that reaches his beautiful eyes. My stomach actually flutters, and I have to avert my gaze before I blush harder. “You’re kind of a genius, maybe, Elle. Are you a professional?”

I laugh softly. “A professional?”

“Like, are you a full-time happiness expert here? Maybe a harvester of goodwill or just a researcher?”

I laugh louder. “I’m a journalist.” He looks confused, which confuses me so deeply that I actually find myself explaining what a journalist is. “I write, uh, about stuff that’s happening, so people can know about it?”

He is thoughtful. “How would you say the quickest way to make people happy is? The easiest way to bring happiness to a whole town, perhaps?”

“What a crazy, intriguing question,” I say aloud, and he doesn’t seem bothered that I kind of called crazy. I also called him intriguing. “It’s sort of a huge philosophical or psychological debate that I wasn’t really expecting when I came out for a walk today.”

“The psychology of happiness,” he repeats, looking up at the sky and frowning. I note the light stubble lining his handsome jaw, and look away before he catches me staring. “So what’s the answer?”

I bite my lip, enjoying the weirdness of the situation a little. My theory is writers love to have strange encounters. It’s like kindling for our minds. Then an answer comes to me. “I think it’s all down to … words. What people consume daily affects mood. The way you word things affects perception. I think, not to toot my own horn, that a lot of it is down to the media. What they chose to portray every day, and how they portray it. Stories are everything to us, in kind of a primal, very real way.”

He frowns. Mouths ‘toot my own horn’ to himself, and then shakes his head, and looks me very carefully in the eyes.

“What would make you happy?”

“This cocoa makes me really happy,” I say, taking another sip. “I’m going to get a danish in a minute, and I expect that will bring me some joy.”

“Blips,” he mutters. “Barely blips.”

“I’ve never met anyone so interested in making strangers happy. It’s, uh, nice.” Truthfully, he’s weird as hell, but every time he turns his ponderous scowl into a smile, I feel a fishhook tug from my core in his direction, and I’m finding it hard to want to walk away and look at the rest of the fair. I feel like I’d rather stand here in the cold and discuss the semantics of joy with this icy-eyed stranger than do anything else right now.

“When you write about happy stuff,” he says, “you probably make people happy. Happier than when I give them gifts.”

“Oh, no one wants to read happy things,” I joke, but only partially. “Scary, weird things get clicks. I’m actually here to investigate the monster of Seven Pines. Have you heard much about it?”

His face falls, not into the normal resting scowl, but to something more akin to mortification. “No, that sounds ridiculous. Hearsay. Libel.”

I’m a bit surprised by this answer. I thought it was a well-known thing in this area. I thought we might be able to joke or laugh about it a bit. “Sorry,” I say. “It’s just a little story for the internet. Nothing mean about the town or any of its people. It’ll be fun. Cute. You really haven’t heard of it?”

“Nonsense,” he says. “You should write a story about something else. Something nice. Like the Christmas fair.”

I take a mental step back and look around, and I wonder if he’s actually wrong. A fluff or human interest piece around Christmas might be the great partner piece to the dramatic horror of a ski slope haunting.

The way he’s looking at me has changed. He had been amused, jovial overall, and friendly. Now his eyes scrape up and down me with careful deliberation, as if he is trying hard to see right into my soul. I might not get his sense of humor, with the whole watch bit, or pretending not to know what journalists are, but I still feel like we got along well up until the ‘monster’ thing.

He must just think I’m so silly, believing in monsters. I give him a small smile. “If you think of anything,” I say, “I’d love to talk to you again.”

I’m accidentally taking a page or two out of Liara’s book, and giving him a shy, coy smile as I write my number on a piece of notepaper, fold it, and push it across his table to him.

“Really,” I add, making eye contact.

I watch as he swallows, and stirs, but his facial expression stays locked on some emotion in the family of ‘suspicion’, or even ‘anger’, so I give him a small nod and walk away.

Damn. I try to tell myself that I’m a little upset at losing out on a lead for my story, but I know that truthfully, I would have loved for him to call me anyway. There was something about the smoothness of his voice; the warm comfort of the way he towered over me and yet seemed to have such a gentle disposition. I could learn to understand his jokes, I suppose. It has been a very long time since a man has interested me. It’s a shame I blew it without knowing how, but that’s OK. It means my vacation remains wide open for what I came here for.

I wander around the rest of the fair lost in my head, daydreaming about headlines and taglines and snappy closing lines.

I have never been so filled with ideas before. It must be the clean mountain air — maybe a vacation was a great idea after all. 

Chapter Four

Braxen

I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t really have done any of that. I try not to engage much with humans, except to try to get my damn positive energy meter to twitch whenever I can, but that woman was … interesting.

There was something about the way her looks seemed to clash with her shy personality. The way she fiddled with the cup in her hands and asked me questions, and yet was able to stand there being the most beautiful human I have ever seen. For some reason, I opened up to her, and yet she barely reacted.

It doesn’t matter, since as soon as I fill my harvest quota, I am hoping against hope that my mothership will arrive and take me. But … I don’t know. She’s not only the most gorgeous, intriguing person I know, she taught me more about human happiness in five minutes than I’ve managed to learn in five months living in a cave in the mountains.

Maybe it’s for the good of my job here for me to find her again. Spend more time getting to know her, and therefore all humans in a way, before I leave. Maybe she can help me find the trick to getting the damn dial to move.

I stand in the same spot for the rest of the day, trying different tactics as usual to try to make people happy. I refuse payment, add free gifts, even try out a compliment, but the measuring device I wear on my wrist doesn’t note any significant alterations in the base average happiness. But why? Back home, I would be sure that giving extra good deals in a trade would make my people happier. But here, are they actually a more complex species? Or are they incapable of feeling any happier than this?

This isn’t good. It isn’t good at all. Surrounded by so many people with such average moods has not only completely sapped me of my natural gifts, but it’s also … well, to try out some local slang, it’s kind of bumming me out, too.

I make enough money to pay for my spot in the fair for the day, and when I pay the mayor’s assistant, I give him the rest, too. “For you,” I say. “Have a good Christmas.”

He blanches, and hands it back. “Thank you, Braxen, that’s very kind, but I can’t accept this much money.”

“I honestly have no idea the worth of what I gave you,” I say dryly. “I live in a cave and mostly subsist on wild vegetation.”

There’s a pause, but then the man laughs, and claps me on the back. He walks away, shaking his head and chuckling, and I go back to get my bags filled with hand-carved wares.

I don’t understand humans at all. He refused money, which he can exchange for anything he desires, and yet when I told him I eat weeds he experienced an actual uptick in positivity?

At least I have a few watts of positive energy logged to my harvest device today. I just wish there was some kind of a pattern to it. Every now and then I’d pick some up from Elle — lovely Elle, she didn’t know she had paid and more for the cat figure she’d been eyeing up — but I couldn’t figure out what I’d been doing to achieve it.

It’s an endlessly frustrating job, but at least I know it isn’t one hundred percent impossible.

That’s something, right?

I lock away my stuff in a rented cubby by the tourist center, and get ready for the night. A rumble in what I can only describe as my very soul tells me a tiny avalanche is coming nearby, so I will do what I can to stop humans from leaping into the abyss. I guess.

There’s something else tingling at the periphery of my extrasenses, too. Something I can’t figure out; normally they just stick to predicting avalanches or similar disasters. I just can’t seem to get Elle out of my head.

It’s interesting. And I decide there’s no harm in pursuing it. I take off for the Seventh Pine trail, or ‘home’, and I wonder what could possibly be about to happen that my subconscious is trying to warn me about.

Chapter Five

Elle

I tried to spend more time in the market, but my fingers were itching to type. Instead, I went back to my room and warmed up and typed out some skeletons. The town of Seven Pines inspired me, and I wanted to get some stuff down before I forgot it.

But then I heard Liara’s uproarious laugh and quickly slammed my laptop shut and crept out of the back door so she wouldn’t think I’d stayed indoors all day.

I have some investigating to do anyway. Then I will return, with scribbled findings in my notebook, safe in my pocket, and we can sit and discuss her probable crush on cute sleigh driver guy. I’ll pop open some wine. Honestly, I can’t wait. But I need to prioritize my career, or I’ll never advance. It’s brutal out there right now, and I need to get the edge. Believe it or not, I have full faith in this bizarre story to go viral, and that might open more doors for me down the line. Doors to write more serious stuff. To open people’s eyes about the horrors of the world.

Whatever this ‘monster’ truly is, I have my camera phone and notebook in my pocket. Nothing is going to get past me.

Exhilarated and gleeful, I stand in ski gear at the head of the Seventh Pine ski slope. Yes, I said I wasn’t going to go skiing on this vacation, and I really wish I didn’t have to — because I really suck at it — but everyone I interviewed at the Christmas market said the same thing. The monster is seen in this location by people who ski roughly halfway down. It jumps out, showing its aggressive golden form, tries to blind you, and comes right for you.

The people who were attacked all seem fine, if shaken up, so my theory is that whatever this monster is, it’s just trying to guard something or keep people away from something. It could be a bear, or a moose, or even a cave-dwelling guy. The blinding gold hue? I’m stumped on that, but what if … what if the thing is strung up with lights to freak onlookers out? What if it’s even spray-painted?

I really have no idea, but that’s why I’m so excited to find out.

One person even informed me that after every monster sighting, the attacked witnessed some sort of avalanche right after. It seems as though whatever this monster is, something it’s doing out on those slopes is causing dangerous snowfall, and one day it might get someone killed.

The slope is steep and though the sun hasn’t yet set all the way, the light is dimmed and orange, and I close my eyes and mutter a few positive words to myself before I waddle to the top and jam my, uh, ski sticks, into the snow.

I take off.

What I know about skiing comes from a single experience as a teenager, on a trip with my high school, and some YouTube videos before I left to brush up. The ski stuff was available from our lodge rental, and I don’t know if any of it really fits me perfectly, but it should get me down a slope easy enough.

The biting wind cuts through the air like tiny razors, finding any weakness in my thick ski outfit and exploiting it until my skin is numb. I go faster, and faster, and manage to successfully slow myself down once … then I’m somehow going faster than ever again. I shoot past the trees and simultaneously my life flashes before my eyes.

All I can think about is how damn reckless I’ve been. Skiing is hard! Skiing is hard, and dangerous, and I didn’t tell a soul about where I’d be, and now a tree trunk is coming up right in front of me and I bank a hard right, twisting my ankle and lifting into the sky for a few seconds. I tumble and crash into the snow, several feet beneath its surface, and it takes me twenty full minutes to fumble with my skis before I actually manage to disconnect them from my feet. I thrash around for a while until I orient myself, and then slowly get to my skiless feet and look around.

Snow has begun to fall. Lightly, but in a very real way. The sun has gone down faster than I anticipated, and I can only see twenty or so feet around me in any direction. The occasional tree or lump of snow is the only thing that breaks up the horizon and proves that I’m even turning my head at all.

I regret everything.

“Elle.”

And I’m already going crazy?

“Elle!”

I wade through the three foot-thick snow in front of me, feeling the chill even through heavily insulated clothing, and look around, shivering hard and wondering whose voice that is. Why does it sound so familiar? Why does it make me almost nostalgic?

“Elle?! Come towards my voice.”

I take a couple more steps, and then close my eyes and let the voice wash over me. I didn’t think it was possible to go crazy so quickly, but … maybe I’ve been out here for weeks! Maybe I went crazy a long time ago. It’s hard to know exactly what’s happening when everything went from zero to fatal in just two seconds.

And then a figure breaks through the swirling snowy veil and reaches out to me, clutching my shoulders and leaning in as if to check it’s really me, or sniff me, I’m not sure.

It’s a man. About a foot taller than me, and much wider. His skin emanates warmth and glows an almost fiery tan color. His face, angled and sharp, is twisted into a scowl of concern underneath a woolen cap, and even in the snow he’s just wearing flannel and jeans.

I jerk out of my very temporary panic-induced brain fog, and feel the warmth and sturdiness of his large hands on my shoulders, and squint into his eyes through my ski goggles. “H-how?”

“I knew you’d come looking for the monster. I had the feeling you wouldn’t make it all the way. Knew snow was coming.” His voice is gruff, but there’s something beneath his words; a worry I would never have expected from a stoic stranger like him.

“Well,” I say carefully, lips trembling, “thanks. I don’t think I’ve been here for longer than half an hour, but I probably would have…” I trail off, and he nods his agreement.

“Here,” he offers, and nods off to the side, somewhere. I can’t see where he’s gesturing; the snowfall is getting thicker. “I know my way around the mountains. Let me take you inside to the caves. I’ve got you. Ready?”

I pick up my skis and hold them under one arm as he takes the other in his strong grip and guides me, blind as a bat, through the trees and finally through an archway of frosty mountain stone. A cave.

He takes me deeper inside, and then down a small curve, and I feel myself begin to warm up almost the second the wind is off of me and my insulation can do its magic.

There’s a fresh campfire and a couple of empty crates. Does that one say ‘Carrots’? At his lead, I pull off my goggles and lower myself to a sit on one of the upturned crates. Braxen kneels and begins to work on getting the campfire roaring. I watch, feeling strangely at home as he lights kindling, places it strategically around stacked pinewood logs, and then cups his hand and blows.

The smell of Christmas trees fills the cavern, and I lean back and fight a smile. This situation should not be fun or exciting to me in the slightest. And yet, it kind of is. I love that I’m in the world’s most private place with who may very well be the hottest man on Earth, instead of in my cabin with my laptop.

The thought almost surprises me, but I realize I really almost died today. Because of my own reckless pursuit of a career in a world where job stability is getting harder to find. I was so blinded, blinkered, by the idea of impressing my boss that I almost froze to death on a snowy mountain. How sad is that?

Instead, though, by some insane luck, I’m here. The sweet smell of pine smoke drifts through the air and Brax hums a song that the choir were singing while we stood at his stall, chatting about happiness. When the flames start to lick the pale wood, he pauses humming and reaches into one of the crates for a thermos, and offers it to me without a word.

I take it, feeling the warmth of the container, and frown. “Uh … what is this place? It’s all set up already.” Now that I’m warming up, I’m noticing more things. Like the hay in the corner all set up like some kind of a medieval bed. The rest of the crates, some still filled with carrots. It’s like a stable for a horse or something. “Do you … live here?”

He leans his head back and gives a bark of a laugh. “Humans don’t live in caves!”

“Of course,” I say, but I’m not fully convinced. “It looks like someone at least spends some time here.”

“Like I said, I know my way around the mountains here. I … I have a confession to make.”

I raise my eyebrows, and wait. I have to admit: I have literally no idea what he’s about to say. He’s the world’s sexiest serial killer? The sweet-smelling pine wood is his weapon of choice, and being a ceaselessly charitable toymaker is his cover story?

“I … have also been on the trail of the monster.”

I lean back. I really hadn’t seen that coming, but it makes sense. No wonder he got weird and quiet when I brought it up, and no wonder he knew where I’d come to find out more about it. “Why?” I ask.

He takes his time answering, taking the thermos from me and unscrewing it, taking a drink, and then handing it back. I take a sip also, pleasantly surprised to find that it’s something akin to hot, crisp apple cider. I’m already almost fully warmed up from the ski outfit and the fire, but now I feel true warmth head to all my limbs, making my fingers and toes feel cozy.

“Well, uh, it’s important to me that these people are safe,” he says with a shrug. I take another sip as I digest his words. He has no reason to, but he’s helping these people. He made a joke about having an ulterior motive — gauging happiness with a device, something like that — but being with him gives me the impression that he’s never done anything negative in his life. Just because he probably wouldn’t know where to start.

Braxen is this strange hot drink personified. Sweet, with a hard edge and a bite of spice. And he does a good job of making my limbs all fuzzy, too. It’s like nothing I’ve ever tasted before, and yet it kind of makes me feel at home. Like I’m right where I’m supposed to be. Definitely.

I tilt my head at him, and he notices because he tilts his head right back, and smiles. It’s a smile with the slightest hint of fluster — wondering what I’m thinking — and it makes my belly flip flop and my core warm faster than any hot drink or literal fire.

“You’re sweet,” I say, unable to hold the words back as they escape my lips. But then I lean into it. “Not just because you saved my life,” I add. “You’re ... sweet. Real, in a way I’m not used to.”

“You’re not used to real?” he repeats, his words low and light, curious. His hand drops to grip his knee, and my eyes are drawn to his lower half. He’s bent as he sits on the low crate, but still manages to look comfortable and natural. My gaze slides in between his knees, and then I look to the thermos, blushing.

“Are you too warm?” he asks. Knowing that he notices my embarrassment makes the blush deepen, but I shake my head at his concern. Now that my eyes aren’t on him, his are firmly on me, and he seems to take me in. I can almost feel his gaze, slowly but firmly gliding down my skin, like fingertips trailing along my arms, my chest, my stomach. I squirm, and turn to look at him again.

“I’m fine,” I say. “So this is where you go for your stakeouts, huh?”

“My what?”

“When you’re tailing the monster? Have you had any luck yet?”

He licks his lower lip, eyes on me, and my nipples tighten. “No luck,” he says slowly. It’s sexy, whether he knows it or not, but it doesn’t quite distract me. I’m close, to what I don’t know, but I’m close to something big. Something fascinating.

Does Braxen have a secret?

Chapter Six

Braxen

She can never know.

I can’t stop doing this, getting closer and closer to her. Asking her questions, looking her up and down. The pout of her lips, the color of her cheeks. Now that she’s warm and safe, flushed from what came close to a near-death experience, she looks so very alive and soft and ready for anything.

Well, maybe not anything. But sharp, intelligent Elle is ready for the truth. She’s scanning her surroundings and scanning my face for scraps, clues, hints as to what that truth is. She won’t stop, won’t leave, until she’s one step closer to getting what she wants.

I could tell from the start that she wasn’t one to give up easily. But I lied, and now I’m stuck in it. Because I can’t backtrack now.

I’m the ‘monster’, only really I’m not a monster. I’m an extraterrestrial. My people come from a different world. We can change shapes, but mostly we look like people … or reindeer. It’s a long story. It involves a lot of travel back and forth between worlds. It’s not interesting.

I bet she’d think it was interesting. Then I’d be forced to explain everything. How I was left here by accident. How they never came back for me. I’m presumed dead; Earth is listed as one of the most potentially hostile unknown planets, so they won’t come back just on the offchance. I need to contact them, but my devices are all out of battery.

Oh, and our fuel? It’s psychic energy. And I’ve had no luck gathering any from any of humanity.

I could just try to explain all of that to her, see what happened. I’ve seen enough Earth movies in my time on this planet to know that that story probably ends with an autopsy.

So I guess … I’m stuck helping a journalist write a story about me, pretending to track me, pretending to search for clues for me when I know I’m right here. And a small added bonus would be that I get to spend time with her; with this woman who seems to see right through me. A woman who says what she thinks, and takes what she needs, and understands the secrets humanity holds that just might get me home.

Because since I’ve been on Earth, I haven’t felt true happiness either. It just seems harder to obtain than it does on my home planet. Except when I’m with her? Something stirs. And I’m not just talking about my—

“So what’s our first step? Now that there’s two of us, we should have some more luck. Where is the monster usually sighted?” she asks, jerking me out of my thoughts. I think fast, but ultimately decide to tell the truth wherever I can, and simply tell her ‘I don’t know’ if it’s something I can’t answer. Maybe that will get … somewhere.

This is going to end terribly, isn’t it?

“Well, it’s usually seen outside this cave. The snow will settle in a short while, and we can go outside and look around,” I say.

“Oh, how do you know?”

How do I know the weather patterns? I can feel it in my gut; have been able to since I was very small. It isn’t unusual for my kind to have special abilities here and there. I’ve lost most of mine since losing access to constant true happiness, but I still have my inbuilt weather sensor. “Just living here all my life,” I say slowly.

“Thought you hadn’t lived in Seven Pines long?” she says, tucking loose hair behind her ear and shooting me a smile with those full, pink lips. The look is like a hot needle right in my gut, but instead of pain, I feel something else. Something nice. Warm.

“You know,” I say, waving my hands around. “Earth.”

She laughs, a delicate sound, and then seems to get self conscious about her wide-open mouth, so hides the tail end behind her glove. I can’t stop myself from smiling along with her, and it’s strange, because I don’t usually smile. I just don’t often feel the need. I’m still very uncomfortable with my human form, but it’s getting more and more natural all the time. And it appears to be fully functional in every way, judging by the way my cock has hardened to steel between my legs. When she looks away, I have to adjust the denim I have squeezed my thick legs into. When she turns back, I smile again.

“You are beautiful,” I say, squinting my eyes to get the best possible look, and I shake my head. “I keep trying to think of a more beautiful person I’ve seen, but I can’t.” Her cheeks become bright red, and for the first time I wonder if their internal temperature has something to do with their emotions? Because it seems to happen a lot in response to the things I say. “It’s just a truth.”

“You like the truth,” she says with a small nod to herself. “I like that. I like the truth too, as a journalist.”

“But you want to write a story about a monster without getting the whole story,” I say before I can stop myself. She frowns.

“What do you mean? I thought we were here trying to get the full story together. When it stops snowing, we’ll go see. Right?”

“I mean, you don’t have the monster’s side of the story.”

She chuckles as if I’m joking, and I nod and laugh too as if I am. “True. If the beast will give me a soundbite, I’ll include it. Of course I will.” She gets up and stretches, and the ski outfit tightens around her petite frame. The way her waist nips in and then her hips widen out, for some reason, fills my body with some kind of fervent desire I’ve never truly felt before.

Female reilendeer are fine, attractive enough, and I’ve noticed a pretty female human here and there, but I’ve never felt this raw, raging longing inside myself before. It takes every ounce of superior strength I have in my human form to stop me from standing and grabbing her. I’d press her against the chilled cavern wall, pin her wrists above her head, let her wrap her legs around my waist, and find my way inside that brightly-colored jumpsuit.

“Did you hear me, Brax?” she’s saying cheerily, and I feel my eyes widen. Can she see somehow what I’m thinking about? Can she somehow sense my hidden erection straining against these jeans? My breathing is shallow and my hands are gripping my knees tightly, and I take a second to right myself; calm myself.

I’ve heard of feelings like this before, gripping the stags back home, but I never thought it could or would happen with an alien like Elle. It’s like my world has been turned upside down when I realize what’s happening. I want to be with her. Squeeze her tight and enter her; mark her with a bite and make sure she will never want to be with another male again.

Is she…

“Brax!” she says with a laugh. “Is the cold getting to you? I said I think it’s stopped snowing outside. Do you have a flashlight or something?”

I had previously cursed my nightvision in this form, but I do have a lantern. I stand and get it, angling myself away so she isn’t confused by how ready I am for her. It’s not like we’ve been courting. We’ve just decided to align our common goals and hunt a monster. She doesn’t have to know that the monster is me.

“Oh, a lantern,” she says, excited. “I’ll use my phone light and you use that, and we should be able to see pretty far in the moonlight.” She leads the way, bouncing with every step, and tightening the straps of her snow outfit. “Brax, dear, aren’t you going to get sick without more clothes on?”

“I’m not a deer,” I say instinctively.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I was being overly familiar, huh?” I don’t know why, but she looks a bit disappointed. What just happened? But the silver lining is that she stops asking why I’m not freezing to death as we step out into the snow again. Elle tucks her hair into her hat and wraps her arms around herself as a chill wind sweeps down the slope. I’m cold, yes, but only mildly. She’s wrapped up tight but she still seems to shiver.

I wrap my arm around her shoulders and pull her in close. I know my skin is warm, and she responds after a short hesitation by sliding her arm around my waist, leaning in to fit perfectly against my body, and relaxing.

We fall into a rhythm as we walk together like some three-legged being that would stick out like a sore thumb on this planet, and yet feels so natural. We step through the snow five feet, and then use our light sources to search around for ‘clues’.

We find scratches on nearby pines that she identifies shakily as a bear’s work, and then bites her lower lip. “Should we keep going? There might be bears in all these caves. You’ve never seen one?”

“I’ve seen bears,” I say with a nod. “They are usually far away, and leave me be if they spot me.”

“That’s not very comforting,” she mumbles, and I understand I think. Bears are predators, which means they pose a threat to humans. It’s so funny that these little things run their planet without question, and yet still must be frightened of wandering into the wild and facing predator species. How have they advanced so far when they aren’t the apex predator of their own world?

“We’ll be fine,” I assure her. Bears hate me. They keep their distance, and only pass me in a large arc, keeping plenty of snow between us. I understand: if I was on my home turf and an alien was dropped in my path, I would probably take a detour until I knew more about it.

“I see … tracks. Do you see tracks?”

I turn around to see Elle bent double, nose almost to the snow and her hands firmly on her hips as she eyes up some potential prints in the white blanket. It’s so damn cute I want to laugh. “Tracks? Bears again?” I know I haven’t been in ‘deer’ form recently enough for there to be evidence in this fresh dusting of snow.

“No. Look.” She points. “Is that hooves? Maybe … I’m not sure, I’m no expert. There’s two, uh, toes. Could it be a moose?” Her voice lowers and she looks just as frightened as when she’d mentioned the bear.

“Mooses scare you?” I ask, lowering my chin to look her right in the eye. Deadpan, she nods slowly.

“Of course. Have you met one?”

“I haven’t. Are they very big, these moose?” The word is being translated to me in real-time but my translator isn’t doing a great job at painting a word picture. And it seems like something I’m supposed to know.

“Oh man, they’re enormous.” She’s off, gesturing wildly with her arms and wading ankle-deep through a shallower snow patch that curves around to the right. “I wish I knew what these tracks were of, but they’re probably … no, they’re not big enough to be moose. You’re right.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. “Sure do know my artiodactyla,” I say confidently, following close behind.

“Your what?” she shoots over her shoulder.

“Even-toed ungulates,” I quickly correct. It’s confusing trying to speak a language with so many unused terms. “Sorry, uh, English is my second language.”

She shakes her head. “I swear, people who learn English as a second language sometimes know so many more words than I do.” And it’s quickly forgotten as she leads us into the woods that line the slope. Now our feet only crunch through a half-foot of snow as the canopies above, and the towering mountain to either side, protect from the bulk of the snowfall. It’s picturesque here. Our respective lights reflect on the bright white snow, the deep green of the furs, and the occasional red berry bush.

Elle suddenly stops and crouches, running her hand over more prints. “What does this look like to you? These two separate halves like this.” I crouch beside her, knees apart, brushing against hers. She glances up at me, and then looks away again. “Don’t deer have, like, horselike hooves?”

I look at the tracks and see, indeed, there are two separate toes. My own prints in my regular form has three separate toes, and is almost twice as large, but I see the similarity. “I know what these are,” I say with some unhidden triumph in my voice. “Let’s follow them.”

She is behind me, holding onto my arm to avoid losing me or slipping, I don’t know, and in rapt silence as we navigate after the set of tracks and through the dark, quiet, snowy forest.

Something snags at her foot and she tugs at it. While she’s occupied, I concentrate golden light to the palm of my hand and light up the ground more intensely for her until she shakes her foot free of a frosty root. By the time she turns to look up at me, my hand is back to normal, and I give her a smile as if I hadn’t even noticed. We continue.

Soon, we come to a grove, and as we push past the thick pine needle branches of the final tree, I raise my lantern and she turns her phone light towards the grove too.

Elle tries to gasp, but her breath hitches in her throat. Slowly, but surely, her small hand reaches over and intertwines with mine.

Chapter Seven

Elle

The grove is small, circular, and seems so removed from anything real and true. At least forty huge, beautiful reindeer graze at the patches of visible grass. When we arrive with our lights, they all lift their magnificent heads, some sporting antlers several feet wide, and regard us with careful eyes. But none move, and none run.

It’s Braxen that moves first. I would have been content to stand, holding his hand tightly and leaning against his strangely warm chest — any excuse to get closer to him — but he takes a couple of steps forward, and takes me along with him as he goes. I hop after him, nervous of so many long, curved head-weapons so close to me, but they remain still.

I see breath misting from their velvety-looking nostrils, and soon we’re standing among them. One of them, the largest antlers I’ve ever seen, crunches slowly through the snow towards us. The others part to let him through.

Braxen throws me an awkward smirk, and then lowers his head to the deer. The deer lowers his head back, and I squeal before clamping my glove to my mouth before my sharp noise startles any of the wild animals. They seem fine, though, and Braxen wraps his arm around my shoulder again. It’s comforting.

“They must be used to people,” he murmurs, leaning in so that his breath is hot against my ear. My entire insides turn to jelly. This is all too much. The stag is side-eyeing us, and I turn to look Braxen in the eye.

My heart is hammering like it’s never hammered before. “They’re beautiful. Do you think we’re, um, in danger?” I whisper back.

He stares back, and there’s a twinkle in his eye. Then there’s something else. A hunger; a heat. Brax leans down, and very gently traces the backs of his fingers against my cheek.

My legs are jelly. My core aches. I’m frozen to the spot, but it isn’t the cold. I feel so warm when I’m with him.

“You’re safe when you’re with me,” he murmurs. “Promise.”

I could lean forward and press my lips to his. So soft, pink, full. And in his lantern light he almost seems to glow with some kind of otherworldly light. I could, and I don’t think he would stop me or move away. I imagine him sinking into the kiss, kissing me back, and my entire body is weak at the thought.

But, for some reason, I don’t. There’s something so magical about this secret moment between the two of us, and I want to treasure it. Pause and keep this one frame. This second right now where either of us could lean in and break the thick, delicious tension with a kiss, but neither of us has yet.

I’m the first one to break the heated eye contact and look back at the stag, who gives a small snort that mists in the air.

“We should leave them to it,” Braxen says after a moment. “They’ve been kind enough to let us in, but we can’t overstay.”

His seriousness makes me smile. “You know,” I say, “I interviewed someone today who said the monster looked like a deer to them. Golden antlers, four long legs.”

He looks skeptical, if I had to assign an emotion to the way his face scrunches. “Deer aren’t very intimidating,” he says, and places a hand on the small of my back and guides me out of the clearing. We navigate our way back through the forest, and then trudge a little way up the side of the slope before making our way back to the cave he has his monster-hunting nest in. It astonishes me how he finds the way without hesitating or making a wrong move at any step.

Once back in the cavern, he stokes the bare embers until it’s roaring, and I rub my arms hard to try to warm up.

“You get so cold so easily,” he teases, and once he’s sitting on a crate in front of the flames, he pulls me onto his lap and wraps me in his impossibly comfortable arms. Every firm angle of his perfect body seems like it should be rough and hard, but his skin is toasty and smells delicious. Like hot spiced apple.

“We didn’t find any sign of any monster,” I say with a sigh as he rubs his palms up and down my arms. His motions begin rapidly to create friction, and then they slow down. Soon he’s rubbing me gently up and down, looking me right in the eye, and then he grips my elbows and rearranges me. I’m straddling him in my ski suit, in front of an open flame, in a cave in the mountains. It must be after 11pm, and I wonder if Liara is worried about me or off enjoying her vacation with a new beau.

I guess just once, it’s OK for me to think about what I want — and I mean really, actually want — instead of what I’m supposed to be doing to please others or advance in a cutthroat career.

I squeeze his hips with my knees, and he pulls me into his chest, wraps his arms around me, and just as I feel like I could not feel any cozier or safer, Braxen presses his lips against mine.

Emotion floods me, and my arms and legs tingle like I’ve had a cup of hot, sweet cider. The taste of apples even lingers on his tongue as I open my mouth to let him in. We’re kissing soft, and then hard, and I push off his cap so I can run my fingers through his thick hair, gripping it close to his scalp as I feel him get impossibly hard against my core.

“Brax, what do you do to me?” I mumble against his lower lip just as his hands reach for the clasp at the neck of my ski suit. Slowly, tantalizingly slowly, he grips the zipper and drags it down, across the swell of my breasts, past my ribs and navel, and stopping right before where I wish he’d touch. “I’ve never …”

I want to tell him I’ve never quite done this before, and definitely never with a stranger, but I feel like I don’t have to. As he lays me down on the ground beside the fire, I feel like somewhere, deep down, he knows exactly what I want to say, and that he feels the same.

I want to tell him that I want to do everything with him. I want to give him everything. But I don’t know how to say it, and I don’t know if he needs to hear it.

My instincts are right, because before I can get any more words out, Brax is nipping at the sensitive skin below my navel, right above the lace edge of my underwear. Anything I had been considering saying out loud is gone; lost, and dissipating into the crisp cave air along with pine-scented smoke of the blazing fire. He nuzzles at my panties, half-concealed still by my ski suit, and grips at the lace with his teeth, pulling back to give me the tastiest grin I’ve ever laid eyes on before letting the fabric snap lightly back onto my skin.

He mumbles something against the zipper and I lift myself onto my elbows to get a better look and say ‘Hmm?’ When he locks eyes with me again, there’s no humor left in his expression. It’s only lust, passion, hunger.

“You are the most beautiful creature I have ever laid my eyes on,” he says, adjusting my panties so he can see everything. I have never felt more exposed and vulnerable, yet cherished and seen. I want to snap my knees back together, but feeling his hot breath against my oversensitive bud makes me completely weak.

“You are the strangest,” I whisper back, feeling myself smile at the thought of all of this. My heart absolutely warms when I think about my time with Brax from start until, well, now. When his tongue first laps against me, tasting how wet I am for him, feeling my legs start to tremble on either side of his head, I let out a cry.

“Is that OK?” he asks, his words breathy with arousal, tickling against me, making me squirm. “I just needed to taste you.”

“It’s more than OK,” I tell him, listening to the crackle of the campfire next to us. I am about to say something else, but he adjusts the zipper lower, and then my panties, and presses the flat of his tongue against me before lapping at me. He lets out a groan, and then licks and sucks at my clit. I start to shake, unable to stop myself, and my vision sparks with bright light as I teeter off some internal cliff.

He never stops whatever he’s doing with his tongue, even as I writhe, pressing my hands to my face to stop from screaming. But then I remember … we’re in a cave. I don’t need to do or not do anything. As I feel the most intense orgasm of my life wreck my body and mind, I let out a cry.

Beside me I could swear the fire grows and sparks along with my own intensity. And then finally he releases me and I slump, and when I turn, the fire is back to normal.

I catch my breath, and then when he slides up to lie beside me, I allow myself to rest my head on his chest when I’ve zipped back up my insulated suit, and look up to see the look of pure, real happiness on his face. He’s staring up at the cavern ceiling, looking blissful with a hint of surprised. “Everything good?” I ask.

His watch gives a small beep, and his lips open to reveal white teeth in a pleased grin. “So good, my beauty.” He turns and kisses me full on the lips. The scent of him hits me like the strongest shot of sweet alcohol, and I groan into his mouth. “So good.”

Chapter Eight

Braxen

Not sure what came over me. I wasn’t supposed to get personally involved with any of these humans. I’ve kept myself at a distance since I got here. Observed, gifted, groused when nothing significant happened. Then when the shimmer of happiness ended up stepping right into my life, I grabbed it with both hands.

It’s like Elle is the light in my increasingly frustrating darkness.

It’s like she’s my wish come true.

I know what came over me … she did. And I don’t know if I’m willing to let her go. The only thing worse than never finding a spark of light in the dim void of space? Finding one and then losing it forever.

I’d love to claim her as my mate, but when my people arrive, what would they think? Elle rests against my chest as I think this through, staring at the shadows dancing on the cavern walls. My people. When they return for me, how do I explain what’s happened? That I’ve been hit by a bolt of lightning. Hit right in the chest.

That I don’t know anymore if I want them to return. If what they do when they get here is take me away, do I truly want them back at all? Would I rather they believe I was dead?

It’s all too much to take in right now. It’s like the universe is taking me on a giant spinning spacecraft, dodging asteroids and beaming through wormholes until I’m sick and dizzy and I just want to get off. First, life drops me on a faraway planet to see what energy I can harvest. Then, my people cannot contact me and assume I’ve died in a hostile environment.

I thought I’d lost everything, but then … this. What is this?

I lean down and nuzzle the top of her head as she sleeps. Her body is warm against mine, and her skin so soft and smooth. She smells like raspberries and cream and feeling her heart beat against my chest is making my stomach flip and my cock hard. I should have claimed her. I should have entered her and claimed her as my mate, but what then?

I close my eyes and try not to think about it. Soon, sooner than I expected, I fall asleep, and the sun is already beginning to rise when I crack my eyes open to see Elle awaken at the same time.

She smiles at me, bites her lip, blushes, and I know she can feel how hard I am already, even in my transition from unconsciousness. I guess this beautiful woman turns me on even when I sleep.

“Morning,” she says, and I’m surprised by the shyness to her voice. She rises, stretches, and begins to gather her things back into her pockets, frowning when she realizes she can see her breath in the air again. “How is it I feel so much more comfortable when I’m with you?” she huffs, but thankfully it seems to be a rhetorical question so I just smirk and stretch out my muscles one by one.

She stares. I catch her staring. She grins, and I finish stretching out my back muscles, and arm muscles, until we hear a small but satisfying ‘pop’.

I like this form. Back on my home planet, we generally stay humanoid, but it’s ordinary practise to shift several times a day to get other things done faster. Faster travel, and travel through the air, are just two reasons, and I miss the freedom of having a second form whenever I’m around humans for too long.

“What should we do to hunt the monster today?” I ask abruptly. She zips her suit up and pulls on her hat, and gives a little shrug.

“I’m going to get some more interviews done. I only really casually asked stall owners, but I got a lead. There’s a couple staying close by to me and I arranged to meet them for brunch. I just have to go let my friend know I’m alive, and then that’s where I’ll head.” She fidgets with her ski goggles. “I guess you’ll be at your stall?”

Honestly, screw my stall right now. I’m so lost when it comes to interpreting and creating happiness, and I feel like it would be more useful to me if I follow Elle around today instead. She seems to be more effective at making people happy than I am.

“What if I come with you to the interview?” I say. She looks surprised. “We both want the same thing.”

If I know what information she learns, I can be better equipped to steer her away from the truth, anyway.

“Right…” she says. “Yeah. OK. It might be nice to have someone by my side. But we aren’t gonna need to go good cop, bad cop, or anything. We’re just having a friendly discussion.”

Not sure what she’s talking about. We’re not the police at all. Are we? No, I decide with a small nod. We’re not. “OK,” I say, uncertain. “Let’s go have a discussion.”

I grab the skis I’ve hardly ever used, and follow her out of the cave and back onto the slope. I knew they’d come in handy. If I ever had to make my way down to the bottom in this form, I figured I would need them.

We zoom down the slope. Elle is ungainly and clumsy, but she is squealing with laughter anyway and my wrist is beeping at the positive energy she sends swirling between us. Finally, we reach the bottom, and cozy up together on the ski loft back to town.

Her lips are so tempting that I can’t possibly ignore them for any longer. I lean over, the zip teeth from her suit snarling against my button up shirt, and we share a kiss as hot as a crackling campfire as gentle snowflakes alight in her hair, her eyelashes, her nose.

She doesn’t notice that they all melt just before touching my skin.

“I wasn’t expecting this,” she says, looking away at the pine trees below her waving feet. “I’ve never…”

I nod, understanding. “Met someone on vacation. Me neither.” Except her vacation was probably hours away. Mine was lightyears.

“Right,” she says after some hesitation. “I guess I’m not a very romantic or relationshippy person.”

“You’re too young to define yourself like that,” I find myself saying. I want to take it back, but it’s too late. She’s looking at me funny, so I just give a big smile. She is young. If I had always lived on Earth, I would technically be twice her age or so. But I lived in a different solar system with a different definition of time, and a different definition of maturity. There are other technicalities that would have me almost an identical ‘age’ as her.

But am I just talking circles to normalize this interspecies relationship to myself? Maybe to practise for when I have to explain myself to my people?

I bite my tongue and look away, and soon we are hopping off the ski lift together. “That was so beautiful,” she says, breathless. “I feel … like if I had done that by myself, I would have had my nose in a notebook or in my phone and I wouldn’t have appreciated it.” Elle nudges at a clump of snow with her boot. “I’m just trying to say thank you. For a nice time. Even if it ends right now. You are really lovely.”

I’ve never been called lovely. My wrist device beeps, and I hurry to silence it. It has plenty more noise in it now that I’ve met Elle, and it’s starting to get annoying.

“Lead the way,” I say, and she makes her way through the bustling early morning market setup, and to the edges of the town.

I have forced myself into a day of investigating myself, and pretending to be shocked about everything new we learn. The thought should be exhausting. I watch Elle walk, a bounce in her step, shine in her wavy hair, and I don’t feel exhausted at all. I’ve never felt so exhilarated.

This is nothing but dangerous.

Chapter Nine

Elle

Braxen is fine with my insistence on quickly showering, washing the smell of smoke, sex and snow out of my hair, and changing into a more brunch-appropriate outfit. He has plenty of things to do, I presume, so I get busy.

I’m running a brush through my hair and stifling a yawn when Liara bursts through the door and whispers a curseword at it for hitting the wall and making a noise.

Then she spots me, and freezes in the doorway.

My yawn turns into a laugh and I turn from her back to the mirror. “You were out all night?” I ask.

She tuts and tucks flyaway hair behind her ears. She is indeed wearing the last outfit I saw her in, and looking like she got even less sleep than me. “I thought you’d be in bed,” she grumbled. “I need coffee now.”

As she storms over to raid the cupboards for anything resembling caffeine, she pauses to squint at me. “Did you do anything last night? Anything at all?”

Feeling suddenly defensive, I raise my eyebrows at her in the mirror. “Nothing. Why?”

But that was the wrong answer. Liara makes a big show of sighing. “Nothing at all? I told you, don’t just shut yourself away and work, Elle. Do something. Go see the market today?”

“I…” I can’t tell her my real plans today, unfortunately, but I can tell her some of it. “Yeah, I am heading the market. I met a guy, actually.”

I expect her to squeal and pry details out of me, but Liara shakes her head as she pulls out a French press and sniffs at some coffee before choosing one. “Elle, I just want you to get out of the house and off your laptop. Get your mind off work. Sure, meeting a guy would be great, but—”

I feel irritation flare in my chest. “You don’t believe me? Why would I lie?”

“Why would you lie? I don’t know, but I came home to grab some of my stuff last night and your laptop was open and ready, and I saw, like, six notebooks filled with work notes spilling out of your luggage. Where did you go really? To sniff something out?”

Damn. I set my brush down and turn to face her. She’s actually really angry. I hate hate hate conflict, so I just swallow and pause before I answer. “The truth is, I did go out to follow a lead for a story,” I begin, very carefully. The last thing I want is to fight. I open my mouth to continue, you know, to the good part, but Liara holds up a hand and cuts me off.

“I knew it. You know what, Elle? Do whatever the hell you want. I dislike what you’ve become since graduation, but I still loved the person you were inside. But this? You’re lying to me now?” She shakes her head, her eyes fiery with anger, and I want to yell over her, but I’m stunned. She’s never spoken to me like this before. “Whatever. Work all you like. I’m going to get coffee in town; this stuff is stale. And then I’m going to ski, which I know you hate, so don’t bother pretending you might join me. Save it.”

She flounces off and the door shuts again before I can speak.

My best friend dislikes who I am?

I head to meet with the couple with my head spinning. Liara’s words echo through my mind. I do like to work. I like the rush I get from publishing something. The rush I get from reading comments, good or bad. I like the money I get paid, and how it enables me to pay my rent.

The more I think about it, the more annoyed I get at my best friend. How could she be so unsupportive of me? So rude? Why ruin our time together, when by her own admission we don’t get much?

But then, by the time I reach the cafe, I’ve done a 180 and I’m near tears thinking about it from her point of view. Yeah, we were supposed to spend time together. She met a guy and had one evening with him, but then returned and figured that I had always intended to spend the entire vacation busy with something else. I get why she’s upset. I’m pretty upset at me too.

I stop outside the cafe and my boots crunch to a halt. Braxen is waiting outside, looking hot and huge and is it my imagination or is he literally steaming in the cold air? He can certainly melt any ice in me with just a look; just a smile. I’m melting right now as he catches my eye.

I stop and glance inside, not seeing the couple I agreed to meet with. I bite my lip, and pull him out of the eyeline of the people inside. He raises his eyebrows, looking concerned.

“What’s wrong? Something with the case?”

It’s adorable he’s calling it ‘the case’, and I let out a laugh before shaking my head. “Let’s blow it off. Let’s hang out together instead. My place is empty.”

There’s a silence, and my veins begin to freeze with the awkwardness of it all. He’s rejecting me, he never liked me, I’ve misread everything.

“Elle, that sounds amazing,” he mumbles. “Don’t you want to work on your story?”

“I have an idea for another story,” I tell him, feeling my skin flush red as he stares down at me. “You like reindeer, right?”

He looks puzzled and cute, and I lead him back to my rental, feeling empowered and giddy about my decision. I would never normally blow anyone off, no matter what, but this is a vacation, and it’s not like I left them high and dry in a frozen cave. If anything, I’ve tricked them into having brunch at the world’s cutest local cafe.

The reindeer are outside, and look interested in him especially. I grab a cold carrot from the bucket and snap it in half, handing the top half to Brax. He raises his eyebrows at me and takes a bite.

“Just testing it,” he says, and for some reason I find this hilarious. I make no effort to hide my laughter, as months or even years of built up tension and stress trickles out of my body. Tears leave my eyes as Braxen stands watching me, holding up half a carrot.

Knowing he’s watching me and confused, and for some reason also the carrot in his hand, makes me laugh harder, and I’m bent double wheezing and holding my stomach as he pats my back.

I haven’t laughed like that since my mom passed away. I haven’t laughed like that since it caused me to graduate with a bad grade when my entire life I’ve been an A student. I haven’t laughed like that since I’ve thrown myself into my work 24/7 to avoid thinking about my losses and my failures.

I feel like I’ve just taken an antidote. When I stand up, my tears cold on my cheeks, I feel lighter than air. Like I could spread my arms wide and fly. I needed to relax. I needed to do something, anything, for me.

“Thank you, Brax,” I say, and wipe my eyes. He stands, holding his awkward carrot, and then snorts and begins to laugh himself. “I don’t think you know what just happened, but it was … cathartic. I think.”

“You have no idea what you’re doing to my wristwatch right now,” he says, and I smile at him, but my brows furrow in confusion. He traces his tongue over his lower lip, and then something possesses him to yank me forward with more passion than anything that happened last night, and press his lips hard into mine.

Suddenly he’s pressing my back against the wall of the lodge, his teeth grazing so lightly yet firmly against my bottom lip that my knees actually begin to shake. His tongue pushes through my lips and his fingers thread through my hair.

Something hard, long, thick, presses against me, between my legs as he pushes my wrists back against the cold wall. But I don’t feel the cold. I never do when I’m with him.

“I need you,” he says, pulling away and shaking his head as if in disbelief. “I’ve never needed anyone; anything. But I think I need you.”

I swallow, overcome by his desire for me. No one has ever looked at me like this, or grabbed me like this. Never. I expect myself to stammer, but it comes out clear as a sleigh bell. “Take me, then.”

Brax, my strange, beautiful, winter break man, grips my waist and is about to lift me into his arms to take me into my charming rental. And from what I can feel against my hip, I know he is about to make my entire vacation more than worthwhile, but then … he stops.

And you could hear a pine needle drop.

I can actually see the hairs standing up on the back of his neck, and then I notice the reindeer begin to buck and struggle. I peek over his shoulder, and that’s when I see it.

A big — um, no, huge — black bear has ambled casually past the tree line of the forest we’re backed up onto. It raises itself onto its back legs and paws at the air, and then lets out a misty bellow. The reindeers buck and pull to the end of their tethers, and I let out a gasp.

We could just run inside, but leave these poor animals to their fate? I bet there’s bear spray somewhere in some cupboard or storage space inside, but it’ll take me so long to go find it. I’m not used to there being predators in my back yard!

“Shoo!” I push past Braxen, who was clutching my shoulders protectively. I flail my arms around and yell louder. “Go! Go on!”

I saw a nature documentary once that said most of the time black bears, and I’m pretty sure that’s what this is, will just turn around and leave when faced with any opposition. Unless desperate.

But this one doesn’t seem to be desperate or sick, and it also doesn’t seem to be scared of me in the slightest. “Boo!” I yell, and Braxen steps up next to me and begins clapping and shouting too.

The bear isn’t scared. It lowers itself to all four feet and slowly wanders up to the reindeer fence, and then rises up and plants his forepaws on the fence that divides them. It’s sniffing at them so hard that its nostrils are flaring and steam is pouring from them. The thing, close up, is so big it’s making me tremble.

“We can’t leave, we can’t just leave,” I’m saying over and over, practically begging Braxen to have the answer. I take another step towards the fence and clap hard, just five feet from its huge head. It turns to blink at me, and then opens his enormous mouth filled with huge bear teeth, and gives a harsh, roaring bellow. Shaking, I try to stand my ground. “Go!” I say again. “This is a town! Shoo!”

It grumbles, opens and shuts its mouth as if to snap at me, and then shakes its huge shaggy head. Then it takes a step towards me. And then another one.

I’m frozen. Literally. I can’t move. Why is this happening? Is this some kind of divine punishment for me for letting go of the stress, the pain, the anxiety that I’ve been keeping inside me for so long? The universe is pointing and laughing right now. You thought you could relax! it’s saying, rolling in fits of laughter.

My eyes are about to well up with tears as I wonder how I could have prevented this, when…

I don’t quite know how to describe it, but even in the middle of the day, suddenly everything around is bathed in a harsh, orange glow. I’m warmed, and the bear averts his gaze, and it’s as if an actual star has fallen silently and quickly to the ground right behind me.

The bear chuffs and grunts, shifts from foot to foot, but advances no further. And then, from behind me, out steps a stag.

A stag that I can barely look directly at, because it shines so brightly. Every inch of this thing, almost twice the size of the panicking reindeer to my side, is glowing with the golden brightness of the sun itself. I take a step back until I’m pressed against the wooden wall once again, but this time without Braxen’s huge, firm body right up against me.

But I don’t feel alone. I feel confident, awed, ready for anything. A huge difference from the terror that was wrecking me body and mind just seconds ago. I feel uplifted. Tears of humble joy spring to my eyes as the bear looks away from the golden stag, shakes itself off again, and trudges back through the trees and into the forest. Hopefully never to bother us again.

Seriously, how lost did it get to end up here? Those poor reindeer. But my eyes refuse to leave the huge deer, with thick branching antlers, and fur the color of liquid gold.

I’m shaking, and after a while it turns to look at me. There’s something in those eyes. Something quite sad, and I feel it right in my gut. It takes a step forward, and then another … and the third step it takes towards me, it does it as Braxen. Seamless.

He reaches forward, and takes my frozen fingers in his, hot and comforting as a fireside, and immediately I feel warmed, safe, calm. Physically, I do, but my mind and heart are still racing to catch up. I try to speak, but nothing comes out, so I just shake my head up at him.

He looks melancholy, but accepting, and he finally speaks. “We should talk,” he says, and I am pretty inclined to agree.

Chapter Ten

Braxen

Rule One: Don’t integrate yourself too far into society.

Rule Two: Don’t get attached or form more than simple, casual relationships.

Rule Three: Do not reveal yourself to the natives as an extraterrestrial. They may not be understanding. They may act violently. They may be hostile. Don’t do it. At all.

I lead her silently indoors as I recount each rule, and how long it took me to break each one. Not very long, honestly, and I had always considered myself quite a law-abiding citizen. It’s surprising, in a way, but then I look at Elle, and I know it isn’t really surprising at all.

There’s no other way this could have gone.

“What are you?” she whispers, still holding on to my hands like they’re lifelines to the past. To an innocent time, minutes ago, when I was just a man and she was just a woman. And things were not complicated at all.

So sweet, and so perfectly simple. Just me, her, a roaring fire, and the settling of snow outside.

“We are called Reilendeer,” I say. “The similarity to your Earth word is not a coincidence. We came a long time ago. We tried to harvest positive feelings when there were none left to be had on our own planet. We left, and only returned again recently. There was a communication issue, and my people left without me. Since none of my devices would work without positive psychic energy, I couldn’t contact them. They were trained to presume me dead, so that’s what they did.”

She shakes her head slowly. “You’re an alien? You’re seriously an alien?”

I try not to smile, but I do. “I thought I was a monster? I guess I’m both.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that.

“I don’t really like the word alien,” I continue, “but I am from another planet. Another solar system entirely, actually. Our tech there runs on psychic energy, but for some reason our harvests have been going so poorly recently. That’s why we spread out further and further, and eventually it got me stranded here.”

She shakes her head, still speechless, mouth hanging open. Then, finally, she says something.

“I don’t know what I want to talk about first: the fact that you were running around town with me ready to find out more about the ‘monster’, or the fact that … that …”

I cringe a little, waiting for what comes next.

“That you’re the most beautiful, incredible thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Which do we talk about first?” She is almost stammering now, and I feel a tug deep in my chest. It’s guilt, but it’s also worry — am I going to lose the best thing that ever happened to me since leaving my planet?

“I don’t know,” I admit, and step forward, closing the gap between us and lifting her chin with my forefinger. “I don’t know if we need to talk at all.”

Elle is completely still. Her lips are so inviting, even if they are twisted in uncertainty. She just saw me switch to a different form; an ethereal form. One that cannot possibly exist within the confines of her own planet and its laws of science.

“Are you … are your people hostile?”

Another tug inside me pulls when she asks me this. “No,” I assure her. “In fact, we have your planet classed as one of the more hostile ones in the known universe.” I give her a small smirk of apology when she looks horrified. “You guys are pretty unfair to each other on Earth sometimes. Always starting wars with your own people over things that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.”

Elle actually rolls her eyes at me. “I get you’re an alien, but saying stuff as obvious as that just makes you sound like a jackass.” But she’s still smiling. “I think humanity really isn’t so bad.”

“From what I’ve seen, it really isn’t,” I agree. “I spend every day just trying to give things away. Gifts, money. They never want to accept anything without giving something in return.” I stoop and press my lips to hers, remembering how amazing she tastes everywhere, and feeling my cock harden almost against my will. “There’s so much good in the world, and I think your people just aren’t looking in the right places.”

I let the illusions fall away, slowly so I don’t frighten her any more than this needs to. I see reflected in her eyes, and dancing across her skin, my own true golden glow.

Chapter Eleven

Elle

I can’t stop thinking about what Braxen said, so even as he lifts me into his arms and my eyes are dazzled by his true alien form, I’m distracted.

I’m distracted until he carries me to my bedroom — which I hadn’t yet graced with my own presence — and lays me down on the soft, thick comforter before crawling over me to kiss my lips with urgency, hunger, and passion.

Then his words are lost to me as I feel like I’m floating, my body light as air as his tongue softly, but firmly, enters my mouth and dances against mine.

Soon his hands are scrabbling against my clothes. His body is still almost exactly human, but he has been somehow suppressing some of his true form. His skin glows a bright, glittering burnt amber. His eyes are the color of pyrite; like decadently dark wood peppered with glowing embers that seem to crackle when he stares at me.

And on his head, nestled in his dark curly hair, sit two short horns that arc outward, reminding me of ancient Greek depictions of satyrs or fawns. I take him in when he pulls back from the kiss, absolutely astonished by him.

Not just by him. By myself, too. By my reaction to him.

I’m writhing under his firm, perfectly sculpted like a marble statue, body. I waste no time in pulling off his two layers of shirt, and bite softly at his neck and shoulder, feeling the ebb and flow of his intense natural heat. But I never once feel overwhelmed by the temperature that emanates from him.

“You look like a … a demigod,” I joke as I fumble with his belt buckle, and then his zipper. He helps me, as if clothing has become the ultimate burden to us both and we cannot wait another second for it to be crumpled on the floor beside the bed.

“A what?” he asks, puzzled, but flashing his perfectly white teeth at me in a grin.

“Never mind,” I laugh, and squirm out of my underwear just in time for him to push his now-weirdly human boxers down. Exposing the most beautiful cock I’ve ever seen: long, thick, beaded at the end with sparkling hints of his arousal.

I sit up and bend over, forcing him to lean back to make space for me, and before I can really stop and think, I am lapping up his arousal. It looks like liquid diamond in the light, and tastes equal parts salty and sweet. At first I hesitate, not really sure what I’m doing, but the taste of him grows on me so quickly and so urgently that I find myself swallowing him deeper and deeper into my mouth.

Soon his tip is flirting with the back of my throat, and I slide him all the way out again to circle him with my tongue. I’ve never felt so … powerful, before. It’s hard to explain just how incredible it makes me feel to see this huge, strong otherworldly man quake at the knees because of the lightest touches of my lips and tongue.

“I need you more than I have ever needed anything,” he says, his voice deep and yet musical now, as if he had also been suppressing his real tone to sound more human.

I realize I don’t have a clever answer for him. I’ve spent too long backing out of and shying away from real life. This is what I truly want, and I’m going to have it. “Me too,” I say. My voice is barely a whisper, and when he presses his mouth against mine again, the end of my sentence becomes a whimper.

His cock presses against my opening, slick with the need I just promised him, and with only the slightest of thrusts he pushes several of many inches inside me. Filling me up. Pushing me to my limits already, and he’s only halfway there. I gasp, inhaling against his mouth, and my shuddering surprise calls him to nip at my lower lip, running his fingers through my hair.

As he enters me, I know without a doubt that I have never felt so wanted; so adored. Never.

“This is my first time,” I say, my words a rush and a scramble; I feel guilty if he thinks I’ve hidden anything from him. Which is silly, considering. “But I don’t want you to stop. I just wanted you to know. If I’m … you know.”

“Sweet thing,” he murmurs into my hair, nuzzling me as he slides out, leaving me aching almost painfully to be filled again. “You are perfect. Tell me what you want, and how you feel, and if you ever want to take a break.”

“A break?” I wrap my legs around his waist and angle myself around his thick shaft so that it feels even more incredible the next time he slowly slides inside me. Already, my thighs are quivering and my breath feels more shallow. I know from my time alone exactly what I want and what I need from a man. Or a … him. “I want you to move faster.”

He complies immediately and pistons between my legs, filling me up full and then pulling out almost entirely until I’m gasping. Crying out. The alternating between being almost overwhelmed by him, and needing all of him back inside me, is so intense that my back arches and my insides begin to heat up.

But just before I climax harder than I ever have before in my life, Brax covers me with his body, scrapes at my neck with his teeth, and turns my face to look him in the eyes.

“I want you to be mine. Forever. We can figure out the details later. Just say you’ll be with me.”

The hurried intensity of his voice, and the quickness of his breaths, suggests that he is just as close as me. I am stunned by his beauty, his vulnerability; by the way he looks at me.

I nod. “I’ll be yours. If you can be mine.”

“Forever.”

It’s shocking that it doesn’t feel strange to me. Not at all. In fact, right in this moment as he slides with excruciating slowness in and out of me, I feel like I can see and think with more clarity than I ever could before.

“I want to make you happy,” he offers, breathless, and then gives me a smirk.

And I just know. I am absolutely his. “Let’s do it.”

He traces his lips across my collarbone from my shoulder to my neck, and then clamps his teeth down lightly against my pulse. I feel the tip of his tongue teasing at my heartbeat, and then my body tenses as the orgasm hits me. Then rolls off me. Then hits me again. I’m shuddering, and the lights seem brighter. When he fills me, I feel as if the heat of the sun itself is roaring from my core outwards. Every extremity, every eyelash, every hair on my head is filled with liquid warmth, and together we tense, and then relax.

“You’re everything I think I’ve ever wanted,” he says, brushing my lips with his. “And I didn’t know it.”

“I feel so lucky,” I murmur back, nuzzling into his perfectly shaped chest. Running my hand up his chiseled form, and feeling the aftershock of each earthshattering climax ripple through my body.

I didn’t understand the meaning of ‘toe-curling’ until today.

Finally, after kissing him until I felt able to walk again, I got to my feet and took the most leisurely cool shower. The water eased away the heat I’d taken on from his skin, but I never felt uncomfortable in the slightest.

I felt totally blissful, and completely at peace.

When I was out, and smelled wonderfully like flowers and cream, I towelled myself off and wrapped myself up and found Braxen back in his full human form, and fast asleep. Every now and then, maybe at the apex of each breath, his skin color ripples from golden tan to glittering gold under the light.

I watch his perfect chest rise and fall for a moment, and then I head downstairs to check on my phone.

Five messages.

One spam, one from my boss asking how it’s going, and three from Liara. Uh oh.

‘Sorry. Maybe I overreacted. But I dunno, maybe I didn’t. Meet me at the slopes and we’ll hang out, have some fun like we wanted to?’

‘... Are you ignoring me? You check your phone, like, every ten minutes. You could have at least told me you weren’t coming. I’m really kind of mad at you, and this isn’t helping.’

‘Fine. Wow. Can’t believe you’re being this way. Trying to stay mad, but … dunno, Elle. I’m just upset right now. Give me some space. I don’t want to talk for a while.’

I checked the time. The last one had come in just nine minutes ago. All in all, Liara had waited almost two hours for a reply from me. She was right — if nothing had been happening, and I’d been at home working like she expected, I should have replied within just a few minutes. I was glued to my stupid devices.

Absently I realize I am sort of hugging my phone like it’s my actual friendship with Liara.

She is more important to me than, well, almost anything.

“Brax,” I call, and then jog up the stairs and back to my bedroom. I’m not sure what it is I want from him, but I don’t want to stand there alone with those sad messages from my best friend. “Braxen.”

Should I ignore her desire to be alone and go and try to find her? Force her to spend time with me? I decide a text will be less invasive, and more immediate. I will let her cool off once she realizes I wasn’t being cruel, and then we can talk later. It seems like the smartest move.

As I go into the room, I send Liara a text. ‘I have so much to tell you,’ it says. ‘I was NOT ignoring you. I love you. I’m so sorry, for everything. I can’t wait to spend time with you when you get home.’

He is sitting up, rubbing his head, and when he sees me he looks so happy. I feel butterflies in my stomach, and I hit ‘Send’ without worrying for an hour whether the message had the exact right tone. Immediately, it buzzes back, and I snatch it up.

‘NEED a story by tonight. What’s going on over there?! You’re normally so fast at responding Elle, what’s the deal?’

I do a double take, having assumed it’d be from my friend, and read it over again.

Obviously it’s my boss. I check the date, and wrack my brain. Tonight? I shake my head and looked up at my alien reindeer’s sweet, blissful expression. “Give me … a few minutes,” I say. “I need to do something.”

My head is swimming with all the different things that happened in the last few hours, but I still feel that astonishing clarity.

It’s like something fundamentally changed inside me when I said yes to Braxen. To forever. It wasn’t time to think about forever just yet, though. Yes, I absolutely want to spend every second with him, but as I wait for Liara to return and meet him, I know something with absolute certainty. I have something more important to do right now.

Something for me.

I sit down at my laptop, open it, and I begin to write.

Chapter Twelve

Braxen

The next half hour is what I would call perfection. I never knew it truly existed. My wrist device is measuring that my comms could be almost halfway charged. I’ve collected half the energy I need to phone home, and it was all just mine and Elle’s happiness from today.

And I don’t know what to be more excited about: the fact that I can almost phone home, or the fact that Elle said yes to being with me. Forever.

She’s my mate. My one and only. My everything.

And soon I can contact my people again.

I should be ecstatic about the latter, but all I can think about is her. I watch as she taps furiously on her own device, still powered by electrical currents instead of psychic energy, which is adorable and dated. She smells delicious, and somehow looks even better.

When I pass her a cup of coffee, she takes it and thanks me with the softest, sweetest kiss for anticipating her needs.

Finally, she stops tapping, and I hear a little ‘whoosh’ noise as she sends an unknown message into the ether.

She is looking happy, pink-cheeked, and ready for anything when she rises from the table, but my stomach begins to twist.

The thing is — I know I’ve made the right decision. I spent all this time desperate to find a  way to get my people to find their way back to me, and now I have it. With Elle’s help, I have my way home. My way off this sweet, hostile, little green and blue rock. But now that I have it, do I want it? I refuse to take her off of Earth when no other human even knows about all the life out there. It would be too much for her. Too unfair of me to ask. At least I have the translator and the human disguise.

I know I’ve made my decision, but it feels bittersweet. Everything I’ve worked for, I now have to rethink. That’s all. It’s just an adjustment.

She stands and stretches, and I ask what she was up to. “You’ll see,” is all she replies, and wraps her arms around me. When she leans her head on my chest, she lets out a sweet hum. An ‘mmm’, and I just can’t get enough of it. I will never get enough of her.

I lift her chin and kiss her, deeply, and she feels me get hard against her hipbone and bites her lip up at me. “You are naughty,” she says, wiggling her hips and smirking as if she’s said something funny. “Or are you nice?”

I tilt my head. “I’m nice, I think.” I nod. “It seems like I fulfill the definition of nice. Why do you ask?”

She begins to hum, dancing around a little and lifting my arm and spinning. “Gonna find who’s naughty and nice.” She takes my hips and gets me to step side to side with her for a moment, laughing. “You don’t know the song? Santa Claus is coming … to town.”

My human girl is so incredibly cute, so gorgeous, and is acting more calm and carefree than I’ve ever seen her, and I let her rock us from side to side slowly as I kiss her again. We dance for a moment to music that only she can hear, her head resting on my chest with a smile on her face.

And then I feel it.

A rumbling. Shaking. Tumbling. My hands tremble, and I take her wrists and step back, looking around. I know my eyes are wide and my teeth are almost audibly chattering, because Elle looks concerned and gives my shoulder a small shake.

“Brax? Braxen. What’s wrong?”

The feeling passes, and I shiver violently as it leaves my system. “Avalanche,” I say through gritted teeth. She raises her eyebrows, and I let out a heavy breath. “We have a few minutes, and then an avalanche is going to hit the ski slopes.”

She shakes her head slowly, gives me a deep frown that I wish I didn’t have to explain away. “This is like your alien superpower?”

I smile at that, and when she sees it, her frown turns into a matching smile too. “Yeah, just like that. I can sense them. I’ve always been able to, ever since … well, my brother died in one back on my planet when I was a kid.” I swallow, never seeming to be able to get that part out without the lump forming in my throat. “An avalanche none of us saw coming. My people, when we’re affected by things, sometimes we build up psychic defense mechanisms from them. It’s, uh, it’s normal to us. Maybe not for you guys.”

“Brax,” she says, shaking her head, and I feel pain emanating from her. “That’s so awful. I’m sorry. It’s like I can feel your grief. I feel like I can see it happening. What’s going on?”

I kiss the top of her head, feeling the roiling guilt and sadness pass back and forth between us. “This is mated life,” I say. “We promised to be each other’s, forever. We call that mating. I sealed it with a bite.” I bend a little to kiss the skin of her collarbone.

“So— Wait.”

She shrugs me off and backs up, holding up her palms. “An avalanche on the ski slopes? Wh-where’s…” She trails off, and fumbles for her phone, tapping it as she paces and holding it to her ear. “Liara.” She pulls it away and yells at the screen. “Pick up!” Then she turns to me, tears springing to her eyes. And I feel her feelings, like a punch in the gut.

Worry. Regret. Guilt. Sorrow. Man, when this woman feels, she really feels. This must be why she almost single-handedly filled my energy-measuring device up to halfway.

No wonder I was awed by her from the second we met.

“You think someone is in trouble?” I ask, but I know the answer. She wheels around and I can see it in her face. “A friend?” She nods, and confirms what I already knew.

I bury my head in my hands. I can’t let this happen. I have a 100% success rate so far.

I can’t let the snow take someone else. Not while I’m here.

I tap on my wrist device and flick the tiny switches. All this time, I’ve had it on full absorption mode, but it can do more than that. At around this full, I am certain it can give me access to my almost full range of abilities. That includes the ability to treat Earth as a lower gravity planet, as well as engaging what is ultimately a miniature personal warp drive. I explain it as well as I can to Elle and she shakes her head, lost and confused, until I’m finished.

The transfer is complete. The energy has ebbed completely out of the device, and instead the molecules in the air surrounding me are enriched with concentrated and fully processed psychic energy.

I feel it buzz and ripple through my veins; through every cell in my body. I flash and ripple a glittering gold, and feel power spilling through my body.

“What’s happening?” Elle has tears in her eyes, and every fiber of my being wants to stop what I’m doing and comfort her, but instead I need to act. Now is the time to put all of my concentration into making things right on this mountain.

“We’re going to save your friend,” I growl, and then I start to shift.

Chapter Thirteen

Elle

I have never been in a situation like this, so it’s only reasonable that I feel shaken. So many things have happened, and now Braxen is trying to explain to me that avalanches happen all the time on this mountain?

Seriously? All the time? What’s the deal with the mayor trying to pass this place off as the ideal ski vacation when avalanches are constantly endangering people?

As he leads me outside and finishes his transformation into the huge, dazzlingly beautiful reindeer, with antlers that branch and curve high as a small tree, the Elle inside me who went to journalism school begins to piece things together.

The Elle who was hired to write exciting, cool, weird articles is keeping silent for once. This is the true me right now, turning everything I’ve learned since arriving here over and over, until it clicks.

Braxen is the monster. He senses disasters.

He’s diverting the public away from avalanches. Again and again. Possibly every single day.

How many lives has he saved? How many people owe their existence to a scary sighting of a hurtling ball of fire and antler by the side of the slope?

I can’t properly make sense of what I’ve just figured out, because he is fully shifted, and we don’t have much time. He tosses his huge, gorgeous head at me as if to tell me to climb on, and I feel panic rear its head inside of me.

But we’ll be returning with Liara, at least, so I have a better idea than jumping up onto his golden back.

Braxen stays still, except for the impatient stomping of his three-toed hooves in the snow, as I hitch him up to the sleigh, my heart pounding. Because I know exactly what I’m doing, exactly what’s about to happen, and I can’t believe it’s about to become my reality.

I swear, I think as I fumble with the reins, I used to be the most normal person ever. And now this? I’ll have to freak out later, because right now, I think Liara might really need me. Need both of us.

We’re a team now. The weirdest team ever.

Braxen doesn’t even wait for me to disengage the four already hooked up reindeer. He begins to walk, snorting misty breath into the air and tossing his head at me again. Before I can argue, or just scream, I leap into the sleigh.

And he’s running, and running faster, and I feel the rumbling of the sleigh against the stone path vibrate through my body. And then he’s airborne.

We are airborne.

The other four reindeer don’t seem to care. They continue to gallop, happy as anything, through thin air as we rise higher, higher, higher. Above the treetops, above the town.

I don’t know if anyone looks up, but I can’t even imagine what they would be thinking if they do.

I feel dizzy, sick, scared out of my mind. Without the guard around my feelings — this newfound perfect clarity — I feel truly scared.

But it’s OK.

I sit up slowly and grip the prettily painted siding in the sleigh, and carefully look out over the snowy trees and buildings again. My breath is coming hard and fast, and I’m sweating in places I didn’t even know could sweat. I’m scared.

But I’m a lot of things. I’m exhilarated. I’m excited. I’m almost literally on top of the world. And I have the most wonderful partner with me. I know he won’t let me down. So, bit by bit, without packing away my feelings in a box as if they’re something to hate about me — without squeezing my emotions down with work and deadlines and endless tasks — I tackle my fear. Using the hardest tool of all. I face it.

And soon, I’m not a frightened girl anymore. I’m a woman riding through the air in Santa’s sleigh, led by four reindeer and a glowing beacon of light. They gallop through the air, and it’s the smoothest ride ever. I’m not afraid anymore.

For the first time in a really long time, I feel like I’m really me.

I lean forward and try to angle my body with the movement, streamlining the process as well as I possibly can. Soon, the town ends, and the pure whiteness of the ski slopes and mountainsides begins.

“I don’t see her!” I yell over the whooshing of chill wind in my ears. I wrap myself in a hug and shudder. “I don’t see anyone.”

I doubt Braxen can hear me out here, so I grab up the reins again as he descends down the biggest, meanest looking slope. The same one we spent our first night together on. I see two figures huddled, bent over, skiing fast down the slope. Above, at the top, I hear a soft rumble begin almost too quiet to hear.

But Brax hears it, and confirms it for me when he jerks his head in that direction. Then he speeds up, launching through the falling snow straight for the two figures.

I see Liara better now, in her slightly baggy borrowed ski suit. Orange and blue with racing stripes. She keeps tossing worried looks over her shoulder, and I can see from her body language that she is aware of the strange noise behind her. The slight change in the atmosphere; the eerie still before everything comes crashing down.

Why hasn’t the mayor shut this place down if it’s such a hazard? I don’t understand.

“Here!” I very gently tug on the reins, and to my surprise, all reindeer curve to that direction and instantly begin their descent, just from the lightest touch of my hand. “Liara. Liara!” I’m yelling at the top of my lungs as we gallop through the air towards her from behind.

She shoots another look over her shoulder, and locks eyes on the flying sleigh, complete with five airborne reindeer, one at the front glowing like a golden star.

Liara screams.

The noise cuts through even the silence caused by swirling snow and the rumbling of a beginning avalanche.

We land, thundering down the slope with the sudden sound of twenty pounding hooves. I hold out my hand for Liara. She looks at me, at my probably red face, my frozen, outstretched hand, mouth open trying to think of something to say. Anything to say to make this less weird. Less unbelievable.

Then, the strangest thing happens. Somehow just about stranger than everything else that’s happened in the last couple of hours.

Liara reaches out with her gloved hand, still taking care not to trip and fall as she glides down the mountainside, and she grasps my hand tightly. Wordlessly.

Soon, she’s in the sleigh beside me, ski-clad feet awkwardly hanging out of the side. Her male friend, who I’m pretty sure is the actual driver of the sleigh I kind of stole, is gaping like a dying fish, but eventually the two of us together pull him in.

Finally, we soar upwards again, ascending with Braxen in the lead, and then whatever swirling energy he’s running on hits each next reindeer in succession, and then we’re in the air again. Liara is panting with fear, cold, exhilaration, and then finally turns to me and pushes her goggles up onto the top of her head.

“What…?” is all she can say, gesturing around. “Is this … no, wait. What is this?”

I nod my head at the gold glowing deer at the head of the party, and wrap my arm around Liara’s waist so she isn’t toppled out of the sleigh when we bank sharply to the left. “I guess I have a lot to tell you,” I yell over the sound of the approaching snow.

Below us, just about missing the tips of their galloping hooves, the avalanche explodes down the slope. The snow from the top of the decline finally settles at the bottom, and then it’s pristine and peaceful again. It hardly looks like anything happened at all.

We ride the rest of the way back in shocked silence. Liara leans back in the sleigh once we touch down gently on the pathway, and Braxen and the reindeer slowly lead us back into the little paddock behind our rental cabin.

She’s unable to speak, and gently, I prod her. “It’s hard to explain,” I say finally. “But this is why I wasn’t replying. I was with him.”

Liara blinks and then turns to me. “Uh, him?” she asks. “There’s a him too?”

“I tried to tell you. His name is Braxen.” I nod in his direction, and Liara follows my gaze numbly, just in time to see an incredibly handsome man unclip and pet each reindeer, mumbling quietly to each one before they wander away for food and water.

He dusts himself down, tugs on his wool beanie, and then strides over to help us out of the sleigh. “It’s nice to meet you,” he says, beaming at Liara, and holds out his left hand. It’s an innocent mistake to make, especially for an alien, and Liara holds out her right hand and then quickly switches, grabbing his with her left.

“Can, uh, can someone explain to me what just happened?” she insists.

“It might take a while,” I say, rubbing my hands over my arms to try to warm up. “Let’s get inside and by the fire?”

Chapter Fourteen

Braxen

When Elle is finished explaining everything — leaving out only the fact that things in here got steamier than the cabin’s windows — Liara sits in silence. Her male friend, mate, whatever, has long since left to get some rest, and pleasantly assured us he was never drinking hard egg nog ever again.

Humans have this interesting habit of rationalizing away the things they don’t want to look deeper into. I have no doubt that this experience will be all but forgotten by him within the week.

“Well, we need to do something about this,” Liara says finally, and Elle is nodding. I look between them.

“Do something?” Is that not what I’ve been doing this whole time?

“Seven Pines is built on ski tourism. And there’s the mayor,” Elle says, narrowing her eyes as she thinks. “A mayor I was unable to get in touch with for a soundbite about the ski slope monster. Maybe he’ll be more interested in talking after I’ve done a little writing on the subject.” Her eyes actually flash with excitement, and it makes me happy to see her in her element like this.

“We can get expert opinions, witness testimony,” Liara says, looking just as excited. “You can write the hell out of this story.”

“I can?” She bites her lip, and then looks over at me. “I already did do … something. I wrote a story. About Braxen. I sent it to my editor, and he rejected it, of course, because it was too positive. He said no one wants to read anything positive. So I sent it to the local paper. They put it online right away, hours ago, and it already has thousands of hits.”

Elle fidgets with her phone for a moment before showing it to me. “I realize I should have asked first,” she adds, shifting from foot to foot as she presents the screen. “I was just so excited about what you were saying. About how to contribute to the world better; make the world just a fraction of a percentage better for just one moment in the day, and how much that can really matter. So I wrote it. My first positive piece.”

‘Seven Pines’s Christmas Wish Granted. Local Toymaker Brings Holiday Joy to All!’

It’s an article about, well, me. Just like she said. About what I’ve told her about my process carving toys. About how I try to give my wares away. And at the end it’s an opinion piece on why Elle thinks people in Seven Pines don’t want to accept free gifts. It’s overall incredibly positive. About me, and about the town. I’m touched.

“The editor of the local paper, online and in print, asked if I was looking to move here,” she chuckles, and then blushes a furious red.

“What did you say?”

“Oh, I think she was only kidding.” Elle swats away my question, as if it’s so ridiculous to think of my soulmate living here with me in this snowy mountain town. “But I think they’ll be very receptive over there to me writing one last negative story.”

Liara stands, grins, and punches the air. “We’re gonna expose whoever almost just killed me with negligence. You me, and this glowing reindeer alien!”

“Reilendeer,” I correct pleasantly. Liara doesn’t react.

“What are you doing?” she asks, nudging her best friend. “Get writing! I’ll help in any way I can. We will help in any way we can.”

The next hour is a rush, and a blur, and the three of us work together on Elle’s latest story.

I say work together. Elle writes while Liara and I make food and coffee and idly discuss who’s who around town. She has been seeing Mack McElroy, who works part time as a reindeer sleigh driver for the owner of a few nearby rental properties. I assure her that what I know of him is very positive, and she seems elated.

Later, I leave the cabin to grab some more snacks, and in the short walk into town and to the local store, my wrist device begins to beep.

And beep. And beep.

I glance down, and then do a double take and look at it again.

It’s full.

All around me, people are holding hands, children skipping around the market as it closes for the evening, and when some see me they point and wave. Or they grab their phones and double check it’s me from the article. Elle’s article.

“Braxen!” A man I barely recognize from town greets me warmly and claps me on the shoulder. “Great to see you.” I move on, a little stunned, mentally noting each and every smile I pass.

Elle was right. Words are everything. Stories are power. Happiness lies not just in what already exists around you, but how people choose to perceive it. What they consume, and how they interpret it.

I actually have it. Enough juice to talk to my family, my friends, my species back home. I’m no longer stuck on Earth.

When I head back into the cabin, snacks in hand, a deep frown must be set in my face because Elle greets me by springing from her laptop and holding my face in her hands as she kisses me. I sink into it.

There’s no debate. I know what I’m going to do.

“I finished it,” she whispers, looking equal parts terrified and excited. “I used some of my clout as a journalist for PressFeed, even though I technically don’t work there anymore, and I got quick soundbites from local experts on the problem. And on the solution. The mayor refused to comment.”

“You are extraordinarily beautiful when you feel passion about an issue,” I let her know, and she absolutely lights up. My girl glows brighter than I do.

“This needs to stop before someone gets hurt,” she says.

“I have been working on that.”

Her brow furrows. “You could get hurt, Brax. I can’t handle the thought of anything happening to you. I feel like I can feel your heart beat alongside mine ever since we, you know. Is it always like that?” The smirk on her face shows me she knows it isn’t always like this. She knows it’s special with us. I’m not from this world, and that means our love can only be otherworldly too.

“What do we do now?” Liara asks, stepping back into the room with a knowing smile when she sees me reach out to grab Elle’s hands.

My beautiful human turns to her friend and then back to me. “We’re going to visit the mayor of Seven Pines.”

Amused, Liara continues to prod. “Why do you care so much about this tiny town? Aren’t we leaving in a few days?”

Elle turns to me, cheeks coloring. Even after we’ve mated, is she nervous to ask me directly if we will be together? I place a kiss on her forehead to communicate that it is her call. Wherever she wants to be is fine with me. She’s my love, not my pet; she can pick where we go.

“I really like it here, Li. Don’t you?”

“Let me get this straight. You’re seriously moving here, the middle of nowhere, to be in a serious relationship with a stranger from another planet?” Liara sounds accusatory, but I can tell she is trying not to convey the pure happiness she feels for her friend. I am witnessing true friendship here. Liara would do anything for Elle.

Elle gives a dismissive shrug, but then seems to gain confidence. “Yes. I think I am. What do you think of that?”

Liara only chuckles. “I think it’s about time you followed your heart. Your mind is your friend, but it only wants you to work. There’s more to life than that.”

“You’re right, you’re right,” Elle says, and pulls on her coat. “I’ll be sure to listen out for what my kidneys have to say on the matter before I commit.”

Her friend follows close behind, mockingly chiding Elle, and I follow after her too. “What are we doing?” I ask aloud, though I am certain I know the answer.

“The mayor must have something to say about this. It won’t be complete until I get his quote.”

As Elle replies, I look up at the evening sky with curiosity. A shooting star zips across the deep blue, and I can’t help but wonder if my wish is going to come true. And do I even want it to?

Chapter Fifteen

Elle

The mayor lives and works in an ostentatious manor home just outside town, and it takes us very little time to find it with Braxen helping us navigate. The streets are cute, winding, lined with tall snow-capped trees, and we ascend higher and higher until we reach his ostentatious front door.

When his confused staff let us in and guide us reluctantly towards his office door, I steel my nerves and rap three times under the silver name plate. Mayor Kane finally yanks his door open and glares at all three of us.

“Jessica, what’s happening?” he barks over my shoulder. “Who are these people?”

I get such a bad vibe from his combover and pinched, agitated expression already, that I launch into my schpiel before settling in with any small talk first.

“Elle Jones from PressFeed. Do you have any comments on the Seventh Pine ski slope being an avalanche hazard?”

He half-stammers an angry denial before I cut in again. “Anything you want to say about it before I publish this proof globally?” I wave a printout of the article in front of his reddening face and he snatches it, scans it, and then goes white.

“This would ruin the town,” he says through gritted teeth, and in a swift movement — though he has to know it’s only for dramatic effect — he tears it in half. “Do you want all the people living here to lose their homes, their jobs? Because what? You want to run a ridiculous story?”

I swallow, regaining my nerve. “Your Christmas-related exports are the second-highest source of revenue for the town. If you put all your resources into those, they would far exceed the ski slope tourism anyway. Not to mention it’s only one slope you’d be shutting down.”

He gives a growl and goes to shut the door on me, but Liara steps forward and blocks it with her foot. Hands on hips, she glowers at the man. “We have all the evidence we need. We just wanted to give you the chance to comment,” she says, getting fully into the role. I knew she would understand the thrill of being a reporter if she gave it a chance.

“No comment,” the man snarls, struggling to close the door but clearly not about to cause damage to Liara’s foot and open a whole new can of worms.

“Are you going to keep letting your own citizens get in harm’s way like this?” I call over Liara’s shoulder, clicking my pen as menacingly as I can, ready to write. He stares at my pen, at the littered paper on his office floor, and then looks up at the large, intimidating form of Braxen with his arms folded. “Just a yes or no will be fine for the article.”

“You are incorrigible. Who even are you?” he spits.

I smile. “I’m a journalist.”

Damn, that feels good to say.

“Listen. I’ll talk to you. Just get in here before you cause a scene,” he says, nostrils flaring as he looks out at his assistant, Jessica from before, who is pretending not to listen.

“You don’t want to talk about the welfare of your people out here? Where better to talk about it?” I ask him loudly. My mentors tried to teach me when to prod and when to leave an interviewee alone, and I feel like now is the time to push Mayor Kane.

“Look here, Miss!” he shouts, stretching himself to his full height and waggling his finger at me. “You and your weird friends have got to leave. Right now. This is … this is unacceptable. I will not comment. I will not comment on this nonsense!” His face is reddening again like a ripe tomato, and I glance back towards Braxen, who has the weirdest look on his face. It looks like the mayor has spotted it too. “I don’t know what kind of intimidation technique this guy is trying, but he looks ridiculous, not frightening. Is he sniffing the air?”

“Mayor, are you saying you have no soundbite to give?” I ask, shifting over to the right a little as if to shield Brax from view. Why does my guy look so confused? “Are you going to step down over this scandal?”

He stammers. Behind us, Jessica hides a giggle with a cough. This guy may not be well-liked. “I’ll step down when … when pigs fly!” he snaps.

Braxen gently clears his throat and points to the left. Behind the reception desk is a large set of bay windows looking out over Seven Pines. Snow is gently swirling through the darkness, but I realize after a moment that it isn’t quite as dark as it should be. What’s going on?

“When pigs fly. How about reindeer?”

“What?” the mayor snaps, craning his neck to see where Braxen is pointing.

A dozen, no, two dozen reindeer, glowing like golden stars, gallop past our window up here. Forty feet from the sloping, snowy ground below.

They curve around, as if searching for something, hooves silently pounding against the sky as they go.

All of our mouths drop open, including Brax’s. “They’re here,” he mutters. “They’re really here…”

One of the reindeer turns its head and spies Brax, who lifts his arm in greeting and allows his body to glow a violent, heated gold.

The reindeer tosses its massive antlers, and crashes through the bay window.

Glass flies everywhere, and Jessica screams and flees to safety. Two dozen or so golden reindeer alight in the manor reception room, hooves crunching over glass, and slowly morph into the same humanoid alien as Braxen’s true form. They have differently-shaped horns on their heads instead of thick deer antlers, long, muscular limbs, glowing eyes, and chiseled bodies it’s hard to tear your eyes from.

My Braxen is most definitely the most handsome one of them all, though. He steps forward, places his hand to his chest, and then embraces one of the other men.

There’s a loud sound as Mayor Kane suddenly crumples to the floor in a dead faint.

*

Liara and I are hugging ourselves from the chill wind whipping through the air. Braxen and the other Reilendeer have caught up, shared stories in their rapid-fire mother tongue, with Brax tossing over out of context translations of things here and there. We’re cold, but the heat radiating from each alien is warming, so we’re doing OK while they chat, excited to be reunited.

I don’t want to think about what this means for me and Braxen. That his people are back, and he has a ticket off this planet. I know I’m not leaving Earth; that’s for sure.

So is this goodbye?

The thought brings hot pinpricks to the backs of my eyes, and I shiver from the cold as I force myself to think happier thoughts. Like, if this was all this was, that’s alright. Ultimately, these last few days were probably the happiest I’ve ever been. I can close my eyes and relive it whenever I want. The warmth and the joy. Just like I can close my eyes and remember being with my mother.

Finally, the reindeer men part ways momentarily, and Braxen makes his way back to me. He says something to Liara, so quiet I can’t hear what it is, and then he takes me to one side, out of hearing range of the others.

Tears still prick the backs of my eyes, but I ignore them and smile up at him. His tall, well-muscled body and kind, angular face. Heat radiates from him as he grasps my forearms and leans down.

I have no idea what he’s about to say, but when he speaks, I’m simultaneously surprised, and not really at all. “Stay with me.”

“Here?”

“Yes, here. I’m staying on Earth. The energy here, when it can be harvested at all, is potent. I have convinced them it’s within the good of our people to keep someone down here. Stay with me, Elle. I love you.”

I swallow, and my eyes finally well up with happy tears. “I think that would be a dream come true, Brax.”

Before I can say anything else, he’s kissing me. The glowing men nearby give little whoops and cries, and Liara whistles and then laughs as we break away.

“This town has nowhere to go but up now,” he says. “The story will run, and the mayor will be forced to resign if he doesn’t do it earlier. There’ll be new leadership, a new focus on creating custom holiday gifts and decorations. On giving. My business will thrive. And you can focus on writing stories. About anything you like.”

I think about it, thoughts swirling around too fast to catch and look at properly. “I think I’ve already had my fill of big scoops,” I say, looking beyond him at the mayor’s mansion. “Happy stories would be nice. You know, for a while. Human interest. Or nonhuman interest. I’d like to talk about the people who inject a little good into the world. Make sure everyone knows about the positive.”

Suddenly, Braxen looks different. I can’t quite put my finger on his expression. Is it pride? It’s something so human and yet so alien to me, because I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen it.

“What are you thinking about?” I ask him, looking at our companions, still too far to quite hear us. Unless aliens have super-hearing, which they very well might.

“I’m just thinking about a wish I made,” he says cryptically. “And how it came true in the most magical, unexpected way.”

He takes my hand, and together we walk down the winding, sloping, tree-lined paths back to his gorgeous little Christmas village. Our gorgeous little Christmas village. And I think about my own wishes, and how unexpectedly and magically they came true too.

I took a leap of faith, believed in myself a little, and came away with the most incredible Christmas gift I could ever have imagined. Not only did I discover what true happiness is, I found my calling, my soulmate, and my home all in one crazy weekend.

I think about how lucky I am as he leads me back to the cabin, and finally up to the bedroom.

His lips claim mine, now and always. He consumes me with his love, heats me from the inside out with his commanding kisses; different now that we’re truly, completely committed. I turn my head just in time to see a shooting star out the window. Then another. Then another. And I smile.

Because I know now that wishes really can come true.

Epilogue

Braxen

I wasn’t able to wear a woolen cap during the ceremony, because of human tradition. And since I’ve made the decision to live within human society now, I have to acquiesce.

The problem is, when I feel extreme emotion, sometimes I worry that my guise will fade. It’s not the worst thing if my skin gradually looks more tan; if I give off more heat. But the beginnings of horns poking through my hair? Impossible to explain away.

I just have to stand up straight, tall, look straight ahead, and try to contain myself.

When Elle walks down the aisle, the music changes and everyone rises, and I forget how close I am to losing control of my disguise. She looks like a vision. Honey-colored waves are loosely pinned on top of her head, and her dress sparkles, subtly, as though it has an inner glow. It reminds me of the way my people look in their true forms, and I know that must have gone through her mind too.

To distract myself from glowing a happy golden color, I try to think about something grounding. Like the fact that my business is taking off now that the town is leaning on quaint holiday exports. Like how I just hired my second employee, and Elle and I are considering buying our cute little cabin rental.

But these thoughts, while enabling me to think straighter, aren’t doing anything to curb my powerful feelings for her. Feelings of happiness that will power my communicator for months to come.

Snow is gently swirling from the sky all around her, alighting in her hair and on the faux fur snow-queen-esque shrug she has wrapped around her shoulders.

Gasps and squeals ring out from the guests, and from Liara in her rose-red dress and matching red shrug. She points, and I follow her gaze to see that the aisles are lined with the wild reindeer from the forest. Just close enough that they’re visible in the strung up lights.

They are just watching, nothing more. When the guests settle, remembering to be respectful of my stunning Elle’s walk to stand beside me, the officiant begins. We happened to get the town’s new mayor to marry us. He’s a kind, positive man, and I can feel the difference his calm leadership makes already.

While he speaks, I can barely hear, as I stare at my bride. In my mind, we are already bonded with ties far more important than marriage, but it’s a human tradition and I wanted Elle to have everything.

Because I know I already do.

I think the words at the same time that I say them aloud.

For everyone of Seven Pines, for Elle’s closest and oldest friends, and for a couple of my extraplanetary friends in human disguise, I say I do. I look her in the eye as I say it, and I know she can tell that I am promising her the world, if she wants it.

And as it goes on, I’m thinking about just how much I do. About what I have. About the things I never thought I’d gain by coming to this tiny faraway planet, a planet that everyone said was hostile; dangerous.

I will always think of it as the happiest place in the universe.

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Make sure to check out the other books in the Winter Starr series!

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