His Christmas Magic Read online

  His Christmas Magic

  A Vale Valley Romance

  Drea Roman

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  1. Tuck

  2. Darren

  3. Tuck

  4. Darren

  5. Tuck

  6. Darren

  7. Tuck

  8. Darren

  9. Tuck

  10. Darren

  11. Tuck

  12. Darren

  13. Tuck

  14. Darren

  15. Tuck

  16. Darren

  17. Tuck

  18. Tuck

  19. Darren

  Other Books by Drea Roman

  About the Author

  Connect with me!

  More Vale Valley

  Copyright © 2019 by Drea Roman

  His Christmas Magic 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.

  Published in the United States by Drea Roman. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author.

  Cover Art by Cate Ashwood

  Editing by M.A. Hinkle

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks, as always, must go to my sister and alpha-beta reader, Mel. Thanks to Nora Phoenix for her help with Dutch curse words. And most of all, thanks to Gia Reaves and the entire world of Vale Valley writers. You helped my mpreg dreams come true!

  1

  Tuck

  “Are you sure about this? About what the vision means?” Nick asks me, concern lacing his deep baritone voice. A warm fire crackles in the hearth of his private office as I sit across the desk from my best friend, trying to explain why I must leave.

  “I’m sure. He’s my mate I just know it.” I try for a happy smile, but worry and trepidation weigh my usually happy nature down. The visions I saw in the snow globe were fragmentary, shrouded in fog. No, not fog, smoke. My mate is in danger, and I have to rescue him, even though we have never met. While I am happy to know I have a mate, I cannot help but fear I will find him too late.

  Nick cocks his head to the side and eyes me skeptically, his dark brown eyebrows darting up for a moment. “You can't really say that, you do realize? The snow globe only reveals so much, and all you said you saw was a wolf running through the snow.”

  “And a fire,” I add quickly. “I saw the flames of a raging inferno engulfing a barn. My mate’s in trouble. I have to save him.”

  Nick laughs softly and nods his head. “You’ve never been one to run off half-cocked, Tuck. If you believe you’ve seen your mate, then I believe, too.” He stands from his chair, stretches his arms above his head, and groans. “Too much sitting for this fat elf.”

  Snickering, I stand up, too. “Nick, you are neither fat nor an elf. You are an immortal magical being who decided to settle down with the elves.” Gesturing toward my well-earned trim figure, I remark, “Now this is an elf body. We are short and thin and have these pesky pointy ears that give us away.” I flick my right ear as I joke with my best friend.

  Sobering, I let the grin fall from my face. “I will miss you, you know. But no place is so far away that you can’t visit. There is no rule that says I can’t visit you either. You’re my best friend, Nick.”

  I’m getting choked up here. Leaving the North Pole, my clan of elves, and my best friend Nick is not a decision I’ve come to lightly. But over the past few decades, I’ve grown increasingly restless and unsettled. Change is coming; I can feel it all the way down to my elven toes. Glancing at my green-and-white trimmed boots, I grin, wiggling my toes to make the bells jingle. Nick’s laugh pulls my attention back to the situation at hand.

  The booming sound is warm and comforting, and for a moment, I consider delaying my departure. My brain says I don’t have to leave now, but my soul argues otherwise. In my mind’s eye, I see the fleeting image of my mate: an immense black wolf, running across hard-packed snow, as a fire eats away at a tall wooden structure behind him. It’s the same vision I discovered in the magical snow globe two weeks ago and the same vision that has haunted my dreams ever since. I didn’t realize at first what the images meant, but after consulting the elders of my clan and dreaming about my wolf night after night, I know the globe has revealed my mate to me. It’s imperative I go to him now.

  No one knows the snow globe’s origins, but my clan has had it for far longer than the 700 years I have been alive. According to the stories I first heard around the fireside as a tiny elf child, the snow globe appeared during a terribly dark time, when elves were persecuted and hunted for our magic. The globe manifested itself in my grandmother’s cupboard one day, showing everyone who looked the image of a snowy valley with beautiful log cabins, their chimneys smoking in the cold air. It was a sign, and the clan moved North, far away from the reaches of regular human civilization. That also meant we lost our livelihood as healers, makers of potions, and counselors to the sick, lonely, and dying.

  But the world did not believe in magic anymore, so the elves withdrew far away from human lives. That is, until the image of a tall, dark-haired man with a dazzling smile appeared in the snow globe’s mists. No one knew what it meant, but everyone felt in their hearts it was a message. The globe was guarded carefully and protected for centuries before my birth. Yet no one ever met the man whose image swam in its depths. Until, as a rowdy young elf, I found Nick in a human tavern I wasn’t supposed to be visiting and couldn’t contain my joy at finding the man our people had search for all those long centuries. Surprisingly, it appeared he had been searching for us, too. The magic within us recognized each other, and since then our peoples have lived together as one. Or rather, a bunch of wish-fulfillment elves found their calling with an immortal who stops the flow of time for one night each year in order to deliver presents to children all over the world. And Nick, well, no one knows exactly who he really is or where he came from. No one knows why or how his magic works, not even me, his best friend.

  Nick walks around his ancient oak desk, picking up a fire poker from beside the stone hearth and crouching to inspect the waning flames. As Nick stokes his dying fire, I shake my head free of nostalgic thoughts. I want my best friend to understand that I did not come to this decision lightly.

  “I’ve dreamed about him, Nick, every single night since I saw the images in the globe. The fire licks around the building, smoke fills the air, and my wolf vanishes as he runs across the snow.” I lose my nerve a moment, not wanting to voice my fears. Nick rises from beside the hearth and pulls me gently into his embrace.

  “But I know without a doubt that he is my future. If I’m right, and I know in my heart I am, he is my mate. If I let him die, I will die with him.”

  “Well,” he replies, “in that case, we have to celebrate.”

  Pulling back, I grin up at him. “Now that sounds like a mighty good plan.”

  Nick’s idea of celebrating involves too many bottles of elven wine and a couple of reindeer. Before I know it, we’ve consumed at least half a dozen bottles, and the reindeer shifters in question are making out under the table in their human forms. I cannot stop laughing as Nick regales me with one ridiculous tale after another.

  “And that is why you never ask a witch for a cup of sugar!”

  A thump from under the table, and Felipe’s head pops up from underneath. His dark hair is mussed, and his cheeks are flush from the wine and probably from kissing Orion non-stop for the past two hours.

  “Aren’t we,” he pauses to hiccup, “supposed to go somewhere?”
<
br />   Orion emerges from under the table, his face equally flushed and his shirt hanging half off his muscular shoulders. “Yeah, Tuck . . .” He blinks and looks at me, confused. “You’re goin’ somewhere, aren’t you?”

  Felipe nods, his head lolling back and forth in a way that is decidedly not human, but much more like his reindeer form. “You’re gonna find your boyfriend,” he sings out, and Orion laughs. The pair fall back under the table, loudly whispering to each other about where we might need to go to find my mate.

  Smiling at Nick, I feel a radiant joy dance across my soul. “Hell, yeah! Let’s go find my mate!”

  Nick stands, wobbling slightly, and pulls me to my feet. He grins down at me before bending over to peer under the table at Felipe and Orion. “Are you two coming, or are you too busy? I could ask your sisters to fly us out instead.”

  Orion bellows his outrage and shifts into his reindeer right there in Nick’s kitchen. Felipe chuckles, then uses Orion’s furry shoulder to pull himself up to standing. Laughing all the way, we follow the drunken reindeer outside to Nick’s sleigh.

  My breath is frost in the cold night air.

  “Fuck it, Felipe. Hold still, damn it. I can’t get the…”

  A deep throated huff from the reindeer in question is all the response Nick receives as he tries in vain to put the jingle-bell harness on Felipe’s neck. The reindeer shifter keeps tossing his head, trying to get away from Nick so he can continue drunkenly nuzzling Orion’s neck.

  “I know you want to fuck him, but that has to wait, you horny idiot.” Nick hiccups, and I start laughing, the strong elven wine rushing through my bloodstream.

  “I think . . . I think . . .” Damn it, what do I think? I giggle and shake my head. The white, snowy world spins and twirls, and I nearly fall on my ass, barely managing to grab Orion’s dangling lead, which stops my fall but pulls the reindeer’s head up sharply. He bellows at me, cursing me out internally, which I hear loud and clear in my mind.

  “I think,” I pause again to hiccup, “we drank too much, Nick.”

  “Hogwash, you tiny whipper-snacker.”

  “Whipper-snacker?” Now I do fall to the snowy ground, laughing. “You’re drunk, Saint Nick. Ha, ha, ha, Santa Claus is drunk, Orie. Did you hear that?” I jingle the bells on his lead, and the damned reindeer yanks my long stocking hat off my head in retaliation, tossing it away into a nearby snowbank.

  “Hey, that’s my favorite hat, you stupid deer!” Letting go of his lead, I crawl over to where my hat fell. Snatching it up, I brush off the snow gingerly and smile down at it. “My hat!” I exclaim. Reverently, I slip the stocking back on my head, pulling it down to cover the frozen tips of my ears.

  “There!” Nick declares with satisfaction. “All hooked up and ready to go.”

  “Hooked up!” I double over laughing in the snow. Rolling over on my back, I make a snow angel with my arms and legs, the cold barely registering. Considering how much elven spirits we’ve imbibed, I’m surprised I feel the cold at all.

  “Hey, hey, hey, Nick,” I call from my position on the ground. When he comes to stand over me, he huffs out frosty breath after breath from his exertion in hooking the pair of reindeer to his sleigh. He looks down at me with an amusingly bemused expression on his face.

  “What? You silly little elf. What’re you doing on the ground? Aren’t we going to . . .?” He pauses, shakes his head, and leans over, resting his hands on his thighs. He’s wearing his Christmas suit, and the image makes me cackle with laughter. If I weren’t already on the ground, I would fall over. “Where are we going again?”

  “My mate,” I rasp out between fits of laughter. Okay, so drinking elven wine to celebrate finding my mate was probably a bad idea. As the world spins around me, I realize it was definitely a bad idea. “Whoa, Santa Claus, I gotta… gotta lie here a minute. You got me drunk, you magic bastard.”

  “Don’t call me Santa Claus,” Nick whines as he kneels in the snow beside me. “Damn Germans! Damn Coca-Cola and this red suit! Why can’t I just be a saint and leave it at that?”

  I laugh at his oft-voiced complaint, and then sadness overwhelms me. I may be gaining a mate. But I’m losing my best friend. “I shouldn’t go,” I declare suddenly as fear grips me. What if I’m making a mistake? What if I didn’t read the snow globe right?

  Nick leans over and pulls me up by the arm. Before I know it, I’m enveloped in the strong, warm arms of my best friend of nearly a thousand years. “You’re fine, Tuck. You’re going out to find your mate.” He pushes me back, brushing the snow off my shoulders.

  Leaning in, he whispers in my ear, “I’m jealous, you know.”

  “Why?” I’m shocked. For as long as I’ve known him, centuries now, Nick has been as content as pie with his role as the world’s manifestation of love and joy at Christmastime.

  He shrugs before letting me go and struggling to stand up. Felipe and Orion huff softly, shaking their heads drunkenly, probably just to hear their bells jingle. His gloved hand reaches down, and I grasp it to pull myself up to standing. “I’m lonely, Tuck. I have you and the elf clans, the reindeer, and my job, but. . .” He trails off, and I nod solemnly. I understand because I’ve felt the same way for far too long.

  “You’ll find him,” I declare, convinced I’m right. “Or her. Or them.”

  Nick’s booming laughter bounces loudly through the night air, startling Felipe and Orion, who appear to have been trying to kiss in their reindeer form.

  “I’m happy for you, Tuck. Promise to come back to visit?”

  “All the time,” I declare as I jump up and throw my arms around my best friend’s neck. “You’re going to see me so often, you’re gonna think I never left.”

  Nick gives me a long, hard squeeze before setting me down on my feet. “Now, let’s get ourselves in the air.” We climb into the antique sleigh, and I sink down into the plush, maroon seat, grateful for the thick woolen blanket, which I pull up to my neck. Suddenly, I worry about what my best friend will do without me. Nick flicks the reins and clicks his tongue, and the reindeer shake their heads before stepping forward.

  “Who will come with you on Christmas Eve? Maybe I should wait until after the holiday.”

  Nick laughs as Orion and Felipe pick up the pace, pulling the sleigh quickly behind them. This route is so familiar to me, and my eyes sting with barely withheld tears as we gain speed in our dash toward the take-off hill. “No worries, Tuck. I’ll be fine. And so will you. The globe wouldn’t have shown you anything if it weren’t time for you to go.”

  We hurtle over the snowy ground, Felipe and Orion hitting their stride just in time to leap into the air at the hill’s edge, pulling the sleigh and us with them into the crisp night air. Thousands of times we’ve made this flight, though usually on Christmas Eve and never in anticipation of me not returning with them. Damn it, now the wine has turned me maudlin.

  Nick surprises me with his laughter, “Maudlin, huh?”

  “Oops, I guess I said that out loud.”

  “Don’t be sad, Tuck. I know it’s a change, but you wouldn’t leave if you didn’t know in your heart it was the right thing to do.”

  I nod, my cheer starting to return. Or maybe that last bottle of wine is starting to kick in. “Yeah!” I shout. “I’m finding my mate!” Nick cheers with me. We laugh and joke as we sail through the cold night air until a tug in my chest tells me we are close.

  “Slow down. We’re almost there.”

  We are somewhere over the northeastern United States, or maybe it’s the Midwest. Hard to tell from this altitude. Nick tugs the reins, and our lovebird reindeer start our descent. It only takes a few seconds for us to realize we are still going too fast. Nick jerks the reins harder, but this makes Felipe swerve to his left, bumping his shoulder into Orion, knocking them out of sync with one another. As they desperately flail, the sleigh drops altitude quickly. Gripping the edge of the sleigh, I can see the ground coming up fast to greet us. At the last second, Felipe
seems to pull us out of our tailspin, but it’s too late. With a resounding crash, we slam into a wooden fence post, and the world goes dark.

  Pain slams into my head as my eyes flutter open. Nausea overwhelms me, and when I try to sit up, I realize I am tangled in splintered wood, a woolen blanket, and jingle-bell reins. Alone. What the fuck? Where am I? Where’s. . .

  And that is where my mind stops. My head throbs, and I reach up to touch my forehead, only to find a huge goose egg forming above my left eyebrow. My eyes swim, and I lean my head back against the plush sleigh seat. What am I doing in a sleigh? A broken sleigh that is currently entwined with a wooden fence post and barbed wire? It dangles at least a foot off the ground, and I’m confused as to how I got here.

  I try to move, but the whole sleigh shakes as I hold on for dear life. How do I get down? I can’t stay in this dangling sleigh. Just as that thought crosses my mind, a length of the wire fence snaps, and the sleigh drops to the ground. Sharp pain sears through my ankle as it twists in the rubble.

  Fuck, goddamn it. Air wheezes in and out of my lungs as I puff out frosty clouds of breath. My ribs burn, and I swallow hard to stop the bile in my stomach from shooting out of my mouth. Calm down, Tuck. I hear a voice in my head. It’s familiar.

  “Nick?” I call out, confused. Where’s Nick? Who is Nick? Panic seizes me, my breath coming in pants as I start to hyperventilate. Calm down, Tuck. I hear that soothing voice again, and I relax. Well, as much as I can relax, lying half dead in a crashed sleigh. The impression of laughter rings in my mind, and I calm further. I can do this. Okay, but what is this?