“So,” I said, settling more comfortably against Kenai’s chest, “if Mrs. Patterson is really Mrs. Claus, why did she give me magic horny hot cocoa?”
I lay between them as they made me drink water and spoon-fed me hearty potato soup. It had been about seventy-two hours since my heat had started, and my moments of clarity were growing longer. My body still hummed with warmth whenever I looked at either of them, but the desperate edge had dulled enough that I could think in complete sentences again.
Taimyr snorted from where he sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed. “That’s the question, isn’t it? The sweet old lady act doesn’t fool me. She’s been playing this game for centuries.”
“You think it was deliberate?” I asked. “Not just her being a meddling grandmother type?”
“Everything Mrs. Claus does is calculated,” Kenai replied, his fingers absently tracing patterns on my shoulder. “She doesn’t make mistakes. If she triggered your heat right before Christmas, right when we’re in the middle of critical negotiations?—”
“It’s sabotage,” Taimyr finished. “Keep the troublemakers busy fucking their new omega instead of organizing the clans.”
I frowned, my lawyer instincts pushing through the heat haze. “That seems pretty elaborate. Why not just…I don’t know, fire you? Ban you from the North Pole?”
“Can’t.” Kenai’s voice was grim. “We have contracts. Ancient ones, signed in blood and magic. Jólnir can make our lives miserable, but he can’t just dismiss us without cause. And organizing isn’t technically against the rules—it’s just something no one’s managed to do…ever.”
“Why not?”
Taimyr fed me another spoonful of soup. “Because reindeer shifters are herd beings, but somehow we can’t agree on anything. Every subspecies has different grievances, different priorities. The Peary reindeer want safer magical assignments. My people—the Siberian tundra herd—want shorter routes and better rest periods. The Finnish forest reindeer want—” He stopped abruptly.
“Want what?” I pressed.
Kenai sighed. “They want to stop being used as pack mules. Finnish forest reindeer are the largest, strongest subspecies. They get assigned all the heaviest lifting—literal and figurative. Loading the sleigh, hauling supplies, construction work. It’s brutal on their bodies. Most of them are broken down by middle age.”
“The biggest, strongest, and most bullheaded,” Taimyr muttered.
“Tai—”
“It’s true!” Taimyr gestured emphatically. “Every time we get close to unified action, Aleksi torpedoes it. ‘Forest reindeer won’t settle for tundra crumbs,’” he said in a lilting Finnish accent. “He won’t compromise, won’t work with the other clans. He just fights everyone and makes everything harder.”
I could hear the frustration in his voice, but also something else—hurt, maybe. “You’ve tried to work with him?”
“For years.” Kenai’s hand stilled on my shoulder. “Aleksi’s not wrong about the treatment his people receive. Finnish forest reindeer get the worst assignments, the highest injury rates. But he won’t accept that change has to be incremental. He wants everything fixed now—or he walks away from the table.”
“Last year,” Taimyr added quietly, “we had a deal. All three major subspecies had agreed to a unified set of demands. Better safety protocols, rest periods, injury compensation. It wasn’t everything anyone wanted, but it was progress. Real progress.”
“What happened?”
“Aleksi happened.” Taimyr’s jaw tightened. “Three days before we were supposed to present to Jólnir, he pulled his entire clan out. Said the deal didn’t go far enough to address the physical abuse his people endured. That we were selling them out for minor concessions.”
“Were you?” I asked carefully.
Kenai was quiet for a moment. “I don’t think so. But I understand why he felt that way. The Peary reindeer and Siberian herd—we face different kinds of exploitation. Magical drain, exhaustion, dangerous routes. But the truth is, we’re also better compensated. Their work is seen as less specialized—manual labor. And some of their supervisors are…cruel. Deliberately so.”
“Cruel how?”
“Verbal abuse. Impossible quotas. Assigning the heaviest, most degrading work to shifters they know are already injured.” Kenai’s voice was tight. “There was an incident last winter. A Finnish reindeer collapsed while hauling supplies on Christmas Eve. His supervisor made him keep working, said he was faking. Turned out he had three cracked ribs and internal bleeding.”
I felt sick. “That’s assault. Criminal negligence at minimum.”
“In the human world, yes. In the North Pole?” Taimyr shook his head. “The supervisor got a verbal warning. The shifter got marked asunreliablein his file—which means he gets assigned even worse work now.”
“And Aleksi watched this happen to his people while you were negotiating for better rest breaks,” I said slowly, understanding dawning. “No wonder he walked away.”
Taimyr looked at me sharply. “We were trying to build something sustainable. You can’t just demand everything at once and expect?—”
“I know,” I cut in, reaching for his hand. “I’ve negotiated enough union contracts to understand the strategy. Incremental change, building momentum, not overreaching. But Taimyr, if my people were being systematically abused while I was at the bargaining table asking for longer lunch breaks, I’d burn the whole thing down too.”
Silence fell over the room. Kenai’s hand resumed its gentle movement on my shoulder.
