Her lips brushed my temple. “You’re ours now, Aleksi. We’re going to fix everything, I promise. But together.”
The moment everything shifted was subtle.
I stopped fighting. I surrendered to this new reality—one where I wasn’t alone, but part of a herd. I’d always dreamed of a mate, and you should be careful what you wish for, because I had gotten far more than I’d bargained for. Our omega. Our herd.
Magic moved through all of us—not the flashy kind that shaped northern lights or carried sleighs through the sky, but the older kind. The kind that turned strangers into family, rivals into partners, isolation into belonging.
Cold pricked at the back of my neck, and tears welled in the corners of Sylvie’s eyes as she kissed me again.
“Will you be ours?”
Resisting this pull now would have been like trying to stop winter from coming. “I’m yours.” I looked at all of them. “All of yours.”
Snowflakes swirled in the air, and the cold spread across the back of my neck as our mark—the mark of a bond that had snapped into place when I’d first set eyes on her—finally revealed itself. A promise.
A promise that I wouldn’t fight this feeling, and that I wouldn’t stand alone anymore.
We lay tangled together, and I felt something I couldn’t remember feeling in years—peace. Not the exhausted numbness that followed a losing battle, but actual peace.
Sylvie slept tucked close to my chest, her breath warm against my skin. Taimyr’s antlers rested carefully on my shoulder, while Kenai sprawled across all of us with his usual disregard for personal space. We were a puzzle of unlikely pieces, bound by magic older than Christmas itself.
My people still suffered, and we faced a foe nearly as ancient as the world itself.
But tonight, for the first time in my life, I wasn’t facing them alone.
The old me wanted to fight, to move, to refuse rest because resting had always meant weakness. But the alpha in me—the one Sylvie had seen and chosen despite everything—simply held tighter to what was ours.
Ours.
This moment was ours, and no one could take it away.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Taimyr
“What exactly is this place?” Kenai asked as dust motes floated through the air around us.
We were sprawled across ancient cushions Aleksi had pulled from somewhere, our bodies still humming in the aftermath. The library felt different now—warmer somehow, as if our joining had awakened something in its bones. Perhaps the magic here was a bit voyeuristic.
Sylvie pushed up on one elbow, her hair a magnificent disaster that made me want to mess it up all over again. “According to Aleksi, it’s a preserved elven archive. It containsthe original employment contracts between Jólnir and the reindeer clans.”
“Wait.” I sat up so fast I nearly knocked Kenai off his cushion. “You mean to tell me we’ve been fighting for union recognition for years, and this whole time there were original documents that could’ve helped our case?”
Aleksi’s jaw tightened, his defensive walls already starting to rebuild. “It would not have mattered without someone who understood them.”
“It would’ve mattered to know it existed!” Kenai’s easy-going mask cracked, revealing genuine frustration. “Do you know how many negotiations could’ve gone differently if we’d had historical precedent to cite?”
“Oh, so now you care about my resources?” Aleksi’s voice dropped to that dangerous register I knew too well from years of fighting. “Where was this interest when you were making deals that threw my people under the sleigh?”
The temperature in the room seemed to drop. Here we go again—the same fight that had destroyed our coalition last year, except now we were all naked and covered in each other’s scent. Fantastic timing.
“Enough.” Sylvie’s voice cut through the brewing storm. She sat up fully, pulling a dusty blanket over her chest, and fixed all three of us with a look that probably made opposing counsel wet their pants. “You’re doing it again.”
“But he—” I started.
“No.” She held up a hand. “Aleksi, you were right to protect this place. These documents have power, and Jólnir would’ve found a way to destroy them. Rewriting history is the best way to control the future.”
Aleksi’s shoulders dropped slightly, some of the fight draining from his massive frame.
