Silence stretches, broken only by the howling wind and my own thundering heartbeat. Then, impossibly, I hear a voice—deep, careful, speaking words I can’t quite make out over the storm’s fury. But there’s something about the tone, the cadence, that raises every hair on the back of my neck.
Something that sounds almost... reverent.
I move closer to the window, flashlight beam cutting through the darkness, and press my face to the cold glass. The metal frame is so cold it burns, but I can’t pull away. Something in my chest is pulling me forward, demanding I see what’s out there.
That’s when I see it.
A shadow moves against the white chaos—too tall, too fluid, darker than the storm itself. For one impossible heartbeat, I catch a glimpse of something that shouldn’t exist: pale skin that glows faintly in the darkness, eyes that reflect my flashlight beam like winter fire, silver hair catching light that isn’t there.
Jack Frost himself.
My blood turns to ice water.
The flashlight slips from my numb fingers, beam cutting wild arcs across the ceiling before I catch it. When I aim it back at the window, there’s nothing but swirling snow and my own reflection staring back, wide-eyed and pale.
“Jesus Christ.” The words come out as a whisper, my breath fogging the glass. My hands shake as I step back from the window, nearly tripping over my toolbox. The rational part of my mind kicks in hard—too many romance novels, too much local folklore, too much Christmas Eve isolation making me see things that aren’t there.
Because there’s no such thing as Jack Frost. Just winter storms and overactive imaginations and maybe a few too many sips from the bottle of whiskey I keep for “emergency mechanical lubrication.”
I force myself to look out the window again. Nothing. Just a blizzard trying to bury the world, same as every winter storm I’ve weathered in this garage. The footprint-shaped depressions in the snow could be anything—wind patterns, drifting snow, shadows playing tricks.
My heart hammers against my ribs like it’s trying to escape, and I press my palm against my chest to calm it. Get it together, Davis. Twenty-nine years old and jumping at shadows like a kid afraid of the boogeyman.
But I can’t shake the memory of those eyes. Blue as winter stars and fixed on me like I was something worth hunting.
I grab my wrench with hands that aren’t quite steady and force myself back to Mrs. Gracey’s engine. Work. Focus. Normal things that make sense and respond to logic instead of legends that walk through killing storms like they own them.
The radio crackles with another weather update, something about wind speeds and dangerous travel conditions, but I tune it out. I’ve got an engine to fix and bills to pay and no time for whatever my sleep-deprived brain thinks it saw in the storm.
Even if part of me keeps glancing toward the window.
Even if the garage suddenly feels too quiet, too isolated, too much like the kind of place something might be watching from the darkness outside.
I turn the radio up louder and get back to work, telling myself the chill running down my spine is just the December cold seeping through the walls.
Just the cold. Nothing else.
2
Jack Frost Comes Calling
Ja’war
Thescentofherreaches me even through the storm—motor oil and coffee and something that makes every claiming instinct I possess roar to life. Three winters I have watched Fiona Davis through her windows, learned her routines, memorized the particular tilt of her head when she encounters a mechanicalpuzzle. The unconscious way she pushes escaped hair behind her ear with the back of her wrist to avoid getting grease on her face.
Three winters of fighting the biological imperative that demands I claim her, protect her, make her mine.
Tonight, bleeding into the snow outside her sanctuary, I finally understand that patience has its limits.
The projectile wound in my shoulder throbs with each heartbeat, the crude human ammunition doing more damage than it should to Xarian physiology. The hunting parties of Frosses Ridge have become bolder, more organized in their pursuit of the creature they call Jack Frost. The Winter Stalker who supposedly brings killing cold but somehow keeps people alive.
If only they knew how right they are about the first part. How wrong about the second.
I am not winter’s death walking among them. I am winter’s protector, drawn to these mountains by something I didn’t understand until I saw her. Until I realized that some humans are worth protecting not because duty demands it, but because everything in me recognizes them as essential.
As mine.
I press my back against the side of her garage, letting the familiar warmth radiating through the metal walls calm the predator instincts that scream at me to hunt down my attackers. But that would mean leaving her, and after three years of carefully timed “emergency” route deviations, I find myself unwilling to move more than a few meters from her sanctuary.
