AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’m doing the only thing I can—being there for her while she falls apart. Something that I make a promise to myself about—no matter what comes, I will always do this for her. I’ll keep her safe when she needs to fall apart.
“We all will,” Nick murmurs, and I lift my head to meet his eyes. “She’s our world now, brother. We’ll always be there for her when she needs us. No matter what.”
Derek and Cypian whisper their agreement as Belle lifts her head to look at us. “And I’ll do the same for you. We’ll be there for one another when things get hard, or even when things are easy. We support one another in everything. When we can’t depend on anyone else, we can depend on each other. No matter what comes, the five of us are a unit.”
“Always,” I agree.
Belle leans in for a kiss. It barely counts as a kiss, but it’s only about sealing this agreement between the five of us. Which is why Nick, Derek, and Cypian all agree before she brushes her lips against theirs.
“How are you feeling, Doll?” I ask her as Nick and I help her to her feet.
She shrugs. “Not great. After all, I just found out my dad and stepmom are the reason my mom is dead. But I have my magic finally, and the four of you. Plus my coven of best witches. So it’s not all bad. I’m glad I got to see my mom once more. I’m glad I was able to find out why she bound my magic and everything, but a part of me wishes those questions would’ve gone unanswered.”
“Why don’t we get you home so you can have some time to come to terms with all of this?” Nick asks.
Belle frowns. “Absolutely not. We have a house to decorate for Christmas, and it’s certainly not going to decorate itself. Plus, I don’t want to go home yet. I’m not ready to talk about it with the girls. I’d rather stick to our plan for the night, and then in the morning I can see about letting the girls know what happened.”
“Are you sure?” Cypian takes her hand in his, intertwining their fingers as she nods.
“I promise. This is what I want to do tonight. I’ll deal with the rest of it later. Tonight, I want to spend time with the four of you making this house into the best decorated house ever.”
I laugh, leaning down to kiss the top of her head. “Whatever you want, Doll. As long as it’s in my power, I’ll always make sure that it comes true.”
A smile lights up Belle’s face as she nods. I relinquish my hold on her, allowing Cypian to lead her up the stairs. Even though she’s smiling, I can see the sadness in her eyes. This never would’ve been easy for her to find out, but I know that her relationship with her father wasn’t good to begin with. If she ever decides that she wants to go back to confront him, I’ll figure out a way for that to happen with all four of us at her side. And probably with her friends as well. Something tells me they wouldn’t let her deal with something like that without the three of them.
“Wow, this is so much stuff,” Belle says as she glances around the room where we’ve dumped all the decorations we bought. We probably went way overboard, but we wanted to make this Christmas the best for our mate. “Your house must be the hit of the block every year.”
“Ummm... not exactly.” Cypian scratches his head, turning to me. “We don’t usually decorate.”
Belle frowns. “Then why do you have all of this? And why wouldn’t you decorate?”
I clear my throat. “That would be my fault. Being the brother of Santa Claus and Krampus, I’ve had Christmas shoved down my throat in various forms for as long as I can remember.
I’m known for winter, but Christmas is all theirs. When I finally left home, I vowed to never celebrate Christmas again.”
“Oh my goodness! Then why would you ever have agreed to this?” Belle looks absolutely appalled, and I don’t know if it’s because I don’t celebrate Christmas or if she feels bad about dragging me into celebrating.
“Because, Belle, I would do anything for you—even give up my boycott of Christmas. It’s been so long since I celebrated, I figured it would be nice to give it a try again.” I shrug, looking around at the ridiculous amount of decorations once more. “And I might have gone a little overboard on the decorations. We all just wanted to make sure that you got to decorate to your heart’s content.”
“That’s seriously the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me.” Belle waves her hand in front of her eyes. I’m assuming it’s to combat the tears I see forming. “Happy tears, I promise. You might as well get used to it. I cry when I’m happy, when I’m sad, even when I’m angry. I just cry—a lot.”
I chuckle, wrapping my arm around her shoulders. “We can deal with tears, but we should probably get started on decorating. I get the feeling this is going to be a multiple day event. Unless you can use your magic to help us out.”
“That’s something I can do?” she asks, biting her lip.
“Maybe. We don’t know what your magic can do. I just know that you’re powerful. I’m not one hundred percent sure on how witches’ magic works, but I’m sure that’s something you can talk to Tali and Chloe about—they would know.” Cypian shoots her a grin. “But that’s a problem for later. First, we have to go pick out the world’s best Christmas tree to cut down, since we didn’t get it before like we were supposed to.”
Belle squeals. “We’re cutting one down? That’s amazing. I guess it’s a good thing I never bothered taking off all my cold clothes.”
We all laugh as she takes off for the back door. “Stop laughing at me, buttheads. I’m excited.”
“And adorable,” Nick calls after her as we follow her.
I’ve never seen anyone quite so excited about Christmas before, but damn am I glad to be here with her. Having her around is like a breath of fresh air for us. For too long, we’ve been one another’s only contact. None of us have good reputations, and we grew tired of how others treated us long ago. Eventually, we just made it a point to stop trying. Who can really blame us for that? There’s only so much negativity people can take.
Hours later, we have to call it quits even though we’re still not finished decorating. We managed to get the perfect tree—at least according to Belle—cut down and into the house. It’s fully decorated, as is the rest of the room. We started on the exterior of the house and the front yard, but when we got too cold, we came inside and started on more interior decorating, but there’s only so much decorating we can do at once.
Once we started complaining, Belle took pity on us and called it for the night. Now we’re sitting in the front room with the tree while watching one of Belle’s holiday movies. They might be a bit on the cheesy side, but I can see why she loves them so much. This one is really cute, but I will have to say, it would be much better with a sex scene or two. Who in their right mind falls in love in a few weeks without ever sleeping with someone? Seems suspicious to me, but whatever.
