Prologue

PROLOGUE

Only days before Christmas my true love gave to me… a kick in the nuts.

Nanook lumbered back a day early from his fishing trip. He’d lucked out and caught a fat beluga whale and dropped most of it off at the butchers in Santa’s Village. The remainder would feed his family well, and he could already hear the happy cooing of his girls. Roasted blubber chips, blubber soup, blubber pudding…

His stomach rumbled. It always did when he thought of food, which was often. He didn’t get his barrel chest from eating berries like those puny black bears to the south.

As Nanook neared the jutting mountain of ice outside the village, where he’d carved out a home, he frowned to see the playpen sitting just outside the entrance. He spotted the girls trapped behind the chicken-wire coop, the only material that could withstand curious cubs. Odd, he didn’t see his wife Anjij out there with them. Not exactly safe, given they’d had walrus humping their way inland recently.

Grawr. His cubs nosed the bars and made happy noises as they saw their Dada.

My precious girls. His mouth let go of the bag he’d been dragging as he crouched in front of the pen. He would have smiled at his cubs’ excitement, only a bear’s snout didn’t curve. He could rub noses with them, though.

Where is Anjij? The children were too young to be left unattended for long outdoors. He shifted, his human skin pimpling at the cold air. He scooped his babies from their playpen and brought them into the ice-carved cave, kept warm with a small coal-burning pot belly stove in the center of the main room. He placed his children on the floor by their toy blocks—none of that wooden stuff that could splinter. He’d hand-carved these himself from narwhal horns. The perfect thing for a teething baby bear.

As his girls tumbled and fought over the same block, he grabbed his sealskin robe and slid on his slippers. Still no sign of Anjij. Had she taken ill?

He went deeper into his home, wondering at the strange noise he heard, a high-pitched choo-choo sound that reminded him of a whistling train.

The oddity grew louder as he reached the cave where he and his wife slept. He walked in to find Anjij doing the nasty with an elf. The male wouldn’t have even stood knee-high on Nanook, and Anjij’s thighs could have crushed him if she’d applied any pressure. But she wasn’t fighting the elf who pistoned his narrow hips as he plowed Anjij.

His wife.

Cheating on him.

With an elf?!!!

Nanook didn’t think, just snapped. He shifted and roared.

Anjij screamed as she caught sight of him, and the elf came just as Nanook batted him aside, spraying the cave walls with peppermint-scented cum.

The little man recovered quickly and squeaked, “Calm down, fat ass.”

He would not calm down. He’d eviscerate the stringy bastard.

Nanook prepared to charge, only Anjij planted herself in front of him and yelled, “Don’t eat him.”

How dare she defend the elf cuckolding him! Nanook bared his teeth.

She tossed back her glorious mane of hair and sniffed. “I’m not afraid of you.”

He shifted to growl, “How could you? We’re married.”

“A mistake. I want a divorce.”

He recoiled. Obviously, they couldn’t stay together, but still it stung. “What of the girls?”

“Keep them. Motherhood isn’t for me,” she declared.

A shocking statement that left him speechless, but not her lover.

The squeaky toy chirped, “Anjij is much too young and beautiful for a cave-bear life. We’re going to travel the world.”

“Don’t you have a job in Santa’s workshop?” Elves worked year-round for Santa, with only a week off between Christmas and New Year’s.

“Life’s too short to be a slave to a jolly fat bastard in a red suit.”

Short? Elves lived for centuries. “You can’t be serious,” he exclaimed.

“I’m leaving with Jingles,” Anjij stated. “We’re in love.”

“You can’t be. You’re in love with me.”

Her lips tugged into a sneer. “Hardly. I married you to get out from under my dad’s paw. I told you I didn’t want to live in the North forever.”

“We’re polar bears. It’s where we belong.”

“Not me. I’m leaving.”

“But it’s almost Christmas.” A word that soured in his mouth as Jingles dared to put on his pointed green cap with a bell on the end, which matched his red, white, and green striped outfit.

“Christmas is an excuse to enslave elves. I say down with the holiday!” Jingles exclaimed.

“Screw Christmas, and screw this place,” Anjij added.

With that, Anjij departed with her lover, a lumbering polar bear with an elf riding on her back.

She didn’t even say goodbye to the girls. Never once tried to contact them once she left.

Nanook tried to move past the betrayal, but each time he saw tinsel, or heard a Christmas song, or saw an elf, the pain—and rage—engulfed. Given everything about Santa’s Village triggered him, he moved out of his ice cave and relocated. He raised the twins on his own, teaching them the way of the polar bears. Gave them his love, his knowledge, his loyalty. A single dad who would do anything for them… except celebrate Christmas, the one time of the year guaranteed to put him in a foul mood.

Bah hum-elf.