6. Chapter Six

Chapter Six

G ive Somerset enough time and he could probably come up with an explanation for why this—Santa shoved up against a door and Somerset’s hand twisted in his hair—wasn’t stupid.

Probably.

After all, it wasn’t like he’d throw away a year of careful political maneuvers and ruthless self-control a handful of days before Christmas Eve in exchange for immediate, eager gratification. That would be stupid. Even Stúfur would know better than that.

That explanation would have to wait, though. Right now all Somerset had was Dylan’s mouth under his and the hollow, aching cavity in his chest that had cracked open last night when he’d thought…

He shied away from the raw edges of that memory before he slid back down into the dark, salt-sharp space. His kind weren’t meant to feel like that. It was better to focus on the present, on the lean, willing body pressed against him and the dull ache of hunger that tugged at Somerset’s balls like a cold hand.

This was his.

Maybe fuck-all else could be, but this , here and now, was his.

Dylan groaned around Somerset’s tongue as he returned the kiss. He curled one hand over Somerset’s hip, his thumb warm as it grazed over the tight skin exposed where Somerset’s T-shirt had ridden up, and pulled him closer. Somerset could have ignored the insistent tug, but instead he complied. The nudge of Dylan’s cock, hard under well-worn denim, against his thigh scattered any sensible thoughts about “that’s enough” or “you’ve made your point” to the winds.

After all, the remnants of the rough boy who’d come down from the mountain to bend his knee to the first Nick asked, what the fuck was wrong with taking whatever you wanted? Whenever and wherever you wanted it.

Somerset knew he could answer that, but fuck it. He didn’t want to.

He caught Dylan’s lower lip between his teeth and bit down on it. Not quite hard enough to split the skin, but enough to make Dylan squirm. Somerset laved the spot with his tongue before he broke the kiss and trailed his mouth down. He ran his lips along the sharp, stubbled line of Dylan’s jaw and down to the pale, tight column of his throat. Blood pulsed against his lips.

Dylan’s skin tasted like the hospital, a bitter, antiseptic taste layered over the Yule magic and mortal flavor that Somerset was used to. Like candy dipped in hand sanitizer. Somerset cupped the back of Dylan’s head in his hand as he worked to scrape the taste off him with tongue and teeth.

“Somerset,” Dylan croaked out. His hands tightened on Somerset’s hips, fingers pinched around the bone as he tilted his head to the side. Somerset could feel the heat of the bruise he’d worked into pale skin against his lips as he lingered there. He pressed a wet kiss on the spot and then pursed his lips to breathe on it. Frost sparkled as it turned spit to ice, fractured crystalline fingers spreading out across the flushed red boundaries of the hickey. Dylan sucked in a startled breath as the cold pinched at him and let it out on a ragged, “ Skellir .”

The sound of that name on Dylan’s mouth gave Somerset pause.

Until last year he’d not heard that name in decades. He’d heard it often enough in the months since—the Courts weren’t keen on change or kindness—but not from Dylan. It didn’t put Somerset’s back up the same way it did when his brothers mouthed it

Maybe because Dylan wasn’t trying to be an asshole .

Or maybe—Somerset skimmed his lips over the patch of frost, already half melted against warm skin—it was because Dylan sounded on the raw edge of coming. That took the edge off his mood. He chased a drop of water down Dylan’s throat with his mouth. It lingered on the sharp jut of a collarbone before slipping down under the soft cotton of the hoodie.

Somerset caught the metal tag between thumb and forefinger and slowly pulled it down. The zip peeled apart to reveal bare skin, pale where it wasn’t dappled with faded bruises. Somerset’s breath hitched under his rib cage, a tight knot of eager anticipation.

“This is—”

Whatever Dylan was about to say was interrupted by the rattle of the door handle. It jabbed against Dylan’s hip, and he moved away out of instinct. Somerset caught his arm and pulled him into his body, tucked under Somerset’s arm. He then shushed him with the tap of a finger to his mouth.

The door didn’t shift. Somerset could feel his magic flex as it absorbed the force applied against it. It hurt strangely, a dull ache down deep in the gray matter of his brain. He pressed his finger more firmly against Dylan’s mouth.

“I told you,” Gull said from the other side of the door. He sounded uneasy. As if he’d be scared if he was just a little bit more sure of himself. “Mr. North isn’t in. If you want to leave a message, I’ll pass it on.”

Whoever was on the other side didn’t answer right away. Somerset felt the pressure as whoever it was shoved at the door again. This time it wasn’t physical. He dug his mental feet in, down somewhere rocky and cold where his mother had planted their magic, and weathered it.

There was something distinctly annoyed about the pause that followed. After a breath, whoever it was gave the door a petty kick. It was hard enough to crack the wood.

“Tell him to keep his nose out of other people’s business,” the visitor said in a soft, rough voice. “And off their sons.”

“I’d rather not,” Gull said. Apparently he didn’t need to remember who he was to know that wouldn’t go over well. “Maybe you could write that bit down instead?”

“ Changeling ,” the visitor spat with contempt. “At your age.”

The sound of a brief scuffle filtered through the door. Somerset swore under his breath and set Dylan aside at a safe distance. Like it or not—whether he was a traitor or not—right now Gull was his responsibility. Never mind the fact that it would look bad for some Winter Court lackey to get away with roughing up a Yule Lad .

They were the Court’s muscle, after all.

He broke the seal on the door with a swipe of his thumb, the edge of the crack deep enough to draw blood. Before he could open the door, however, he heard someone spit a short, archaic curse and then a door slam.

Somerset cursed under his breath and yanked the door open.

There was an overturned table tipped against the wall and bloodstains on broken glass. Broken plaster lay in chunks on the polished wooden floor where it had come away from the wall. Gull wiped a bloody hand on his jeans and then looked at it as if he’d not seen it before.

“That was weird,” he said as he flexed his fingers slowly. There was blood on his mouth as well as his knuckles.

“You think?” Somerset grabbed Gull’s lip between finger and thumb and pulled it down to check out the damage. It wasn’t even split. Gull had just gouged the inside open when it grated against his teeth. “What happened?”

Gull batted Somerset’s hand away with a scowl. He stepped back and poked at his lip himself. “I don’t know,” he said. “The guy with him grabbed him, and the one who was talking threw a punch. So I threw the first guy into him and they hit the wall. Do I know how to fight? How do I know how to fight?”

It was a good question. Somerset wanted to know the answer too, but not right now.

“I’ve a better question,” he said as he toed a chunk of plaster with the toe of his boot. “You know how to replaster a wall?”

It turned out that Gull did not.

He did, however, know how to sweep up. So Somerset gave him a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a brush and left him to clean up. It was up to him what he started with.

Somerset headed back to his office. He scowled briefly at the hairline crack in the door before he let himself back in. Dylan was perched on the corner of his desk, one leg dangling and the other braced on the floor. He frowned at his phone as he read something.

Even if Somerset had been able to justify being stupid a while longer, the moment had passed.

“What is it?” he asked .

Dylan didn’t look up as he frowned and tapped his thumbs over the screen. “I’ve been suspended,” he said. “Pending an investigation into what happened the other night.”

“Good,” Somerset said as he headed over to the desk.

That terse comment made Dylan look up sharply. He narrowed his eyes as he glared at Somerset.

“What?”

It was the sort of “what” that wasn’t actually a question. It was an opportunity to recant whatever had been said before there was a fight. That was never going to work on a Yule Lad, even one who’d left the fold for a while. If they’d been born with consciences, they’d never have made it down off the mountain.

“Maybe now you’ll stay out of trouble.” Somerset brushed a lock of gray hair off Dylan’s forehead and ignored the scowl directed at him. “You’re Santa. You don’t need a side hustle.”

Dylan snorted. “Being Santa doesn’t come with a wage, or health insurance,” he said. “What am I going to pay my rent with? Candy canes?”

“I think that might be racist.”

“It’s not,” Dylan said. He started to say something else and then stopped himself. His knuckles poked, white and bony, through the skin as he wrung his hands around the phone. “And it doesn’t matter anyhow. I’m just trying to… Where’s Alice? What happened?”

It was Somerset’s turn to hesitate.

When he’d sworn himself to serve Yule with his brothers, no one had bound them to be honest. The Winter Court had known that it would be better if they weren’t always. Because Somerset’s job was to keep Santa, and by extension the Line of Nick, safe, and what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

Somerset already knew what lie to tell to keep Dylan out of whatever Winter Court intrigue had fallen apart on them. Winter’s wolves had killed Alice, and the Yule Lads had killed the wolves. With no one to save and revenge already meted out, all that left was grief. And that was a manageable emotion.

Skellir would have told the lie. He had told the lie, in one form or another, to other Santas.

If he told this lie, though, Dylan would never forgive him. Not if he believed it, and definitely not if he didn’t.

Skellir would pay that price, Somerset didn’t fucking want to .

“The wolves—”

The oath dug magic into his tongue, the lie he knew he should say coming up his throat like vomit. He clenched his teeth and choked it back down.

The geas had no wit of its own. It drew its compulsion from what Somerset believed. So all he had to do was convince himself that the truth was what would keep Dylan safe.

It was a shame he didn’t believe that.

“Was she hurt?” Dylan pushed at him. His voice was tight and thready with anxiety. “Are they…? I didn’t see what happened, but Detective Lund said they were missing. I need to know what happened. It was my fault. Did the wolves take them or…?”

Dylan’s voice cracked as he got to that question, and he had to stop. He clenched his teeth, and the muscles bulged in his jaw.

It would eat at him. Somerset could recognize that, even if he didn’t understand it. Dylan had only ever agreed to be Santa on sufferance. If they gave him a reason to go sour on Yule, he might still change his mind. It shouldn’t be possible, but his grandfather had pulled it off. Yule couldn’t afford to assume it wasn’t bloodline related.

That was enough to make the two opposed impulses fall into step. The oath relaxed its grip on Somerset’s tongue. He rubbed his jaw with one hand.

“The wolves took them.”

“Where?” Dylan asked. Then the more interesting question, “ Why ?”

“I don’t know,” Somerset said. He shrugged when Dylan glared at him. “They’re wolves, not lords of the courts. They don’t take prisoners—”

“She wasn’t a prisoner,” Dylan interrupted him. “They said she was a…a ticket.”

Somerset dug his thumb into the hinge of his jaw to work the ache out of the muscle. He frowned as he took in that information.

“A ticket where?

Dylan paused. He closed his eyes for a second before he finally answered. “Home? I don’t where that is.”

“They’re called Winter’s wolves,” Somerset pointed out. “Guess.”

Dylan flushed. The color didn’t last in his face. “Well, I don’t know where that is,” he pointed out. “It could be a cave or it could be a country.”

“It is,” Somerset said. He chewed absently on the inside of his lower lip as he turned that over in his head. “They weren’t after you?”

Dylan shook his head. The hair that Somerset had tidied back fell over his face. “I don’t think so. They wanted Irene. It was just bad luck that I got the call. ”

Luck, good or bad, was always suspicious.

Somerset nodded at Dylan’s arm, the gray fabric stretched over a bulky bandage. “And that?”

“Gift with purchase?” Dylan said.

It didn’t make sense. Their kind loved babies—whether to rock or roast depended on the individual—but there was never a shortage of them. Mortals were careless with their offspring. For every infant won back by a savvy parent with wits and violence, there were a dozen whose disappearance went unnoticed.

Or sometimes, just unmissed.

There was no reason that someone would rather have a baby than the head of one of the Winter Court’s most important fiefdoms. Unless it was an…unusual baby.

“Where would they take them?” Dylan asked. He got off the desk and stepped toward Somerset. The bruise on his neck was still wet, darkened to purple around the edges. “How do we find them?”

The “we” made the hair on the back of Somerset’s neck stand on end. He caught Dylan’s chin in between his fingers and tilted his head back to get eye contact.

“That’s my job,” Somerset said. “Not yours.”

Dylan’s mouth twisted. “She’s my friend,” he said. “I have to—”

“Do you trust me?” Somerset asked.

There was a pause, and Dylan’s eyes shifted away from Somerset’s for a breath. A man less aware of what he was might have been offended.

“When the wolves took them,” Dylan said, “did you try to save them?”

Somerset let go of his face and stepped back. “No,” he admitted. “I saved you.”

“ That’s your job,” Dylan said. “I—”

Dylan cut himself off before he could finish and lifted both hands in a frustrated “enough” gesture. He turned his back on Somerset and took a few steps away. His shoulders were tight, hunched up toward his ears, and Somerset had to resist the urge to reach out and smooth them back down.

“I get that, I do,” Dylan finally turned around as he finished the interrupted statement. “But for the last year everything in my life has been dictated by the need to keep me safe.”

Somerset crossed his arms and frowned at him.

“I let you keep your job,” he pointed out. “Which might have been a mistake, since last night proved that our escort wasn’t enough to keep you safe. ”

Dylan’s eyebrows shot up. “Let?” he said. “No, I just didn’t listen to you. Something I should do more often…at least then I’d not be sleeping alone so much.”

That stung oddly. Somerset shifted his shoulders to try and loosen the twinge between his ribs.

“If Yule or the Winter Court found out about us—” he said.

“I know!” Dylan interrupted. He turned on his heel and stalked over to the door, throwing the rest of his comment over his shoulder as he went. “I just don’t care anymore. If they don’t want me to be Santa…well, they aren’t the only ones.”

He yanked the door open to leave.

“Wait,” Somerset said.

For a second it looked like Dylan wasn’t going to listen. Then he turned around, the door propped open with his shoulder, and looked at Somerset.

“What?” he said.

“You are Santa, like it or not,” Somerset said. “That means that when you wake up in the hospital and there’s no one there to protect you, you call me. You don’t get an Uber. Whoever killed—”

Dylan interrupted him. “I know,” he said. “Whoever killed my grandfather is still out there, but I wasn’t alone when I woke up. Jars was there.”

The taste of old suspicion was sour in the back of Somerset’s throat, like fresh skyr and just as unpleasant.

“Did you tell him anything?”

“No,” Dylan said. “But he told me he didn’t like me, and that he already had my replacement ready to go. Then he left. If he was behind the coup on Christmas, he’s really bad at making himself look innocent.”

That…was a good point. Somerset hesitated for a second, but in the end it didn’t matter. It was too late to trust him; they would have to admit they hadn’t until now. That would go over poorly. Jars had always been quick to take offense, and none of the Yule Lads were exactly slow at it.

Besides…

“He would be,” Somerset parried Dylan’s point with a shrug. “So would I. Guilty is much more in our wheelhouse.”

Dylan smiled, a tight twist of his mouth that didn’t have much humor in it. You need to care about doing something wrong to feel guilty.”

“I didn’t say we felt it,” Somerset countered smoothly. “Just that we are it. ”

Dylan folded his lower lip between his teeth, snorted, and walked out. The door swung shut behind him. Light from the bar glowed in a thin, reedy line through the crack their visitors had left. Somerset frowned at the damage as he walked around the desk to grab his coat from the back of his chair.

Only to close his fingers on empty air instead of cashmere. He curled them into his palm and let his hand drop back to his side. Last time he’d seen his coat it had been in a plastic bag on the floor of the hospital room, blood smeared wet over the plastic. It was probably in a dumpster now.

He needed a new coat, but the inconvenience was worth the reminder. A resentful Santa was better than a dead one.

For some reason just the idea of that made Somerset’s chest creak with sudden, painful tightness. He rolled his shoulders impatiently as he tried to shrug it off. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen dead Santas before. In fact, he’d seen them all until the latest one.

That didn’t help.

Somerset made an annoyed sound under his breath.

He braced his feet on the floor and reached through . Ice bit down through his shirt and muscle, straight down to the bone. He’d been born on a mountain, weaned on snow melt, and he rarely felt the cold. This was different; it felt hostile in a way that true winter would never turn on one of its get. It scraped Somerset’s skin raw and hardened the meat.

It was Yule magic, but the old kind. Back when it was cruel and the wolves ran with the Sleigh instead of behind it.

Somerset gritted his teeth and focused on want. The smell of fresh wool, with the hint of blood that the dry cleaners could never get out. The weight of the coattails around his legs and the… warmth against his chest when Dylan squirmed into it…

No. Focus on the itch of cuffs against his wrist and the smooth, round discs of old horn or bone, same difference, that served as buttons.

His hand closed on something. In the cold he couldn’t tell what it was, if it was soft or hard…or bloody. There was a reason that Yule rarely used the sack for its old purposes anymore. Mistakes had been made.

Not by him, though.

Somerset pulled his hand out. His coat, or the closest to it his memory could draw, came with it. Frost matted on the collar and dropped from the sleeves in chunks onto the floor as the heavy length of fabric dropped back into the world.

It smoked from the cold, the collar and cuffs darkened as it smoldered .

Somerset gave it a quick shake and a slap to dislodge most of the ice. Once it was clean enough, he pulled it on. It felt the same. He ran his fingers down the row of buttons until he found the nick taken out of the edge of one. All the details were there.

It would do. He didn’t really need a coat, but it gave him somewhere to keep his things.

He took the knife off the desk and sheathed it under his coat. Then he grabbed his keys.

It was best this way. There were only days until Christmas Eve. It was no time for Santa to take any sort of risk. That was what the Yule Lads were for, to do what Yule either couldn’t or wouldn’t. Somerset had sent Dylan away for his own good.

That had worked last year…