Текст книги "Alien God bonus"
Автор книги: Ursa Dox
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Torrance and Wylfrael Bonus Christmas Story
Torrance and Wylfrael Bonus Christmas Story
The sleigh cruised gently over fallen snow through the Sionnachan forest near our castle. The ride was a little quicker and smoother than it had once been, due to the fact that there were now two sontanna pulling Wylfrael and me. Barra, and her new mate, Bohlen. Just before the start of the winter season, Wylfrael had taken Barra to the nearest sontanna farm and let her wander through the ranks of males until she’d found her chosen one. She’d always been a serene sort of animal, but she’d seemed even happier since then.
I know, girl. It’s nice to have a mate.
I snuggled in closer to Wylfrael’s side on the sleigh’s bench, enjoying the radiating heat pouring of off his skin and filtering through my cloak. Since getting pregnant at the beginning of winter, I’d felt way hotter than usual, often kicking off furs in the middle of the night. But out here in the cold, I appreciated my husband’s furnace-like constitution. Wylfrael took my movement as an invitation, his arm tightening around me, his other going to my face to lift my chin. I smiled into the kiss, then sighed as it deepened, Wylf’s tongue stroking inward, a tender claim.
When I felt his warm hand sliding up my thigh beneath my dress, I pulled away from the kiss and swatted playfully at him. I’d told Wylf ages ago that we needed our own sled – I could no longer stomach the idea of the poor Sionnachans innocently riding around in what had basically become our sex snowmobile. This one was solely for our use, so that wasn’t what made me pull away from Wylf’s kiss.
“I need to pay attention!” I said, laughing at his sternly raised brow.
“Right,” he said. “I remember. You need to find-”
“The perfect one,” I finished for him.
The perfect Christmas tree. Two, actually. One larger one for the castle’s entrance hall that all the women could help decorate, and a smaller one just for Wylf and me in our bedroom. Next year it won’t be just Wylf and me... I watched the trees rolling by in the protective embrace of Wylf’s arm and ran my hands up and down my gently rounded stomach. Next Christmas, there would be a little roly-poly stone sky god baby under that tree.
I tried not to let hormonal visions of chubby, winged, cherubic babies with starry skin take over my brain as they so often did these days. I focused on the landscape, eyeing each tree as we sledded by. Too big, too pink, too skinny...
“There!” I called breathlessly, suddenly seeing something peeking through the pink and purple trees. I scrambled to the side of the sleigh, gripping the edge with my leather gloves and leaning out. “Those two!”
Wylf’s hands settled immediately about my shoulders as he called to the sontanna to stop.
“Careful, beloved,” he murmured against my hood.
“What?” I teased. “Worried I’m going to fall out?”
I couldn’t see him – he was behind me – but I heard the seriousness in his voice when he quietly replied, “I worry about many things.”
I turned towards him, smiling reassuringly. It was kind of cute seeing Wylfrael all spooled up about me. He was already more protective than I wagered most men were about their wives. Some of that, no doubt, was due to lingering trauma about what had happened at Heofonraed. But these days, most of it was due to the fact that I was pregnant. Every twinge, every headache, was treated like some grave illness, with Wylf as my most diligent (and gruffly panicky) nurse. Thank goodness my morning sickness is done, I thought. Wylf had nearly crawled out of his own skin with worry when I’d spent most of the early days puking. The times when I did have an appetite, often in the middle of the night when Aiko was off duty, he’d spend hours in the kitchen concocting Sionnachan versions of whatever I craved. And when he couldn’t cook something, he’d go find it, jetting off to other worlds to find specific flavours and textures that might appeal to me. Skalla told him that Suvi had enjoyed a certain kind of Bohnebregg melon during her pregnancy, and Wylfrael brought back an entire market’s worth of fresh fruit from his cousin’s world.
Though I was feeling much stronger and less pukey now, Wylf’s attentive concern only seemed to increase along with the size of my stomach. He didn’t give me the chance to step down onto the snow, instead holding me against his chest as he floated down to the ground on his wings. He used his power to clear a smooth spot for me to stand and gently put me down.
I turned and pointed to what I’d seen.
“Those two!” I breathed, excitement tingling through me. If I squinted, they looked like actual Christmas trees, perfectly shaped and a dark, rich emerald colour. The two glittering green ones were together in a cluster of pink and purple trees. One was much larger than the other, the pair reminding me of a parent and child. Wet warmth gathered in my eyes as grief-tinged nostalgia for the past and hope for the future swirled inside me.
“I used to do this with my dad,” I told Wylf as we walked down the path he cleared towards the two trees. “Every December we’d go to a nearby tree farm to choose one to cut down.” I laughed through a sheen of tears. “He always wanted to pick a nice, big, fluffy, symmetrical one. A real perfect specimen of a tree. But I got the final say, and without fail I’d always choose a scrawny, sad-looking one because I felt sorry for it and worried that no one else would bring it home for Christmas.”
God, I was about to start blubbering now. These pregnancy hormones were something else. I sniffed hard and blinked rapidly, squeezing Wylf’s hand for support.
“I like when you tell me things like that,” Wylf said. “Because then I can make sure we do them with our son.”
That definitely wasn’t helping the tears situation. I sniffed mightily as we came to a stop before the two trees.
“These two?” my husband asked in confirmation.
“Yes. These two.”
They were the most perfect non-Earth Christmas trees I could have imagined. Deeply green and so glittery under the winter sun that they almost didn’t even need ornaments. But they would have ornaments. Because we had loads of them. The other women and I had been making ornaments as a hobby for weeks out of silk and feathers and bits of crystal. Even Aiko and the rest of the Sionnachan staff had joined in – a staff that had doubled in size since when I’d first arrived here. Now that there was life in this castle again, the Sionnachans were slowly but surely making their way over the mountains here for work.
I liked it. I liked the energy, the people, the friendship. I couldn’t wait to go back and decorate the trees with everyone.
Unlike the old days with my dad, we didn’t need to chop it down then strap it into a truck. Wylf used his power to cleanly sever the trees at their bases, and he simply levitated them behind the sleigh for the entire ride back. Though Wylf was technically mortal now, he was just as powerful as ever. As the two trees soared gracefully behind our sleigh, I thought back to a time when his power made me hate him even more. Now that we weren’t enemies at each other’s throats, I could finally admire the sort of power he had. I’d have the same sort of power to admire in our child, too.
Our return with the trees brought much excitement to humans, Sionnachans, but perhaps most of all to Brekken. He ran in mad zig-zags, back and forth in the snow in front of us, as we walked into the entrance hall, levitating the trees behind us.
“Tree inside? Tree inside?” he barked frenetically, tossing his great head and tracking snow into the hall, tail thwapping. It was only the repetition of a very stern command that kept the excited hound from peeing on one or both of the new Christmas trees.
His excitement only increased when the others filtered into the entrance hall to join us. Brekken absolutely adored all the other human women. He trotted around the gathering group, his own beloved pack of little two-legs to protect and play with.
We spent the afternoon decorating the tree. It was one of the loveliest days I’d ever had at the castle. Several women had joined Aiko and Otta, the new Sionnachan cook, to make Christmas treats earlier. The snacks weren’t perfectly Earth-like, but they were close enough – biscuits shaped like tiny men, some human, some Sionnachan; bread and something that approximated fruit cake; little candies made of hardened honeycomb. The non-pregnant among the group (basically everyone but me) drank Sionnachan ale and mead, laughing and singing Christmas carols while Brekken tried to join in with dramatic, off-key howling.
Throughout it all, Wylf kept his eyes almost entirely on me, only looking away to add a small crystal shard somewhere to the tree for a human to hang an ornament off of. The tree we’d chosen for the entrance hall was so tall that he ended up having to levitate quite a few ornaments up towards the top so that the tree didn’t look like a toddler had decorated it – ornament-heavy at the bottom and totally bare at the top.
After decorating, eating, and singing my lungs out, I was getting tired. Wylf sensed it, in the way he so often sensed things about me, drawing close to my side and wrapping an arm around me.
“Let us retire, wife,” he whispered. “We still have our own tree to decorate.”
Wylf did all the work on the stairs. He carried me when I got tired and floated the smaller tree through the tunnel and up the stairs to our bedroom in the Eve Tower. I relaxed into his embrace, not fighting him, just sinking into him, happier than I ever thought I could be after everything that had happened.
When we got to our room, I asked Wylf to let me down, then directed him to put the tree beside the fireplace where the firestone light could illuminate the crystalline green facets. The result was breathtaking – a perfectly gorgeous Christmas scene, nostalgic with an alien edge. He immediately got to work using his power to meld yet more crystal shards into the tree to act as the branches I’d hang my personal bundle of ornaments off of. I followed him around the tree, hanging little people and beaded feathers and angels with black wings on loops of twine. When I was finished, the two of us stood back to admire the tree.
“It’s perfect,” I whispered, wrapping my arms around Wylf’s waist and leaning into his side. I pressed my cheek to the smooth, worn leather of his vest and sighed happily.
“It’s missing something,” Wylf replied.
I looked questioningly up at him. He didn’t say anything else, but instead raised a hand towards our bed. The doors of his armoire opened, and something floated out. It came to a hovering stop over top of the tree, then descended.
“Is that...”
“A star,” Wylf confirmed. “I remembered what you said about the top of the tree. Actually, it’s technically two stars. I hope that doesn’t stray too far from the tradition.”
Wordlessly, I left his side to get closer, tipping my head back to stare at the gorgeously carved silver-white crystal star. It wasn’t the Earth-style five-point star I was used to. It was more realistic, orb-like, the crystal swirling like burning energy over its surface. Perfect for an astrophysicist’s tree, I thought with a smile.
Then I noticed the second star Wylf had mentioned. It was much smaller, a little globe fused to the side of the first larger one.
I shivered when I realized Wylf was right behind me. He bent down and kissed my hair, then the side of my neck.
“For the two brightest and most beloved stars in my world,” he whispered against my skin, settling warm, protective hands on my abdomen. “I love you. Both of you.”
“I love you too,” I said with a sigh, leaning my head to the side so Wylf could kiss along my pulse. “Merry Christmas, husband.”
“Merry Christmas, wife.”
