Page 6 of Saved By Her Guardian (Yuletide Shifters #4)

Aralyn thought she was simply too keyed up to sleep because something good had actually happened to her when she’d been assigned to the cemetery. She was still floating from the searing kisses of the sexy, sexy Maverick.

But it was more than just being excited about finding her truemate, when it hadn’t even been on her radar, it was that she was worried.

She was a reaper and that meant she needed to reap souls.

If she didn’t, if she just stayed at her current assignment, then she’d eventually lose her magic entirely.

And she couldn’t imagine what that would even be like.

Once she’d come into her powers as a teenager, she’d gone right to training so she could reap souls and keep her magic replenished, but a reaper who didn’t reap was unheard of.

She threw back the covers and sat up. She’d been tossing and turning for a couple of hours and was no closer to figuring things out than when she’d started. But the only thing she knew for sure was that she wanted to see Maverick.

With her magic, she could open a portal and go to Northernmost and see him, returning at sunset for her shift watching over the cemetery.

Plan in mind, she got up and went to the armoire to get her warmest clothes since the North Pole was freaking cold.

After gathering her clothes from the armoire, she set them on the bed and looked for her boots, finding one by the door but the other missing.

She looked around the room and didn’t see the boot, so she moved things around, wondering where the heck it had gone and why it wasn’t with the other one.

She saw it sticking out from under the bed and ducked to grab it, her fingers brushing against something.

She peeked under the bed, which, judging by the amount of dust, hadn’t been cleaned in a decade or better, and found a thick book.

Pulling it from under the bed, she sat down on the lumpy mattress and looked it over.

It was several inches thick and had a worn leather cover.

There was a symbol carved into the cover, but she didn’t recognize it.

There were no identifying words on the spine or the cover to tell her what kind of book it was, but she had the distinct feeling that it was magical.

Undoing the latch that kept it closed, she slowly opened the book, the spine creaking as she turned to the first yellowed page.

There was a sigil that shimmered like molten silver, and it was one she actually recognized—a complicated mass of curves and sharp points—the mark of a reaper.

Reapers before her uncle’s time used to create a sigil for themselves and leave their marks when they had claimed a territory to reap souls.

She didn’t know whose sigil it was, but a shiver lit over her skin, and she was drawn to see what the pages held.

Words are a lantern to light the path for those who have no choice , she read in an elegant script in an ink so dark black that it seemed to be highlighted with red.

Turning the page, she read about a reaper who’d been assigned to the church as punishment and had found a way to choose another path.

Blinking a few times as her eyes burned from staring at the pages as she’d read, she realized that what she was holding was an old spell book belonging to a reaper who’d been stuck at the church in punishment, like she was right now.

But this reaper, whoever he was, had found a spell to allow him to petition for an assignment that aligned with his personal convictions and to remove himself from the punishment.

Essentially, the spell went over the head of the lead reaper—in her case, Grim—and sought the ancient reapers in a place called The Realm of the Forgotten.

She couldn’t remember ever hearing about ancient reapers or a realm for them. When they died, they were reaped just like any other creature, weren’t they? She’d never actually given it any thought. Who the heck would reap her? Or Grim?

As she lost herself in the book, reading about the ancient reapers and the Realm of the Forgotten, she grew more and more convinced that fate had led her not only to the church so she could meet Maverick, but to the book so she could petition ancient reapers to change her assignment.

When Maverick crossed her mind, she looked for her phone and found that several hours had passed.

While she could go ahead and perform the spell to go to the realm for her petition, she’d rather see Maverick first. Then when she came back to the church, she’d give it a try.

Because she wasn’t really sure it would work.

It was possible that nothing would come from the spell and then she’d be no better off, and she didn’t want to tell Maverick about it in case it didn’t work.

She tucked the book into the armoire and sent a text to Maverick while she finished dressing for the cold of Northernmost. When he hadn’t returned her message to let him know she was coming to see him, she decided to just head up there anyway to surprise him.

Her stomach fluttered at the thought of seeing him again.

Those kisses had only inflamed her and made her want to be with him more.

Finding that book had been damn near prophetic.

She walked out of the abbey and zipped up her coat, pulling a stocking cap on as she made her way to the gate.

Once she was outside of the gate, she opened a portal to Northernmost. While a portal could be opened anywhere in the world to Northernmost, portals only opened at the Portal at the top of the world, inside the safe perimeter of Santa’s magic to keep Jack Frost from capturing good magic users and stealing their magic for his evil purposes.

As the portal opened and she saw the Northern Lights, she breathed a little easier now that she knew she was going to see Maverick again. Stepping out into the brutally cold darkness, she gasped at the way the cold felt like it immediately leeched into her bones.

Someone yelled, “Stop right there!” and she froze.

Crap, she should have made sure Maverick knew she was coming.

* * *

Maverick returned to Northernmost, his thoughts a jumble of conflicting emotions.

He hated leaving Kentucky and having Aralyn nearby, but they both had duties to attend to.

He hadn’t asked her to give up her job as a reaper, which he wasn’t sure she could actually do anyway.

Being a reaper was part of her identity, a supernatural part of her DNA, the same way that he was a shifter.

He couldn’t stop being a shifter, and he suspected that was how it was for her.

She’d mentioned that her magic would eventually disappear if she didn’t reap souls, and she seemed so despondent about it all that he’d wanted to do anything to change the situation for her.

But it was entirely out of his control. It wasn’t as if he could talk to Grim and ask him to change her situation just because they were truemates.

“I need to talk to Santa,” he said when he’d stepped through the portal.

“Already missing your mate?” Chase asked.

“Hard core.” He rubbed the space over his heart as he crossed the snow and ice to the building where Santa’s office was.

Once December began, the big male was always in his office reading through the Naughty and Nice lists with the help of his elf staff.

He took off his coat and hat and stored them in the security office, then headed to Santa’s office and knocked on the door.

“Come,” Santa called.

“Hey, do you have a minute?” he asked as he opened the door and found the male standing at the window, looking out over the Well and the Northern Lights.

Santa turned and smiled. “Of course. What can I do for you?”

Maverick rested his hands on the back of a chair and stared at his boss and the most powerful warlock in the world, and then he launched into his story about finding Aralyn, much the same way that he’d blurted out the story to Knox earlier.

His leopard was pacing in his mind by the time he finished his tale, all the talk about the beautiful female making him anxious to see her again.

He rubbed the space over his heart again as a pang of longing filled him.

It had only been hours since they’d parted.

How the hell was he going to make it to Christmas without seeing her?

“Well,” Santa said, clearing his throat. “First, I’m happy for you finding Aralyn. And I’m sorry that this time of year is such that you can’t be with her down in Kentucky and she can’t be with you up here because of her assignment.”

“Do you know much about reapers?”

“They’re neutral. Being a reaper is about balance, you know.

We can’t have life without death. Reapers are essential to the balance of nature.

Grim tends to lean a little more toward the evil side of neutral though.

He’s not evil per se, not like Jack, but he’s definitely not one hundred percent neutral.

He’s made questionable decisions over the years, and it sounds like he’s made one with his niece.

It’s not that he doesn’t have the right to punish a reaper who doesn’t want an assignment, but I’m sure there had to be a better way to go about things rather than send her to a place where her magic would dwindle to nothing.

Not to mention,” he said, his tone turning grave, “that without reapers, souls will linger, and the fabric of the world would be thrown into chaos.”

Maverick could understand how she wouldn’t want to reap the souls of children. It sounded like such a sad job. “I don’t want to change what she is, I just want to help her.”

“And have her with you,” Santa said. “She can’t utilize the Well because with reapers, it’s only for those who aren’t under assignment, such as youths before they can reap or the elderly or infirmed who aren’t able to.

Her magic is the sort that’s too neutral.

It’s the same with Sandman and his people who don’t replenish at the Well because they replenish their magic naturally with their abilities to bring dreams to people. She’d be unable to use the Well.”

“I wondered,” he said, pressing his lips into a thin line.

“Listen, she doesn’t really need saving.

Her situation sucks, but the truth is that she has a job to do just as all other supernatural groups do.

Some warlocks and witches have crappy jobs, it’s part of being low on the totem pole of a hierarchy and working their way up to better things.

” Santa came around to him and put his hand on his shoulder.

“She needs someone who believes that she’s strong enough to handle whatever job she’s assigned because, as the truemate of a shifter, I know she is.

You can’t change her fate, Maverick. She’s a reaper and she must reap.

But you can stand with her so she knows she’s not alone, and she can come here to see you.

I’m certain I can provide enough magical protection for you to visit her again before Christmas too.

As long as everyone is being safe and careful so we don’t attract attention from my brother.

Then, when the holidays are over and we have a reprieve, you and Aralyn can make some decisions about the future. ”

Maverick nodded.

Then his heart clenched and his leopard let out a snarl.

He saw the glow of the Portal being engaged. “Someone’s coming through the Portal,” he said, moving to the window.

“I don’t remember seeing an appointment for replenishment for this time,” Santa said.

Someone opened the door to Santa’s office and one of the security elves said, “We’ve got an unauthorized person coming through the Portal!”

“Let’s go,” Santa said.

Maverick followed Santa out of the office, rubbing the space over his heart.