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“Thanks.” Leven was on his feet, then turned toward me. “Let’s go.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.” I stood my ground. “Diners are usually open twenty-four-seven, so I’ll stay here all night until morning.”
“You’re no longer in America as I assume that’s where you’re from with your accent, and this place closes at nine.”
I glared at him, hating my lack of options. His threat sat heavily on my mind.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” He broke the silence between us. “We’ll explain everything to you in the room. And the burritos are getting cold.”
“Just tell me everything now, and I’ll decide if I want to return with you.”
He jaw twitched, but he simply picked up the bag and snatched my elbow before hauling me toward the door. Fear spiked through me, and I ripped out of his grasp. No one looked our way despite the argument we were having in a public place.
“I’ll scream if you touch me again,” I warned.
He grabbed my coat off the hook and tossed it at me. He got dressed, and I held mine in my arms.
But when Leven closed the distance between us, I recoiled until I hit the wall. I was trapped between him and the wall, and all I could smell were the damn kransky burritos in his hand that had my stomach growling for food. “I’m here to protect you.”
“Against what? Krampus?” I whispered loudly, unable to believe I was having this conversation.
“You have no clue what you’ve gotten yourself into.” His whispered voice came out deep and guttural, his face so close to mine, I could study the golden flecks in his pupils. The tightness of his stubbled jaw, how handsome he was, and how small I felt next to him.
“There’s no such thing as mythical creatures.” Yeah, I’d seen something disfigured in the woods, but everything had a logical explanation. My mind flew to my departed grandma, Dad’s mom, and her practice of warding off demons. Drawing circles on the earth with whiskey as part of her belief in the supernatural. My parents had put it down to her old age and dementia. Yet Dad had practiced something similar with rum.
“Let me show you,” Leven growled.
He ripped open the door, and a deluge of winds tore into the joint. He seized my arm and yanked me outside so fast, my head spun. The howling winds stole my scream. I spun away from him, pulling against his hold, reaching for the shut door. No one from inside even looked our way.
But Leven dragged me down the sidewalk as the weather hammered into us, the cold piercing through my clothes, chilling my bones. We rounded the buildings and emerged in an open park. No homes were nearby, no potential witness should he butcher me.
“Put on your coat,” he barked before setting the bag of food near my feet and backing away a couple of steps.
My teeth chattered and my response froze in my mind as I trembled, threading my arms into the sleeves. I recoiled along the wall in hopes of darting back to the diner to ask them to call the cops.
But as I zipped the coat, my attention fell on Leven, who dropped onto all fours in the snow. His body trembled violently, and I swore his legs and arms were growing in size. His torso lengthened. Fuck, something was growing out of his temples.
I stepped back, the brick wall catching me. I needed to run, but I couldn’t look away. Iced on the spot, I watched with fear pounding in my chest. My world tilted around me because I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing.
Leven’s body was morphing, twisting, enlarging. He groaned as if in pain, and my heart went out to him. Why was he doing this if it caused him pain?
Within moments, Leven was twice his size and still growing, his clothes evaporating before my eyes, replaced with… fuck, was that dirty white and brown fur?
I gasped and hugged my stomach, bile hitting the back of my throat. He was transforming. How could this be happening?
Before me stood a deer with enormous antlers, exactly like the one I’d almost run over, the ones in my backyard, and the ones that had surrounded the monster in the woods. I rubbed my eyes.
The world whirled around me, and everything swayed because this couldn’t be real. I was shaking my head. “No, this can’t be.”
Yet the deer stood proudly in front of me, scratching the ground with a front hoof, its head bowing up and down.
But instead of trying to make logical sense of what the heck I was staring at, my vision blurred, and my knees gave out. On my next breath, my world blackened, along with the notion that Leven had just shifted into a reindeer.
