Santa Daddy, I’m Not the One

13

NILS

D isoriented, I sat up, trying to figure out what had woken me up. Was it Frostheart? I hadn’t been able to rest my mind since he’d shown up at the workshop two days ago. I’d been keeping careful watch over Landon, and so far, he was doing well. Better than well. We’d had sex a few times around the workshop. Eirik had caught us once when I’d fucked Landon in the smithy after hours.

My heart fluttered at the memory, the heat of the moment still burning strongly in my mind. The way Landon had looked at me, eyes full of a passion so pure and intense, had ignited something deep within my soul.

I settled back down and reached for Landon. What the…he was as cold as a block of ice and shivering. Then I heard it. The sound that had woken me up. A pitiful groan came from him.

“Landon.” I touched him, but he stiffened and cried out, clutching his chest. He was struggling to breathe, each shallow gasp a terrifying resonance.

God, no. I gathered him in my arms, rubbing his arms, his chest, trying to warm him, to bring him back from the brink. I pulled the comforter around him, but he only seemed to get colder.

“Landon.” I shook him. “Baby, can you hear me?”

“Hurts.” Tears rolled down his cheeks. “My chest…hurts. Can’t…breathe.”

“Hang in there. You’ll be fine. I promise.”

But he didn’t get fine. His condition deteriorated rapidly, his cries of pain sinking deep into my soul. When he fell unconscious from the pain, I couldn’t stand it anymore. With his life hanging in the balance, I had no choice. I couldn’t sit around and watch him die.

Heart heavy, I wrapped Landon in blankets and carried him out to the sleigh. We sped through the quiet streets of Twinkle Glen, the carriage lanterns cutting through the darkness. I landed the sleigh and, with Landon in my arms, hurried toward the Eternal Tree. It was hardly recognizable, its pines barely glowing.

People rushed out of their homes, filling the plaza and blocking my way. They recognized Landon in my arms and the intent in my eyes. It was as if someone had told them what I was about to do.

“No! What do you think you’re doing?”

More people surged forward, forming a human barrier between me and the tree. Their voices rose in a cacophony of protest and fear, and they refused to let me pass.

I pleaded with them. “Please, you don’t understand. He’ll die if we don’t do something!”

“Then let him die!”

“Yes, let him die! Why should you sacrifice the entire town for him?”

They were right. If the choices were them or Landon, I should choose them. Losing one for the greater good was the right thing to do.

“I love him,” I said softly. “And if he doesn’t touch the tree, he will die. I can’t live with myself if that happens.”

“You won’t be able to live at all if you let him touch that tree.”

“So be it. Please get out of my way.”

“No!” a woman shrieked, her expression wild with terror. “We won’t let you destroy us all!”

I looked down at Landon. His skin was pale as the newly fallen snow, his lips tinged with blue. He was dying, and they were preventing me from saving him. Their words echoed in my head, but I couldn’t comprehend them, couldn’t accept them.

“We must think of the town,” an old man said, his voice trembling. “The tree… its soul is already faltering.”

“Maybe this is his purpose. To die so the tree can live.”

“Nonsense!” I cried. “You have to let me save him.”

Tears stung my eyes, and I blinked them away. Panic clawed at my chest, and I felt as if I were drowning. But even in my desperation, a part of me knew they were right; if the tree died, our home would be plunged into eternal darkness. “Please.”

I clutched Landon’s body to my chest, tears streaming down my face as I pleaded with the people to clear the way. Their faces were a mix of fear, resolve, and sympathy, but they stood firm. The collective belief that the tree’s survival was paramount overrode any compassion for the boy in my arms.

Their refusal fueled a desperation I had never known. With a cry, I summoned the snow around me to create a blizzard, to drive them away, to clear a path to the tree. The wind howled, and snow swirled around us in a fierce dance. The people staggered back, shielding their faces from the biting cold.

“Nils.” Landon stirred. His eyes fluttered open, filled with an unfathomable depth of understanding. “Nils,” he whispered again, his voice barely audible over the storm.

“Landon!” Relief and hope surged through me. “Hang on. I’m going to save you.”

But Landon weakly shook his head, a sad smile gracing his lips. “You didn’t tell me you had powers.”

“Of course I do.” The words came out in a sob. “How do you think I make it around the world in three days?”

He raised a trembling hand to touch my face, his skin ice cold against my tears. “Please don’t do this,” he murmured. “I’m glad I met you. You… you reminded me what life is about. I think I love you.”

“No, Landon, don’t talk like that. You’re going to be okay.” My voice broke.

Amid the blizzard I’d summoned, I heard it. His final intake of breath. Landon’s eyes closed, and his hand fell limply to his side. His chest, which had been rising and falling with shallow breaths, stilled. A profound silence settled over us, and the storm died down as if in respect for the solemn moment.

“No.” I looked down at Landon, his face serene in death, a stark contrast to the turmoil raging inside me. I felt as if my entire world had crumbled, leaving me in an abyss of despair and grief.

The people who had been pushed back by the blizzard now approached cautiously, their expressions somber.

I clutched Landon’s body closer, a bitter cry escaping my lips. The tears wouldn’t stop. I had failed him. Failed to protect him, failed to save him.

I fell to my knees in the snow, racked by grief. Just when I’d thought life was an endless cycle of making toys and catering to others, he’d shown up and made me happier than I’d been in hundreds of years.

And now he was gone.

A shout pierced the thick, cold air. “The tree! The tree’s dead!”

I snapped my head up. The Eternal Tree, once a beacon of hope and joy and the source of life for our little village, now stood barren and lifeless. Its needles cascaded to the ground like tears, and the lights that had once shone so brightly now flickered and faded into darkness. A collective gasp rose from the crowd as the last light went out.

The villagers wept and wailed, a haunting echo of my heart’s despair. I couldn’t help the resentment that filled my heart. They mourned a tree but didn’t care about Landon.

They turned to me, their eyes filled with fear.

“What will we do now?”

I didn’t answer. There were no words to convey the depth of what I was feeling. With a heavy heart, I picked up Landon’s body, cradling him gently in my arms, and walked toward the dead tree. The snow crunched under my boots, the sound muffled by the heavy silence that had fallen over the crowd.

I laid Landon down on a bed of fallen needles at the base of the tree, his pale, peaceful face upturned to the night sky. Bending down, I tried to whisper a final good-bye, but the words got stuck in my throat.

I didn’t want to say good-bye. I wasn’t ready to let him go yet. Never. Pressing my face to his chest, I cried, my tears seeping into his shirt.

A low hum rose from behind me, a chatter that grew. Behind my closed lids, a shimmer of light flickered. I opened my eyes. A warm glow enveloped Landon’s body. The tree had sprung back to life, each needle lush and green with light sparkling brighter than ever.

What? I hardly dared to believe.

Landon, his cheeks kissed by the tree’s newfound brilliance, inhaled sharply. His chest rose and fell with a gentle rhythm that hadn’t been there moments ago. He was breathing. Alive.

A cry escaped my lips, one of unadulterated relief and joy. The villagers shifted their attention from the tree to the boy at its base. I touched his face, half expecting him to vanish like a mirage. But he was real, his skin warming under my fingers, his breaths steady and strong.

“Landon?” I whispered, my voice breaking. Tears streamed down my face, but they were tears of gratitude, of love, of a hope that had been restored as miraculously as the tree’s lights.

His eyelids fluttered and then slowly, so slowly, opened. His eyes, those deep, expressive eyes I’d thought I’d never see again, met mine.

“Nils?” His voice was weak but unmistakably his. “What happened?”

I couldn’t find the words. Instead, I laughed, a sound of pure happiness, and pulled him gently into an embrace. “You’re alive,” I said over and over, as if saying it enough times would make it more real.

“The tree,” he murmured.

“It’s alive.”

“I know.” He touched my cheek. “I saw it when I died. The tree. It spoke to me.”

“It did?”

He nodded. “They told me not to be afraid. That I had to die so I could live. My fate’s entwined with the tree. For as long as I live, it shall too.”

I stared at Landon, and the truth settled within me. I’d felt it the day he’d been kidnapped by my elves and brought here. Landon was my soulmate. That he, too, was now connected to the tree was all the proof I needed.

“You believe me, don’t you?” he asked. “Or am I going crazy?”

“I believe you. My fate’s entwined with the tree too. It’s the reason for my immortality, and now you…you died to become an immortal.”

“Is that what happened?”

I laughed, pulling him into a tighter embrace. “As long as you stay in Twinkle Glen, you’ll never die. We’ll live and love forever,” I promised him, my voice choked with emotion. Landon wasn’t the first person I had ever loved, but something had always prevented me from loving completely until him, and now I knew why. The others had all lived the expected lifespan of a human before dying, but he was different. He’d died a human and woke up an immortal.

“Let’s go home.”