Chapter 1: Mistletoe and Mischief
The cold bit through Jackson’s leather jacket as he killed the engine of his bike. The house loomed in front of him, a grand Victorian skeleton under the moonlight. Its gingerbread trim was black against the sky, the paint peeling like sunburned skin. It smelled of damp pine needles and memories he’d rather forget.
Inside, the silence was a physical thing. It was broken only by the groan of floorboards under his boots as he dumped his helmet on the hall table. The scent of fresh pine garland twisted his gut. Christmas Eve. He’d timed it perfectly.
“Jackson? Is that you?”
Teresa appeared in the archway to the living room, a ghost in a cream-colored sweater. Her blonde bob was perfect, her face a careful composition of relief and concern. A fire crackled behind her, casting dancing shadows that didn’t reach her eyes.
“No, it’s a burglar,” he muttered, shrugging off his jacket.
She flinched, just a little. He saw it. “We were worried. Dinner was hours ago.”
“I ate.”
“Where?”
“A bar.” He moved past her toward the stairs, the need to be alone a pressure in his chest.
Her hand, soft and tentative, touched his arm. He stopped, but didn’t turn. “Jackson, please. It’s Christmas Eve. Can we just… for your father’s sake—”
He wheeled on her. “Don’t.” The word cracked through the hall. “Don’t use him. You don’t get to do that.”
Her blue eyes glistened, but she didn’t back down. “He wouldn’t want this. He wouldn’t want you hating this house. Hating us.”
“You don’t know what he’d want.” The anger was hot and familiar, a lit fuse he couldn’t snuff. “You got the house. You got the money. What else do you need? My sparkling personality?”
Tears escaped then, tracing lines down her carefully maintained complexion. “I need my stepson not to look at me like I’m a stranger. Like I stole something from you.”
“Didn’t you?”
The accusation hung there, ugly and final. He knew it was unfair. He knew his father’s death had left her just as adrift. But the bitterness was a language he’d spoken for so long, he’d forgotten how to say anything else.
Footsteps on the stairs. “What’s all the yelling?”
Kristi. All glaring eyes and messy blonde bun, wrapped in an oversized hoodie. Sarah followed, quieter, her brown hair falling around a face that watched, always watched, from a distance.
“Nothing,” Jackson said, turning for the stairs again.
“Bullshit,” Kristi spat, planting herself in his path. She was all of twenty, vibrating with a righteousness he found exhausting. “You come in at midnight on Christmas Eve, stink of beer, and immediately start in on Mom? Real classy.”
“Kristi, don’t,” Teresa whispered.
“No, Mom. He does this every time. He waltzes in, treats this place like a hotel, treats you like staff, and then vanishes for another six months. Why do you let him?”
“Because he’s family,” Teresa said, the words hollow with defeat.
“He’s an asshole.”
Jackson smirked, a cold, empty thing. “Finally, something we agree on.”
He pushed past her, his shoulder connecting with hers. She shoved back, a feeble push against his solid frame. “You’re a parasite. You feed on this… this drama. You love making us feel like shit because you feel like shit.”
“Kristi, that’s enough!” Sarah’s voice, rarely raised, cut through. She stood at the bottom of the stairs, her arms crossed. “Just stop. All of you. It’s Christmas. Can we have one night without this?”
The plea, so plain and tired, doused the flames for a second. In the sudden quiet, the logs in the fireplace popped. The old clock in the parlor ticked.
And then the doorbell rang.
The sound was so alien, so utterly unexpected at this hour, that they all froze, staring at each other. No one visited. Not out here. Not on Christmas Eve.
Teresa wiped her cheeks, composing herself. “Who on earth…?”
Jackson watched as she went to the door, a strange prickling on the back of his neck. He saw her peer through the sidelight, her confusion clear. Then she unlocked and opened the heavy oak door.
A gust of icy wind rushed in, carrying with it the scent of frost and something else, something sweet and wild, like crushed juniper berries.
She stood on the porch, haloed by the yellow porch light. A young woman, seemingly in her late twenties. Long, impossibly red hair tumbled over the shoulders of a coat too thin for the weather. Her face was all sharp, elegant angles and piercing amber eyes that swept over the scene in the foyer with an unsettling, knowing calm.
“I’m so sorry to disturb you,” she said, her voice a melodic ripple that seemed to soften the very air. “My car… it died just down the lane. A mile back, maybe. The phone has no service out here. I saw your lights.” She offered a smile that was both apologetic and strangely playful. “I’m Elara.”
Teresa, ever the gracious hostess even in chaos, stepped back. “Oh, you poor thing. Come in, come in out of the cold. You’ll freeze.”
Elara stepped over the threshold, her boots making no sound on the wood. She unbuttoned her coat, revealing a simple, dark green dress that seemed to shift in the firelight. Her gaze traveled past Teresa, past the glaring Kristi and the wary Sarah, and landed squarely on Jackson.
Her eyes held his. They didn’t look away.
In that instant, the air changed. The residual anger, the grief, the brittle tension—it all seemed to recede, pushed back by a sudden, electric charge. It was a feeling of being seen, not as the angry stepson, the disappointing brother, but as something else entirely. It was disorienting. It was dangerous.
“Thank you,” Elara said, her words now seeming meant for him alone. “What a… lively family you have.”
Jackson found he couldn’t speak. A warmth, unrelated to the fire, spread through his core. The others seemed to blur at the edges of his vision. All he saw were those amber eyes, glittering with a secret amusement, as if she’d heard every ugly word spoken and found it all terribly, wonderfully entertaining.
Teresa was fussing, offering tea, asking about the car. Kristi was muttering about strangers and safety. Sarah was just staring, her brow furrowed.
But Jackson heard none of it. He was caught, snared in a silence that felt profound and personal. Elara’s smile deepened, a dimple appearing in one cheek. She gave him a slow, deliberate blink.
When her eyes opened again, the playful glint had sharpened into something predatory.
And then, so softly only he could possibly hear it, carried on a breath that smelled of winter woods, she whispered a single word into the sudden, waiting quiet of the house.
“Mine.”