Sugar & Snowflakes (Cozy Christmas Collective #1)

Chapter 1

EMME

The thing about “temporary” is that it sometimes lasts forever.

That’s how long I’ve been living in the apartment above Gran’s garage—a sparkly pink sanctuary that was supposed to be a pit stop after my relationship imploded and has become my favorite place in the world.

It’s all me up here. Fuzzy pink blankets, opal drawer pulls, prisms hanging in the windows that scatter rainbows across the wood floors and white marble countertops. Well, when they’re not speckled with frosting.

Wrinkles crease around Gran’s eyes as she watches me, silver curls puffed like spun sugar around her face.

She’s all rosy cheeks and twinkling eyes, and there’s always been something Mrs. Claus-ish about her—warm, wise, and just mischievous enough to make my cousins and me wonder if she’s hiding true magickal abilities.

“Emmeline…” She studies me with a look that’s equal parts amused and concerned.

I push the plate of sugar cookies covered in hot pink frosting and coarse sugar crystals in front of her to ward off the upcoming lecture.

“Solstice is for couples,” I announce, plucking a cookie off the plate.

“For fate to smile down on them, and to have their bond approved by the Elders and then live a lifetime of mated bliss.” I pause, take a bite, and add, “Not for people like me who get their hearts publicly demolished in front of literally everyone they’ve ever known. ”

My chest feels tight, my words too loud in the cozy space.

“He didn’t even apologize,” I mumble, falling back into the same conversation I’ve had with myself, (and anyone else who will listen) for the past year.

“Just said it wasn’t personal. That fate had ‘spoken.’ Like I was a placeholder.

A practice run before the real deal showed up. ”

“We’re not going down this road again, Emmeline.” Gran doesn’t say anything else for a moment, and the silence between us fills with all the points she’s made before. All the things I know are true but don’t want to hear.

Tears sting my eyes, and an ache presses at my throat. “Totally.” I force a smile, big, bright, and sugary sweet. “And you’ll be happy to know that I’ve sworn off men entirely and am devoting myself to baked goods.”

I pop the rest of the cookie in my mouth, then lick frosting from my fingertips.

Gran makes a quiet, disapproving hum. “Shifters should be with shifters during Winer Solstice, if no other time.”

Her hand covers mine, warm and soft as powdered sugar. “I’m not saying you have to come for the whole week,” she continues, squeezing lightly. “Just for the peak of Solstice.”

“The peak?” I snort. “When every single member of every pack will be in attendance and the Elders announce new mates? Hard pass. I’m not embarrassing myself again.”

Gran tilts her head. “No one’s asking you to embarrass yourself now, and you didn’t embarrass yourself before.”

“Didn’t I?”

“You were in the throes of passion,” she says, and I can’t help but cringe at her use of the word passion.

“And passion”—there it is again, another full-body cringe—“has made buffoons of us all at least once in life. Fate simply didn’t feel that Brandt was your true mate.

And good riddance. I heard he’s already gone soft around the middle and that mate of his has him selling those vitamin packs for that pyramid scheme.

I mean MLM. Or whatever they’re calling it nowadays to dodge tax fraud.

” She shakes her head. “They’ve even started doing those lives on TikTok, bless their hearts.

It’s like watching a car wreck in slow motion.

You don’t want to look, but you just can’t help yourself. ”

A laugh bursts out of me.

Gran smiles, victorious, and lifts her teacup for a slow, satisfied sip. “But who knows what might happen this year?”

“Nothing will happen this year,” I say, reaching for another cookie mostly to avoid eye contact. “Because I’m not going.”

“Not even to keep an old woman company?”

“Mm, interesting. You’re ‘seventy years young’ until you need something, and suddenly it’s all woe is me, my brittle bones.” I crunch a pink sugar crystal between my teeth. “Max and Libby and the rest of the cousins will be there. You won’t even notice I’m not.”

“It would mean a lot to me if you came, Emmeline. Just for the peak. The aurora borealis will be beautiful this year. They say it’ll light up the entire clearing.”

“‘They,’ huh?” I raise a brow. “Who’s they? Big Aurora?”

Her teacup hits the saucer with a loud clink. “Emmeline Lark, if you do not get your little fox butt there, I’m liable to—”

“Gran,” I interrupt, holding up both hands. “I’m twenty-two. I’m an adult. You can’t force me to go.”

She narrows her eyes, and the corners crinkle in that deceptively sweet way that says she absolutely could force me to go, probably without even leaving her chair.

There’s a whole storm of ancient fox magick and maternal guilt swirling behind that look, and I can practically feel my free will shriveling under her gaze.

I exhale hard enough to send a pink sugar crystal skittering across the counter. “I’ll think about it,” I say finally, which is my very polite way of shutting down the conversation. And my even politer way of saying not a snowball’s chance in hell.

It’s been two days and approximately two dozen cookies eaten since Gran left for the Fated Lights Festival. I’m cocooned under a mountain of blankets, armed with another plate of pink-frosted cookies and a mug of cocoa so thick and sweet it could qualify as pudding.

The movie playing on my laptop is aggressively cheerful—fake snow, fake love, fake conflict. I don’t want anything deep right now. I want the safe version of happily ever after. The one with no risk, no heartbreak, and a guarantee that everything works out by the ninety-minute mark.

The radiator hisses as icy snowflakes tap against the window. I take a deep breath and exhale, blowing through the steam of my cocoa. “The Winter Solstice can keep its cosmic light show and fated mates. I am good without them.”

Gran’s ringtone pierces the quiet, a chiming mash-up of bells and faint fox calls that Max, Libby and I made for her two Solstices ago back when I wasn’t bitter and love didn’t make me nauseous.

I consider letting it go to voicemail, but no one ghosts Gran on Winter Solstice. Not if they want to live to New Year’s.

I swipe to answer. “Emme’s anti-Solstice hotline.”

“Emmeline, I—” The line crackles. Reception at the peak of the mountain is terrible at best.

“Gran? You’re breaking up.”

More static, a jumble of cut off words. Then, faint but unmistakable, “Honey cakes!”

I blink. “Honey cakes?”

Every year, Gran brings the honey cakes for the newly bound to share after the mate announcements. It’s tradition—sugary, sticky symbolism for the sweetness that’s supposed to last a lifetime.

Skipping the honey cakes would basically be the non-shifter equivalent of forgetting the wedding cake. Total scandal. Gran’s brought them every year since before I was born, and once she’s gone, it’ll be my turn to carry the torch. Or, I guess, the honey cakes.

“I forgot them!” she yells, though the line distorts her voice and she sounds like a robot. “Need you…bring them…tradition!”

I sit straight up and nearly slosh hot cocoa across my nest of blankets.

“No.” I shake my head and glance out the window where the snow blurs the street outside into watercolors. “Absolutely not.”

“Honey cakes…tradition!” The garbled words come again.

Chewing my lower lip, I stare at my reflection in the window—messy bun, pink sweater, a cocoa mustache dotting my upper lip. “Max, or…or Libby. What about them? They can come get the cakes, right?”

Even as I say it, I know it’s pointless. Max is on patrol with the Northern pack, and Libby’s expecting her first baby any day now. She can barely waddle, let alone navigate a snowmobile by herself through the forest. I’m grasping at excuses, and both of us know it.

“You’re the only one—”

There’s a crackle of static, a few garbled syllables that might be “hurry” and “come quick,” and then the call drops completely.

“Gran? Hello?”

No response.

“Giant sugary ball sacs,” I curse, kicking myself free of the blanket burrito.

I put my cocoa in the fridge and shove the remaining cookies into a tin before tossing them into my bag along with pastel-colored marshmallows and a container of pink frosting in case I need a quick sugar pick me up to get through this trek to the top of the mountain.

Then I start layering up: pink glittered puffer coat, matching gloves, and sequined boots.

No need to go overboard with the whole snowsuit getup.

I’ll be back on my couch before I know it.

By the time I grab the tin of honey cakes from Gran’s kitchen and make it back to the garage, the snow’s picked up a bit, falling in soft, white flurries.

“I’ll drop these off,” I mutter, glancing up at the glowing fairy lights bordering my apartment window, “and be back long before the Elders even think about announcing mated pairs.”

Snowflakes speckle my goggles while I guide the snowmobile along the frozen river’s edge, engine humming beneath me as the trail winds higher up the mountain.

Just over that ridge and through the pines is the clearing where the Fated Lights Festival is held.

Every pack from the Northern Hemisphere will be there, basking in fate’s glow like it’s not one big cosmic matchmaking circus.

“How am I already this jaded?” I mutter, gripping the handlebars tighter. “Aren’t I supposed to get at least ten more years before I start hating love?”

The river curves away, the pines thinning as I climb higher. My pulse thrums with the steady rhythm of the snowmobile’s growl. I’ve already made it most of the way up when the sky lets go.