One Day Until Christmas
Eden
There's frost starting to form on the cottage's windows and Tenor keeps grumbling about how they should replace them in the spring to new energy efficient ones, but it means that they have to keep the fire going round the clock to keep the cottage warm.
The crackle of it is soothing, and between the tree twinkling in the corner of the room, the scent of her mates and a roasting honey ham all around her, and her fully stocked Kindle in her hands, it's probably the best Christmas Eve she's ever had.
The snowfall has lessened into a light dusting rather than a full onslaught so it adds to the ambiance without meaning one of them has to constantly be out there shovelling.
Fuzzy reindeer socks had appeared in her drawer that morning, which now peek out from under her blanket where she's snuggled with her mates on the couch.
They keep trying to peek over at what she's reading, and no amount of grumbling is ever going to make them stop. Not that she wants them to. But it really isn't their business if she wants to read about an omega getting abducted by aliens and bonding with a pack of extraterrestrials.
Tenor is the one to break the silence of the afternoon while Luke is in the kitchen carving up the ham ready for dinner. "Alright, everyone," he announces. "It's time for the Acosta family tradition of opening one present early on Christmas Eve."
"Fuck," Luke breathes from the kitchen. "You said that was just a myth, man."
"It wasn't a myth when my mom wanted us to behave for her Christmas Eve party, and it's not a myth now that I'm tired of reading about ribbed alien dick," Tenor says.
"Aw, fuck yeah!" Luke hoots and punches the air, completely forgetting about the ham. "I got just the thing!"
He launches himself into the bathroom and she has no idea where he could've possibly hidden those in there, but he comes back with four shiny red gift bags that he sets on each of their laps and then claps his hands together in excitement.
"Let's fucking go," he says in a voice that's just on the cusp of being too loud.
Her mates tear into the presents like savages as she carefully picks through the tissue in hers to reveal–
"Matching pjs?" Julius' voice is slightly horrified.
"With dogs on snowboards," Tenor says, his voice flat.
"Fuck yeah," Luke says, entirely unbothered by their reactions. "I even got Eden matching panties."
And true to his word, there are flannel panties–who even made flannel panties?–alongside her shirt and pants.
Luke insists they all get changed into them, and Julius only requires prompting for every step to get him undressed out of his black hoodie and sweats and into the new matching set.
"Okay, I lied, Eden gets to open two," Tenor says once he's changed and settled back on the couch.
She snaps her head up and squeaks "me?" But she can feel excitement bubbling inside her, bright and sweet, at the thought of more presents.
He gets up and digs around in the linen cupboard until he finds what he's looking for. And she has to admit it's a pretty good hiding spot, considering she almost never does the laundry and rarely changes the sheets herself.
The box is pretty big and covered in green wrapping paper that looks like it's been wrestled by a gorilla. There's a massive silver bow on top of it, and when he presses it onto her lap on the couch, the three of them crowd around her to watch her open it.
Her hands are a little shaky as she takes the bow off and carefully unfolds the paper from around it instead of just ripping into it, ignoring their impatience.
When she sees what's inside it, she gasps loudly.
If she thought it was just another cute pair of jammies or fuzzy reindeer socks, she was wrong.
It's a brand new laptop, the latest model that had just come out that she had heard Luke talking about for the last month. The colour was a pretty iridescent silver with gold undertones.
"We thought you'd like this colour, although Julius advocated pretty hard for rose gold," Luke is saying, although she can barely hear him. "It's called stardust. If you want a different one, we can exchange it."
"No!" She yelps, and she's already opening up the box and marvelling at the sleek MacBook Air. "No, I like it! It's perfect."
"Luke noticed your old one kept crashing every time you tried to play something. And, well, we wanted you to have something that's yours, not just our hand-me-downs," Tenor rumbles beside her.
Julius nudges her knee on the other side. "Open it up, baby."
She does. The screen flickers to life and she notices The Sims is already downloaded and installed on the desktop. A giggle bursts out of her chest.
"We got you all the expansion packs too," Luke is explaining. "So you can build your dream house. Or murder pool, if that's your thing."
And to think she has a whole lifetime with these men. A lifetime of Christmas Eves and heats and days spent in their cottage in the woods. A whole lifetime of smutty novels and hot cocoa and cuddling in her nest.
She double clicks The Sims icon and sees that they've already preloaded the game with a Luke, Tenor, and Julius Sim. But it was the Eden Sim that caught her attention. Because it was... pregnant. Undeniably pregnant.
"Wait, what?"
This is the end of Christmas Heat: Or, Don't Take Amoxicillin When You're on Suppressants!
Do you want to read more about the South Yorkverse? Here's an excerpt from Knot My Daddy: A Reverse Harem Age Gap Sugar Daddy Omegaverse Novel...
On her second night as a waitress at Tim's Bar, one of the customers at her table–Gwen, she had said her name was–cornered Charlotte by the bar as she was filling beer glasses for a group of alpha males who were all leering at her from their table.
Their predatory eyes followed her and sent shivers down her spine, which Charlotte tried dutifully to ignore.
"You're too pretty to work here, doll," Gwen had said in a drawling southern accent.
She was pretty, a beta who looked like she was in her early thirties with curves in all the right places, perfectly curled blonde hair, and expertly applied makeup. "What's a nice little omega like you doing working in a place like this?"
"I need the money," Charlotte had said, avoiding eye contact like she did with every other patron here, focussing on the task at hand.
She used a knife to skim the foam off the top of the glass, trying to concentrate on doing it perfectly so the bartender wouldn't yell at her again. She was always such a cry-baby when people yelled at her, especially a man. Raised male voices made her want to puke, or hide, or both.
The woman's eyes briefly flashed with something that might have been concern, although her voice was almost mocking. "I saw a job posting for a daycare centre worker the other day—"
"I'm a grad student at South York U," Charlotte had mumbled in response. "I need something that will work around my schedule."
The woman's eyes turned appraising, flitting over her again in a way that seemed much more calculating than just casual interest. She leaned into sniff her, the movement obvious, making no room to hide what she was doing. Whatever she smelled–or didn't, as the case was–didn't seem to phase her.
"I have a little side hustle," Gwen said then, her voice confident despite the shameful words that she was saying.
"I set up pretty girls like you with men who can take care of them.
Like a mutually beneficial arrangement. No strings attached.
I know tons of great guys who would love to help you out. "
"Oh, I don't think—" Charlotte tried to deny her, but Gwen cut her off, leaning in to sniff her again in a way that, if she was an alpha, would've made her bristle and growl.
"You are an omega, right, sugar? What's your scent?"
"I uh– I don't have one yet," she stammered, her eyes decidedly focussed on the beers in front of her even as her face heated in shame.
The woman's eyes seemed to brighten at that. Her eyes cut over to Charlotte's nametag, which read Lottie. She hadn't wanted to put her real name on it. Hadn't wanted to risk any of the patrons finding her identity or following her home.
"Here's my email, doll. Just think about it and reach out if you change your mind," she drawled as she left her card on the counter.
And Charlotte did think about it. All night, as men grabbed her ass and stared at her chest instead of her face, Charlotte thought about it.
Which was how, that night before she left for the evening, she found herself emailing Gwen after her shift using the bar's internet connection.
She had cancelled her own internet subscription at her apartment the week prior to save money.
She bit her lip and forced her thumbs to type out the words on her ancient phone. There was a huge crack down the middle of the screen that made typing difficult, and it was at least six models old, but new phones were well down the list of her budget priorities, somewhere after kitchen appliances.
From: hiney333@
To: gwen@
Subject: Interested?
Hi Gwen, it's Lottie, the waitress from Tim's Bar. I thought about what you said, and I'm interested in meeting someone who may be able to help, if you have anyone in mind. Thank you for your help. All the best, Lottie.
She quickly put her phone back in her pocket before stamping the time on her timecard and rushing home. It never felt safe walking on the street at night, but she kept her head down and her breath held with every person she passed, her keys clutched in her hand as a weapon.
The bar was only a couple minutes' walk away from her place, but this wasn't the safest part of town even in broad daylight, and it only became seedier after dark.