Of Tails & Mistletoe

  Blurb

  In this Christmas novella in the Of Magic & Scales series, the usual cast of zany but lovable characters is back to love and to hold the clueless groom on his way to married bliss. With or without the mistletoe.

  * * *

  Aiden Mercer is about to become Naël Fouchard's husband. Their Christmas wedding is all the ex-detective can think of now that his life has settled into a comfortable routine and no one is threatening his life or that of those he loves.

  But whose bright idea was it to put him in charge of finding a venue for the wedding? Or to give him a case of mertail-napping to solve?

  Of Tails and Mistletoe

  Of Magic and Scales 3.5

  Natalina Reis

  Hot Tree Publishing

  Also by Natalina Reis

  M/M Stand-alone Romances

  Infinite Blue

  Lavender Fields

  Sleeping Love

  Of Magic & Scales Series

  Of Magic and Scales

  Of Scales and Fire

  Of Fire and Bone

  Of Tails & Mistletoe

  M/F Stand-alone Romances

  Loved You Always

  Blind Magic

  Fictional-ish

  Her Real Man

  The Jewel Chronicles

  Desert Jewel

  Rebel Jewel

  Snow Jewel

  Of Tails and Mistletoe © 2021 by Natalina Reis

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any written, electronic, recorded, or photocopied format without the express permission from the author or publisher as allowed under the terms and conditions with which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution, circulation or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

  Of Tails and Mistletoe is a work of fiction. All names, characters, events and places found therein are either from the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to persons alive or dead, actual events, locations, or organizations is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  For information, contact the publisher, Hot Tree Publishing.

  www.hottreepublishing.com

  Editing: Hot Tree Editing

  Cover Designer: BookSmith Design

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-922359-92-6

  Contents

  1. O Come Ye, All Ye Magicals

  2. Jingle Goats

  3. Tails We've Heard on High

  4. Away in a First-Class Hotel

  5. All I Want for Christmas is a Merman Tail

  6. O Christmas Aiden

  7. Merman Wonderland

  8. Frosty the Mertailnapper

  9. The Night Before the Wedding

  10. Tails & Mistletoe... Um, and Unicorns?

  Also by Natalina Reis

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  More From Hot Tree Publishing

  To Portugal with love. Para Portugal com amor.

  1

  O Come Ye, All Ye Magicals

  If I heard “Jingle Bells” one more time that morning, I was going to summon my fireballs—no dirty pun intended—and destroy the mall’s PA system. My soul mate and all-around hot guy, Naël, was annoyingly undisturbed by the incessant hammering of peppy Christmas music as he wandered from store to store, his collection of giant shopping bags multiplying by the minute. I gingerly carried my one and only bag, a tiny red number where a simple piece of jewelry hid—my Christmas gift for Cristina.

  My merman scanned me with suspicion in his big brown eyes. “Is that all you are going to buy?” he asked, pointing at the miniature bag in my hand. “No more Christmas gifts? What about something for the baby?”

  I shrugged. “I’m ordering gift cards online for everybody else and the baby isn’t due for months,” I declared, sniffing the air to locate the nearest coffee stall. “You are marrying me. Why would you need another gift?”

  Naël barked a laugh and drew me in for a hug. “True, sweetheart. Who needs gifts when I have you in my bed every night?”

  We made a stop at the bookstore on the way out, and by the time we got home, I was lugging a large canvas bag full of books. Naël kept throwing dubious glances at me and smirking. I would not apologize for being a bookworm.

  Vee greeted us at the door, flushed and wearing the most god-awful mermaid-inspired outfit. We had hoped that her foray into the tweens would have sharpened her sense of style, but apparently, we had both been very off. If anything, her obsession with everything mermaid and unicorn had risen to the level of madness. Her room was currently an explosion of rainbows and pastels that caused tooth decay to any who ventured in.

  “Guess who’s here?” she asked, throwing herself at her brother’s neck. Naël blew a few of her almost-white curls off his face. “Oisin is here,” she blurted out a second later. Which meant the witch, Taz, wouldn’t be far. Those two had something going on or my name wasn’t Aiden.

  “You seem a bit too excited about Oisin,” Fouchard said, disentangling himself from his sister’s arms. “Did he buy you a unicorn or something?” He was a god after all; maybe he could indeed get her a unicorn.

  Vee’s amber face darkened. “Wait! Are you blushing?” Did Vee have a crush on the Celtic god? “Do you have the hots for him?” Naël gave me the stink eye, so I amended, “I mean, do you like him?” The way she avoided my eyes told me all I needed to know. “Holy mackerel, you do have a crush on him. Honey, he’s like—” I searched for a number but my mind couldn’t quite wrap itself around it. “Hundreds of years older than you.”

  The young mermaid crossed her arms and pouted. “Age is just a number,” she quoted. “Love crosses all barriers.” Man, she had been hitting the Internet for platitudes, hadn’t she?

  Naël dropped his shopping bags on the floor and draped his arm over her shoulders. “However true that might be, Vee, I’m not sure Taz would be very happy.”

  “Taz is cool. She wouldn’t stand in the way of true love,” Vee said, stubbornly resisting her brother’s pull. “She liked Aiden but she never hated you for stealing him away from her.”

  I almost choked on a laugh. The child was either very innocent or possibly delusional—not sure which. There was no point in contradicting her, so I let it go, setting the bag with the books on top of the chair by the front door and walking into the kitchen where everyone was congregating.

  “Who invited you all?” I asked. Besides Cristina, who had been asked to watch Vee while we shopped, Taz, Oisin, and Silva were all making themselves comfortable with our food.

  “I did,” Vee replied, grabbing an orange from the fruit bowl. “We need to discuss your wedding.”

  I swear the house rocked around me. “My wedding?” My voice came out a bit too screechy. “What makes you think I need you all to plan my wedding?” The thought was truly terrifying.

  “Well, have you chosen a venue yet?” the young mermaid said, sounding more like a mother than a child.

  No, I hadn’t, but there was plenty of time. We weren’t getting married until Christmas. That was a whole—shit! Only three weeks away.

  “Vee is right about that, Aiden,” Taz interjected unnecessarily. Fueling Vee’s crazy ideas about my wedding was not wise or welcomed. “You have any idea of how hard it is to secure a venue for a wedding, especially this time of the year?”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but my merrow spoke first. “They have a point, sweetheart. Maybe we should start looking.” Not my sexy merman too. This was looking more and more like a conspiracy.

&nb
sp; “There is a great place on the beach just down the road from us,” Cristina offered, her index finger in her mouth. “It’s called Coconuts by the Sea.”

  I knew the place. It was lovely, open and breezy, right by the ocean, but commercial—not us at all. Not to mention, I was so not willing to spend a fortune. Naël might be independently wealthy, but I was not going to spend his money to put on a show we didn’t need.

  Vee clapped her hands and bounced like a jack rabbit. “Yes! We can set up a wedding harbor with rainbow veils and topped with a unicorn horn.”

  I did choke then. Taz laughed—the wicked witch—and slapped me not-so-gently in the back. “Great idea, Vee,” she added with a wink. “We could also cover all the chairs in fake mermaid scale fabric. It’d look lovely.” If I wasn’t coughing so much, I would have wrapped my hands around the witch’s neck and squeezed until her eyes bugged out. Not enough to kill but just enough to make her life flash before her eyes.

  Fouchard stepped closer and placed a protective arm over my shoulders. “I think Aiden is having a hard time with all of this,” he said, laughter ill-disguised in his voice. “Let’s just table this matter for now and come back to it after we have a chance to talk about it, okay?”

  Surprisingly enough, it was Silva who stepped forward and said, “Absolutely. It’s your wedding, not ours. Maybe you want to think of a place that means something special to both of you.”

  Now, why had I not thought of that myself?

  Cristina looked like a chipmunk with a hoarding problem, her cheeks so puffed up with travesseiros; I was in wonder of how she could still mutter sounds. The soft, flaky pastries they called pillows were hot off the oven and onto our plates as we sat at the Piriquita, the famous coffee shop guilty of such sinful edible temptations. Even at the height of winter, the place was a mad house with people standing, sitting, and hanging over the long counter drinking coffee to wash down all that sugary goodness.

  “I can’t believe I managed to convince you to come to Sintra, my friend,” Cristina said after swallowing her food. “A few months ago, you wouldn’t even consider coming here.”

  “A few months ago, I had nothing but bad things to say about magicals and no reason to expose myself to the high magical traffic of this town.” I had come a long way from hating my own kind to not only accepting but making friends with all sorts of magical creatures. I was, after all, one of them.

  “Don’t sell yourself short, amigo,” she said, taking another huge bite off the pastry. She chewed a few times before continuing, “You used to be terrified of coming anywhere near Sintra.”

  “Well, the King of the Sexual Perverts no longer rules around here,” I said. “It would be a waste not to visit this beautiful place.”

  It was gorgeous, and I had always been upset it was also Magical Grand Station. The micro-climate had long been favored by monarchy, poets, and celebrities to escape the heat of the summer and the harsh reality of modern life. This was a green heaven, heavy with wildlife, fresh water, history, and magic. Palaces peppered the serra, topped spectacularly by a gray Moorish castle, its crenellated walls undulating over the dips and rises of the rocky terrain.

  “Perfect for a wedding,” Cristina said and winked at me.

  Naël and I had discussed it the night before and the Quinta da Regaleira had come up. The Quinta was where we had first made love, so what could be more perfect to stage our union? Cristina had offered to drive me there since our coffee shop was closed on Mondays and my mate had taken Vee to a school play audition.

  “Wipe all that sugar from your face and let’s go,” I told my pregnant friend, who was working on her second pastry. How could she eat that much and stay so thin? Was that baby of hers sucking up all the calories? “Since we are not sneaking in at night like we normally do, we need to get to the gate before they close.”

  We dropped a tip on the sugar-covered tabletop and left the coffee shop. I stood for a few seconds contemplating the steep climb up to the Quinta. After a long inhale, I let out a loud breath and started the hike up the mountain, Cristina in tow.

  It was strange to walk in the place through the front gate. In the past, we had always stolen our way into the grounds by either climbing the lowest walls or teleporting to the other side, using my coolest magical talent—at least in my humble opinion. I wanted to check out the chapel, under which Naël and I had been intimate for the first time. Not the most romantic or comfortable of sites, but it kept us away from the eyes of the Virgin Mary in the painting over the altar. I was not religious at all, but the chapel was a beautiful example of neo-Manueline architecture and would most definitely be a great venue for a wedding.

  We paid ten euros each for our tickets and made our way up the hill to where the path was lined by life-size statues of a variety of gods and goddesses. I was a bit ambivalent about this; I was the son of a goddess—an amazing woman if I may say so myself—but I had also been chased and almost killed by a god, however ridiculous. So, my respect for their divinity was a little iffy at best.

  As soon as we turned the corner in the path and faced the pretty white structure of the chapel, now decorated with evergreens and red baubles, memories came flooding in. My pants began shrinking as images of that kiss sandwiched between my merrow and the cold interior wall of the chapel took over all my senses. I could still feel the warmth of his lips on mine, his taste on my tongue, his hard body against mine….

  But then, just as quickly, memories of another kind came rushing in: the way the depraved King of the Folk made me feel, the way he ran his hands over my lover’s body, and the way Naël had been trussed up like a turkey and anchored at the bottom of a soft-water pond.

  I shook my head like a wet dog, and Cristina threw me one of her are-you-losing-your-mind looks. “That’s not the way to get rid of lice, in case you didn’t know.” I’ll say it again; with friends like mine, who needed enemies? “What’s wrong with you?”

  “This is not the place.” My blood froze and I shivered.

  “What do you mean? This is the only chapel in the Quinta.” Cristina frowned, her eyebrows knitted so tightly they might as well be a unibrow.

  I hugged myself, trying to chase some of the cold away. “I mean, this is not right for our wedding,” I explained, my teeth clicking rapidly like castanets in a flamenco dance. “Too many bad memories here. No, scratch this venue off the list.”

  I turned around to leave, but my friend grabbed my arm. “Are you okay?” Sweet Cristina was back.

  I smiled at her. “I’m fine,” I lied. “Let’s not come back here for a long while, okay?” She nodded and, hooking her arm on mine, walked in silence down the path with me.

  I guess I needed more time to heal from a few things after all.

  2

  Jingle Goats

  “Earth to Major Aiden.” Taz, all red hair and crazy sunglasses, stood before me, half bent so her face was smack in front of mine, her scarlet lips puckered in mock worry. “Geez, Aiden, where the hell did you go for the past few minutes?”

  Bringing my mind back to reality from wherever it had gone, I flattened my hand on her face and pushed her away from me. “Stay away, witch. I forgot my garlic.”

  She slapped my hand away and frowned, straightening the sunglasses on her nose and rubbing her lips together. “Fuck! I’m not a vampire, idiot. Now you smudged my lipstick.”

  “Serves you right for not respecting my personal space.” I sounded like a child even to my own ears. I had been so preoccupied with figuring out where to hold our wedding, I had been a pain in everybody’s ass—including my own. “Be a good witch and get me a bica, will you?”

  Before the witch could explode—and she most certainly would—my soul mate came to her rescue with two cups of hot espresso and a truffle.

  “No need to kill each other,” he said in that sexy voice of his. “Remember, it’s Christmastime, a time for tolerance and goodwill to men—and women,” he rushed to add before Taz took exception. “But i
n our case, goodwill to this man in particular.” He wagged his eyebrows in a very Marx Brothers’ way and I had to laugh. My usually stern and cantankerous merman could be very funny sometimes.

  I pulled him against my side and squeezed his delicious ass. “Oh, I will most definitely show you a boatload of goodwill later, my sweet merrow.” He chuckled and bent down to kiss the top of my head. “I just can’t come up with an idea for a wedding venue that doesn’t reek of bad memories. It’s driving me nuts.”

  “You mean nuttier, right?” Taz interjected, daintily sticking out her pinky finger as she took the coffee to her lips. “Because you are already a nut.”

  I gave her the stink eye and then took a swig of the hot coffee. “What do you think of the Capuchos Convent? We could have the ceremony out in the courtyard at night.” We had had such great moments together in that place, it made sense to hold it there.

  “That’s a great idea,” my man said, glancing at the clock on the wall, a beautiful kitschy thing I had recently purchased from a local store. “Shit. I promised Vee I would be there for the first rehearsal. Can you check it out for me, sweetheart?”

  Disappointment must have been obvious on my face because Taz leaned forward over the table and said, “Oh, don’t be so sad, Aiden. I’ll go with you.”

  I snorted. “Like I need your company.” But I did. I hadn’t been to the convent since Fouchard had surprised me with a private birthday celebration in the fall. I hated to go there without my lover. Then, there was my dad, my druid-monk father who lived a humble life in the convent. I wondered what my mom thought about that. And did I want to see him again so soon? I had forgiven him for abandoning me as a babe, but there was still some anger inside me. “What time do you want to go?” I might as well give in.