Faith

Christmas was exactly how I thought it would be. Lonely.

I sat at the table I had shared with the guys for the last week, and slowly stirred my cranberries into my potatoes, not in the mood for festive. I sagged down in my seat and grabbed my wine glass. I tipped it to my lips and took a gulp of the sweet white wine. I was usually a dry, white kind of girl, preferring Prosecco to a Reisling, but when the waitress - the one who hated me - poured my glass, I hadn't been paying attention, and was stuck with it. After the third glass, I didn't even pretend to try to correct her. I just let the syrupy wine flow like water over my tongue and drifted into the land of the delightfully tipsy.

I planted the glass back on the table, perhaps harder than I intended, 'cause the couple at the next table gave me a look, and pulled my napkin from my lap. I swayed a little as I stood, but I was fine. Totally fine. The fact that I needed to steady myself on a few chairs as I made my way to the door was due to the dining room unexpectedly tilting.

The beach was no less slanted, but I refused to crawl back to my cabin, so I resorted to holding my arms out to keep my balance. God, I wished the boys were with me. Cupid would give me a piggyback ride, or Vix would carry me like a princess. And Dash? Dash would kiss me until I didn't know up from down, and the topsy-turvy ground would mean nothing.

"You seem to be a bit inebriated." A shiver ran down my spine as Peter hooked my arm over his shoulder. I tried to pull away, but he grabbed my hand and held me there.

"Let go of me." I twisted and tugged at my arm fixed across his shoulder. "Please."

"Your mates can't help you now." He leaned close, his sickly breath feathering over my ear. "I have a bit of a score to settle with those three and their boss."

"What are you talking about?" His arm clasped around my waist as he hauled me against his chest, the thick ridge of his cock pressed into my belly as he twisted my ponytail around his hand and pulled. "Please let me go."

"Oh sweetheart," Peter hissed against my lips before he crushed his mouth over mine. I could taste blood as he pulled away. "It's time I take what's theirs. They have already taken so much from me."

"You're crazy." I tried to pull out of his hold, but his arms were like a vice around my body.

"Say goodnight, little Faith." He pushed a rag over my face, the sweet scent of the fabric cloyed at the back of my throat, before everything around me dimmed. "They will give me what I want to get you back, my sweet." I felt my body being surrounded by something, and then the world went dark.

Dash

I flung the door to Faith's cabin open, giddy at the thought of being back with her. Christmas had been stressful. It always was. But we managed to get to every house, to eat all the cookies - little known secret? Santa never ate the cookies, the misses would have his head if he took in that much sugar in one night - and with a little magic, no one was ever the wiser that we had been there.

I dropped the bag of gifts on the kitchen table and looked around the quiet cabin. Weird. We had planned no activities for Faith the afternoon after Christmas, so it was presumed she would be in the cabin.

"Honey," I cupped my hands around my mouth and called out. "We're home." I waited.

Nothing.

"Think she went to the beach?" Cupid fell into one of the living room chairs and kicked his sandy feet up onto the table.

"We should have seen her on the way in then." Vix ducked his head into the bedroom. "The bed has been made."

"So?" The resort's housekeeping staff was impeccable. They practically made the beds before we got out of them.

"No maid service today." Vix pointed at a little note the staff had left on the table. "Which means she hasn't slept in the bed since we left."

"Maybe she stayed in our cabin?" I didn't want to panic, but I could feel that something was wrong. "Are her clothes here?"

"Yep." Cupid called from the closet in the bedroom. "Just a couple things are missing. Her red bikini's in the bathroom."

"Go check out our cabin." Vix whipped out his cell phone and pulled up a call. "I'm getting a hold of the general."

"Dude." I grabbed the phone from him. "Don't call Santa the day after Christmas." I ended the call and stuck the phone in my own pocket. "Did you learn nothing from Rudy's stupid ass, when he walked in on things that should never be spoken of?"

"We all need a little downtime." Vix held out his hand for his phone, but I crossed my arms over my chest. "Weren't we just planning on celebrating a successful mission with our own mate?"

"It's like thinking about my parents banging." I shuddered and headed towards the door, snatching up the bag of gifts as I went. "Let's just find her. Calling the general is a last resort."

Our cabin was equally empty. And when we checked with the staff about the activities we had booked for Faith, they said she had only showed up to snorkeling and Christmas Eve dinner.

"Nothing on Christmas Day?" I rubbed my hand over my face and that feeling that something was wrong had turned into a full-blown panic attack centered directly in my stomach. "She really wanted to decorate gingerbread palm trees."

Cupid snorted, but then his face fell. "She wanted to put lights on them," he said soberly. "She was going to leave them for us when we got back."

"I would have noticed gingerbread dicks on the kitchen counter." Vix held out his hand to me, and I dropped his cell into it.

"Time to call the Claus." Fuck.

"Do I point out now or later that I haven't seen Sourpuss today either?" Cupid sat on the sand, shredding the dinner menu that he had snagged while we were chatting with the dining staff. "Cause it can't be a coincidence that Krampus was here, at the resort we always come to, and now Faith's missing."

"That's really not good." I hadn't thought about that. "He wouldn't have done anything. He knows Santa would call in all the troops if one of our mates was taken."

"Perhaps that's exactly what he wants." Vix raised a brow as he put his phone to his ear. "Why don't you check and see if Peter Black has checked out?"

"On it." Cupid and I jumped to our feet and made a dash to the concierge desk in the lobby. I crossed my fingers that Krampus wasn't responsible.

Faith

My mouth felt like it was filled with cotton. And rotten grapes. And cotton soaked in rotten grapes. I rolled over on the bed, my entire body sore. When I pried my eyes open, I was not in my cabin. I wasn't even at the resort. The floor was a slab of concrete with a drain in the middle, and the windows were barred and set high on the wall. And it was definitely too cold to be in the Caribbean. The mattress I lay on was made of straw and looked like it belonged on the set of some slasher film, which did nothing for the anxiety that was crawling up my throat.

"Hello?" I called, then instantly regretted it. What was I always yelling at those stupid blondes in the horror movies Gavin used to make us watch for date night? And that should have been another red flag. Fuck. I rolled off the mattress and breathed in slowly through my mouth as my stomach roiled with the movement.

I waited for the room to stop spinning and carefully got to my feet. I tried to peek through the windows, but they were caked over in filth that I didn't dare touch. A single naked bulb lit the room, leaving harsh shadows against the walls, and I could hear the slow drip of water from somewhere. I didn't even want to check out the deeply shadowed corners, cause I did not want to find a spider. Just the thought sent shivers skittering up my spine.

Everything about that room made my skin crawl. It was all very not good. Bad. It was very, very bad. I looked at my watch. But the crystal was cracked, and the hands were not moving. I tried to be upset about that, but it had been an anniversary present from Gavin's mother. The same woman who congratulated my ex-husband when we left the lawyer's office after signing the divorce papers. I think her exact words were 'I never liked her anyhow. I'm glad you left before you accidently knocked her up.' Toxic bitch. I pulled the watch band off my wrist and tossed it in the corner with the spiders. Yeah, the ones that weren't there. Gah, yuck.

The door was my next mission. I had no doubt that it was locked, but maybe I could have jimmied it open. Unlikely.

I pulled at the handle a few times, and rattled the door, but it barely budged. It was solid wood, and in the damp it had expanded into the frame tightly. I probably couldn't have even gotten it open if it wasn't locked. Defeated, I slid down to the floor and banged my head against the concrete wall.

What I couldn't figure out: why was I even in a basement room to begin with?

I had no significance. There was no one to ransom me. My parents were long dead, my ex-husband couldn't care less, and as I had already established, his mother wasn't going to cry any tears over me. So why me?

Peter had said something about my mates, right?

Did that make him a terrorist or something? That's who would kidnap military family members. I guess. But I wasn't. I was their Christmas Holiday fling. I know they had said all that stuff about mating for life, and the perfect mate, but that's what guys said. I had no delusions about that. If I ever got out of whatever I was in, I was going home. Alone.

The sound of footsteps against concrete had me on my feet in an instant. I backed away from the door as far as I could get. And waited.