Rowan Hale has a woodshop to run, a quiet life he likes, and absolutely no desire to spend the final days before Christmas sweating inside a Santa suit. Then his younger brother wins a holiday trip and leaves Rowan as the only approved replacement for Frosthaven's beloved Winterlight Village. One favor turns into a week of fake snow, demanding families, malfunctioning holiday magic, and Elara. She understands exactly why the village matters. For her, its glowing lights and over-the-top traditions feel like a piece of home at a moment when her own family life is changing. Rowan should be another temporary part of the display, but the steady, unexpectedly gentle man beneath the red suit becomes harder to ignore with every long shift. There is only one complication he cannot hide forever: Rowan is a polar bear shifter. When real reindeer are added to the attraction, one scent is enough to send the animals into panic and threaten the entire Winterlight tradition. Rowan blames the bear inside him. Elara blames the people who keep turning Christmas into a disaster. Between unpaid overtime, an impossible manager, family worries, and a holiday village on the brink of closing, neither of them has time to fall in love. Yet the closer Christmas Eve comes, the more Rowan and Elara discover that the traditions worth saving are not the perfect ones. They are the ones that make people feel they belong. If they can keep Frosthaven's holiday heart alive, they may create something neither expected to find beneath the winter lights: a new home, a new tradition, and a reason to stop treating Christmas wishes like make-believe.
Rowan Hale has a woodshop to run, a quiet life he likes, and absolutely no desire to spend the final days before Christmas sweating inside a Santa suit. Then his younger brother wins a holiday trip and leaves Rowan as the only approved replacement for Frosthaven's beloved Winterlight Village. One...