"The Bite Before Christmas" by Lynsay Sands & Jeaniene Frost

There are two Christmas-themed stories in this book.  In Lynsay Sands' "The Gift," Teddy Brunswick is spending his holidays alone in a cabin away from the small hometown where he is sheriff.  A lifelong bachelor, Teddy is tired of being the extra at friends' family dinners.  However, a severe winter storm has shut down all the roads as well as the electricity.  So he is surprised to find Katricia Argeneau, the niece of a friend, at his doorstep.  She's in the neighboring cabin, also without power, and they decide to spend their time waiting for the snow plows and utility trucks together sharing food and company.  But Katricia is a very old vampire, and within minutes of meeting Teddy, recognizes him as her long awaited lifemate.  Will she be able to convince the mortal Teddy that they belong together?

The second story by Jeaniene Frost, "Home for the Holidays," takes place in her Night Huntress universe and finds Cat throwing a party in honor of Bones' 245th birthday right before Thanksgiving.  But when a stranger arrives claiming to be Bones' half-brother, Cat is immediately suspicious.  Then when Bones, Spade, Mencheres, Kira, and Annette become extremely enamored of the new vampire, Cat, Ian, and Denise set out to discover how exactly this stranger has enthralled them.

I had not read any of Sands' books before this short story, but I enjoyed it.  Teddy is 62 and thinking about retiring and is embarrassed to find himself smitten with the twenty-some-looking Katricia, but she's actually a very old vampire who is thrilled to find her lifemate after centuries of looking.

I have read Frost's Night Huntress series, and this short story fit right in with the others.  Cat and Bones are a vampire "super couple" in the paranormal romance genre, and to read how he treats her in this tale was a bit shocking.  His half-brother is not only a vampire but also a demon who has put Bones and the others in a trance that may end up causing an overthrow of power in Bones' line of vampires.  His sire, Ian, is on to the stranger and works with Cat to find a way to save their friends.  Cat and Ian's interactions give the story humor as she thinks of him as little more than a vampire gigolo.  There's always lots of action in Frost's stories, and the same is true here.  368 pages (Kindle edition).