Chapter 4
“You got here just in time,” the server said as she came up to their table, adjusting her Santa hat. “We’re starting to get packed, and you never would’ve gotten a table.”
“Do you have a special going on or something?” Beck asked.
“We do! It’s half price on all our holiday-themed drinks.
” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a couple of skinny strips of cardstock with the drinks listed on them.
“We’ve got cranberry punch, a red Manhattan, a mistletoe martini, a pumpkin spice white Russian, hot buttered rum, and spiked hot chocolate. That one’s my favorite.”
“What? No eggnog?” Kendrick asked.
The server looked over at the bar, then leaned down a bit. “We have it, but I really don’t recommend it unless you want to be re-experiencing it all day tomorrow.”
Lilith made a face. “Pumpkin spice white Russian for me, please.”
“You’re such a girl,” Ewan told her. “Just a beer will do.”
“Same,” Griffin ordered.
Beck shrugged. “I’ll try the red Manhattan. Might as well get into the season a bit.”
Kendrick stroked the edge of his jaw with the back of his hand. “I really want the eggnog, but I’ll be safe and go with the hot buttered rum instead.”
The server listened to them without writing anything down, and then she looked expectantly at Lars. “For you?”
“I’m not sure. They all sound good,” he admitted.
She straightened up and took a step back. “Wow! I love your accent! Where are you from? No, wait! Let me guess. I was really good at this back when I was a fine arts major. I did a lot of theater and had to master quite a few accents. Germany?”
“Um, no. I’m from—”
“Wait!” she insisted. “I’ll bet it’s one of those places where the accents sound really close. Austria?”
Lars blinked. To him, the difference was vast. “Actually, it’s—”
“Poland!” she shouted, earning a few looks from other nearby tables.
“No. I’m—”
“I need to think about this a little. Let me get your order, and I’ll figure it out,” she insisted.
It wasn’t a game he was particularly interested in playing, but she was so eager. Lars looked at the drink list once again. There was one drink that kept drawing his eye. “I’ll have the mistletoe martini, please.”
“Coming right up!”
“Mistletoe sure paid off for you a couple of nights ago,” Griffin remarked with a gleam in his eyes. “I guess we all know what’s on your mind.”
“We don’t even need to guess, do we?” Lilith grinned at him from across the table.
“It was just one kiss,” Ewan defended him. “And if it’s under the mistletoe, it doesn’t count.”
Beck tapped his fingertips on the table. “Oh, I think it counted, all right.”
Kendrick let out his deep laugh. “If they kissed like that under the mistletoe and it ‘doesn’t count,’ then I’m glad we weren’t around to see the kisses that do count!”
They all laughed again, and so did Lars. He always found himself in a good mood when he was around the Alexander dragons, even when they were teasing him.
“Just a few days in America, and already you found her.” Lilith clasped her hands together and rested her cheek on them. “It’s like one of those romantic Christmas movies!”
“Hold on,” Ewan countered. “Don’t put words in his mouth. They kissed, but that doesn’t mean they’re mates. Right?” He looked expectantly at Lars.
Lars shook his head and smiled. “I’m afraid you’re wrong, my friend.”
“Damn!” Griffin gently pounded the table. “I should’ve made a bet!”
“You’ve lost more of them than you’ve won, so you’d still be behind,” Ewan retorted.
“All right, boys,” Kendrick said. “Let’s let our guest talk for a moment, eh?”
All five dragons now turned to stare at him.
“It’s true,” he said with a sigh, seeing no reason to hide it from them. The Alexander clan was close with the Artemis Eclipse shifter coven, and they would’ve figured it out anyway. Just his and Amanda’s behavior at dinner the other night had been enough. “I believe she’s my mate.”
“That’s so exciting!” Lilith squealed. “I love it! I want to do something for you guys to celebrate, like bake a cake or something.”
The server returned with a tray of drinks, setting each one down in front of the correct person. She put Lars’s martini down last. “Denmark?”
“No, sorry.”
“That’s okay. I’ll get it! Did I hear we’re celebrating something tonight?”
“Yes!” Lilith said, right as Lars said, “No!”
“When you guys decide, just let me know. I’ll come back to check on you as soon as I think of some other countries!” The server hurried off to take orders from the next table.
“Why can’t we celebrate?” Lilith asked, pouting a little. “Amanda’s wonderful.”
“Yes, she is.” At least, what he knew of her was. Lars didn’t doubt that if he got to spend more time with her, he’d only continue to discover things he liked about Amanda. “It’s just very complicated.”
“I understand,” Kendrick said with a nod. “I’ve been on this Earth for a very long time, and Maeve isn’t my first mate. We can’t help how we feel about someone, and logic doesn’t usually have much of anything to do with it.”
Lars started to relax a little, grateful that Kendrick recognized his struggle. “That’s true. I’m not sure what to do.”
“If you’re mates, then you can probably work it out one way or another,” Ewan theorized.
“You didn’t sound like you supported this idea a minute ago,” Griffin pointed out.
“I just thought we should give Lars a chance to come to the conclusion himself and decide to share it with us instead of jumping there ourselves. That’s all,” Ewan defended.
Kendrick let out a long yawn. “Other than their bickering, I agree. The two of you will just have to sit down and talk about it.” He yawned again. “I shouldn’t be this tired!”
“Are you getting old on us?” Beck teased.
“Me? You’re the one with dark circles under your eyes,” his uncle pointed out with a chuckle. He looked a little closer. “Are you feeling well?”
“No, actually,” Beck admitted. “I think last night was too much for me. I really am getting old if a late dinner and a couple of shots make me want to stay in bed the next day.”
“I’ve got a good hangover cure I can mix up for you when we get back.” Lilith made a face, pulling the corners of her mouth down nearly to her jawline as she put a hand over her stomach. “Maybe I should make some for myself.”
“A little hair of the dog will fix us right up,” Griffin decided, taking a slug of beer.
“Hopefully.” Lilith sipped her pumpkin spice white Russian.
“Anyway, back to the most important matter at hand. Lars, what’s holding you back from being with Amanda?
There are a lot of strong women in the Artemis Eclipse Sisterhood, and they all look out for each other, but Amanda definitely does a lot of it.
She’s always jumping in to take care of things, and that’s on top of running a successful business. ”
“I’ve heard a little about that.” In fact, late the previous night when Lars found himself tossing and turning because he couldn’t get Amanda out of his head, he’d decided to look her up online.
He easily found the website for her energy healing practice, complete with rave reviews and a polite apology for having such a long waitlist. Though the page itself came off rather humble, it was clear that Amanda had a thriving business.
“I couldn’t ask her to leave something like that behind,” Lars lamented.
“She could still do energy healing on Svalbard, couldn’t she?” Griffin asked.
“Yes, but we don’t have nearly as many people. It seems wrong to take her away from all that she’s created here, as well as her family.” That was providing that Amanda even wanted to be with him. This problem had many facets.
“And what about you?” Ewan asked. “Could you move here?”
That was something else that’d kept him up at night.
“As you know, my family has guarded and maintained the polar node of the ley lines for a very long time. I was very young when I understood that was how I would spend the rest of my life. I like Amanda very much, but this work is important. I can’t just leave it behind.
My brother is in charge of it while I’m gone, but I can’t just leave that burden on him. ”
Griffin took a sip of his beer and then looked at the bottle. He gestured toward Ewan’s bottle. “Does this taste funny to you? Because I don’t feel very good.”
“This is weird,” Beck noted. “We’re all experienced enough to know when to cut ourselves off.”
Lars noted that their faces looked pale, and the dragons weren’t full of life the way they usually were. He, however, felt fine. At least physically. “What do you think it is?”
Kendrick had propped his elbow on the table and then put his head in his hand. His head began to slide down before he jerked it up again. “Hm?”
“Were you asleep?” Beck asked.
“I don’t know what’s come over me.” Kendrick yawned again. “It’s not even that late. I don’t think I’ve felt this way since the last time the ley lines changed on us.”
All at once, the dragons lifted their heads and looked at Lars.
“Surely that hasn’t happened again,” Ewan protested. “We’ve only been in Salem a few years. We’ve had to move around before to accommodate for changes in the ley lines, but never this quickly.”
Lars hadn’t been paying much attention to the natural energy lines that connected various parts of the world and ran directly under Salem. In fact, he hadn’t thought about his work much at all, other than the fact that it might keep him from being with his one true mate.
“I know you’re on vacation,” Lilith said slowly, “but do you think you could check?”
“Of course.” Lars immediately got to his feet. “I should go outside, where it’s a little quieter and I can concentrate.”
“I’ll come with you,” Beck volunteered. “I feel like crap, but I’m a dad. I’m used to feeling like trash and still having to get things done.”
Instead of going out the front door, where holiday shoppers were out in droves, they went down the long hallway at the back of the pub, past the bathrooms and the door to the kitchen, and into the alley.