Page 52 of Bottoms Up (Mythic Beast #4)
Chapter One
Lauren strolled through the Fairbanks University campus because she was bored and looking for something to do. She loved spending time with her mom, and this had been a fun trip, hanging out with her mom and Kendra, but Lauren wanted to let loose and have some fun of a different kind.
She’d been broken up with Wyatt for eight months, and it was time to date again.
She’d gone out with a few people, but nothing serious, and she hadn’t had sex with anyone besides Nick, and she’d only seen him over the summer when she’d gone home from Harvard, and then over fall break when he’d come to Cambridge to hang out.
Nick was one of her best friends, and a fantastic fuck-buddy, but they just didn’t get to see each other that often.
If she was going to have a wild sexual fling, Alaska would be the place to do it.
If she did it at Harvard, word would get around, and she didn’t want everyone to know.
Or rather, she didn’t want anyone in her theater group to know, because she’d turned nearly all of them down by telling them she was going through an asexual phase.
She looked up to the full moon and wondered how the werewolves in Alaska felt about the long nights.
It was only four in the evening and dark already.
In mid-December, the sun rose before eleven in the morning and set at around two-thirty, which meant the powerful vampires like Kendra were down less than an hour a day, and were outside at two-thirty, if they wanted to be.
Lauren wandered into a nice coffeeshop, ordered hot tea, and sat to wait for them to bring her teacup and teapot. She caught the eye of two males she sensed were shapeshifters, and she grinned at them. They looked at each other, then back at her, and walked to her table.
“What’s a pretty girl like you doing all alone?” one of them asked.
“Bears, right?” she asked.
One of them leaned down, sniffed, stood back up, and frowned. “You aren’t from around here, are you? The bears live in the woods. College students live in the coffeehouses.”
She smiled. “Except when they don’t. The sniff told me all I need to know.
Ya’ll can sit and talk if you want. The sniff should’ve told you Kendra and Zander see me as a friend, but please don’t let that scare you off.
” Like it’d done the other four or five shifters she’d found to talk to.
She was beginning think that if she had sex in this town, it was going to have to be with a human.
And really, there was nothing wrong with that, but shifters are just so much more alive . It’s like they called to a part of her soul. Especially the bears.
One of them sat with her, and the other got in line to place their order.
“I’m Bill. He’s John.”
“I’m Lauren. Are the two of you brothers, or just friends? And why are you on campus over the winter break?” Lauren asked.
“Cousins. We go home in the summer, but the final couple of miles of road to our house don’t really exist this time of year, so we stay on campus over the winter break. Do you live in town?”
“No. I live on the east coast. I came with my mom to visit Kendra. We’ll fly home for Christmas, but we try to make the most of my time away from school.”
Fuck , she hadn’t meant to mention school. Now they’d ask where she goes, and then she’d have to say Harvard, and then they’d think she thought she was better than them, and everything would go downhill. Fuck, fuck, fuck .
“Where do you go to school?”
She sighed. “Harvard, but I’m an art student so it isn’t like I’m a genius.” Which wasn’t entirely true since she’d have degrees in both theater and business in a few months, but it also wasn’t a lie.
John sat with what Lauren assumed were two coffees, and a waitress brought Lauren’s tea. Lauren poured a cup from the teapot and held it in her hands to warm them. Fuck , but Alaska is cold in December.
“So what’s there to do at night around here?” she asked them.
“There’s a dance club a few blocks over. A couple of sports bars. What are you looking for?” John asked.
“It’d be nice to go dancing, though with all the clothes I’d have to wear to get there without losing body parts, I might roast if I tried to move too much.”
“It doesn’t get cold at Harvard?”
“It gets bone-chilling cold, but Fairbanks is colder. What are the two of you majoring in?”
They talked for twenty minutes, and were making plans to meet up later and go to the dance club when Bill looked over her head and froze.
Lauren sent her senses out and felt Gavin’s energy. She closed her eyes and swore silently. If shifters were more alive than humans, Gavin was like a nuclear energy plant.
Most vampires came across as having less energy.
Not really dead energy, but not exactly alive, either.
Abbott, now known as Zander, had a mega-powerful energy signature that wasn’t exactly monstrous, but not alive in the way humans and shapeshifters are.
Lauren’s mom’s friend Kendra was also a powerful vampire, way more sociable than Zander and Gavin, but her energy didn’t feel alive either, much less nuclear.
Lauren was glad Kendra had managed to keep her first name when the vampires had all changed identities. Her legal name was different, but her middle name in this identity was Kendrick, which was the mother of this identity’s maiden name, so she could get away with going by Kendra.
Gavin had a new last name, and he was spelling his name Gawain now, but was okay with people saying either Gou-wan, or Gavin. In Lauren’s mind, he was still Gavin.
And Gavin’s vampire powers or energy or whatever was the exception to write home about. In Lauren’s mind, he practically glowed with power.
Supposedly, Gavin was one of the scariest vampires in this realm, and Lauren had understood why when she was younger, but on this trip, he seemed different.
Without turning around, she asked, “Why are you here, Gavin? You can’t drink tea or coffee, right?”
“If your mother found out I didn’t take steps to protect you, there’s no telling what she’d do to me.”
Both bear shifters were staring at the table, not looking directly at the vampire, showing submission without looking odd to the humans in the room.
The vampires ruled the territory, and any shapeshifters living here would do it only with the permission of Zander, who was Master of Alaska.
Gavin was his Secundo , but was also sometimes called Zander’s junkyard dog — the vampire he sent after misbehaving vampires and shapeshifters who needed punishing. Or worse.
Lauren kept focused on the bears while she spoke to Gavin. “I haven’t needed protection in a long time.”
“And yet, Zander and Kendra have made it clear you’re under their protection. Normally, Zander’s protection is more than enough, but Kendra has made it clear she’ll take it as a personal affront if someone fucks with you.”
Lauren crossed her arms and smiled at Bill, who’d looked up and met Lauren’s gaze when while Gavin talked. “I think Kendra’s fine with people fucking with me, she just wants to make sure I’m good with fucking them back.”
Gavin sat in the fourth chair at the small round table and looked at the two young men. His power throbbed out of him, and she knew they’d feel it. It wasn’t an active threat, and yet, it was.
The vampire’s grey-blue eyes looked bored, but Lauren could feel Gavin’s attention like a physical touch, and she knew he wasn’t bored.
He glanced from Lauren to the boys and quietly said, “Leave us.”
Bill and John stood, turned, and walked away without so much as a backward glance, and Lauren glared at Gavin.
“That was rude.”
“I can take you to the dance club. You don’t need them.”
Lauren’s heart threatened to beat double-time in her chest at the thoughts of dancing with Gavin, but she focused on her breathing and controlled her physiological response as best she could. It wouldn’t do for Gavin to pick up on her fascination with him.
Also, Gavin and her mother were enemies. Or, they had been for years. There was some kind of truce, now, but they still avoided each other as much as possible.