The Dragon’s E-Mail Order Menage

Not because they had been afraid for him, that didn’t seem to have crossed their mind, but because it had been an inconvenience to have to stumble around in the dark. They had called him a baby for being upset that his “nanny” was gone. They understood in no way why he might miss, her, why he might need her still. That was fine. It was a sh*tty lesson to have to learn, but it was one he had needed.

It taught him the limitations of his parents in a way he was pretty confident nothing else could have. He did pretty well for himself afterwards, once he realized once and for all that his parents weren’t the thing that defined his identity. He figured out other ways to do that, things his parents never really bothered to deal with when it came to him.

Like, perhaps, the fact that he was a dragon shifter. Talk about a giant fu*king elephant in the big old mansion of a house. He didn’t think that they were ashamed of being shifters or anything like that, they just didn’t bother to teach him about it. He supposed that he was lucky for where he had been raised, then. He knew from talking to others that there were many parts of the world where being a shifter was a hell of a lot harder than it was when you lived in Santa Fe.

Santa Fe, magical safe haven, perfect town for an adolescent boy to explore what pretty much amounted to having super powers. He had turned out pretty damn good if he did say so himself and he had kept things civil enough with his parents that he could still sit here and have a meal with them. It might not be the most pleasant meal in the whole world, but he was still sitting there with them nonetheless, and that was something. It, too, was something more than a lot of grown people could claim to have with their parents.

“So, Levi, what is all of the fuss about, anyway? Why did you insist on dragging us out like this in the first place?”

“Aw, I’m sorry Mom, did you have a lot going on that I got in the way of?”

“We’ve been at the lodge, Levi. It’s where we like to go when it’s time for the winter to come. You know that. I’ve told you before, I know I have.”

“Have you? Maybe I forget because I haven’t ever been there.”

“Oh for the love of Christ, Levi.” His father spoke with the dismissive exasperation that was, in Levi’s mind, one of his signature moves. “Are you acting this way because you’ve gotten your feelings hurt over not receiving an invitation to the cabin? Please, if you’d like to come just say the word. You may join us if you wish. I suppose we’ve both just assumed that you have other things going on. That you wouldn’t be particularly interested in holing up with good old Mom and Dad.”

No, Levi thought to himself with a grimace that he hoped wasn’t as obvious on his face as it felt, that is something I definitely don’t want to do. Thankfully, however, he had the good sense to not to actually speak any of that out loud and instead he just smiled and kept his mouth shut, eternally grateful when the waiter returned with the tray of margaritas. His mother sniffed at it like it smelled bad and his father refused to even look at the poor guy, but Levi gave him his biggest grin he had and took a long, slow sip.

Now that they had been through the initial unpleasantries, he knew which line of questioning would come next. It was the questions that came like clockwork, he figured they did for most children when they got to a certain age. It was just part of being the adult child, probably more so for him because he was the only son of very wealthy parents who were now looking for him to hold up his end of the bargain. That was, more than likely, what this whole thing was about, this whole luncheon. As far as Levi could tell there were rarely get-togethers with his parents that weren’t motivated by something other than a desire for spending time together. The fact that they had let him choose the place where they would meet (although they had been incapable of being inside for more than a few minutes before they started to act like being somewhere that wasn’t five star was the end of civilization as they knew it) was a pretty telling sign. It meant they wanted something from him and they wanted to play nice about it. Interesting. Unusual.

“So what do you think?”

“What do we think? About what?”

“About the drinks, Mom. I know they aren’t the best champagne, but do you think they’ll work for you?”

“They’ll do. Not half bad, actually. Perhaps we don’t give you quite enough credit.”

Very interesting. If he’d had a hunch before, now he knew they wanted something. Those were the only times when his mother talked about giving him any kind of credit. It wasn’t enough credit though. These drinks were fu*king fantastic and he took another couple of long sips of his drink, already signaling with one finger to the server to order him another one. His mother gave him a disapproving look, arched one perfectly groomed eyebrow, but said nothing.

“So. Who wants to tell me why we’re really here?”

“Come on, Levi, let’s not have any unpleasantness. We’re all here to see each other, aren’t we? That’s what family does.”

“Sure Dad, but is there something in particular you wanted? You both just seem a little bit on edge, a little bit jumpy. Kind of seems like you’ve got something on your mind.”

“Well, we did want to talk to you about something. We wanted to talk to you about the future.”

“The future, huh? Is that all?”

His parents glanced at each other, exchanged some look the meaning of which only the two of them would ever really understand. He had seen that before, between his parents and between other couples as well, some of whom he knew and some he didn’t. Couples who had their own unspoken language they could speak without speaking at all. It surprised him somehow that his parents had this, this closeness between the two of them.

They had always seemed so cold to him, so distant, that having that kind of intimacy seemed almost impossible to him. But it was there, whether it made sense to him or not, and they were currently having a whole conversation without him being included in any way. But then again, that kind of thing, that kind of exclusion, was kind of just par for the course with those two. That was how they operated.