Snippet #2788909

Phoenix frowned at Alex’s mention of his dreams. He trusted Alex’s gut on the matter, trusted that the dreams couldn’t mean anything good. But nothing had happened yet. Hopefully they’d pass on through and this would all blow over. Everything going to hell was the last thing he needed right now.

He fixed a smile back on his face as he turned around to serve a customer, but Aurora’s sudden departure made the smile slip a little. He turned his attention back to the customer and fixed them up with their lemon and ginger white tea, handing them a free cookie and asking them to spread the news. “Is Aurora okay? I hope I didn’t upset her by bringing up the hunters,” he said. He didn’t know much about Aurora or what had brought her to the town, but the speed with which she practically ran out the door made him think it couldn’t be much good.

Somebody called him away to ask him a question. His staff were good and only ever asked him to sort something out if they’d given it a try themselves. He’d trained them in himself, but he couldn’t take all the credit. They were hard workers and he was immensely proud of them. He turned back around to serve a customer at the counter... and for a moment was struck entirely speechless, a rarity for him. There was a man at the counter, and he was honestly possibly the most beautiful man Phoenix had ever seen. His white blonde hair was that perfect type of messy that Phoenix could only ever hope to achieve, and those piercing blue eyes felt like he was looking into Phoenix’s soul. He recovered his composure and fixed the biggest smile he could on to his face.

“Hi there! What can I get you?” He asked, leaning on the counter a little. He was pretty sure he’d promised himself and/or Jaiden (he had been exhausted and a little drunk at the time, so couldn’t be sure if he’d said it out loud to her) that he was never going to fall for a pretty face again. He knew that if there were hunters in town, he should be especially careful. He didn’t recognize this man and knew that he should probably be careful as a result. But... that perfect face and that perfect hair.

Evelyn just scowled at the mention of the hunters. Her skin was still stinging like hell, and she knew it was going to take a while for it to heal up. But Markus had an oddly calming presence, and she figured he was probably a good ally to have on her side. She raised an eyebrow as he mentioned questioning. “I like your thinking.” She said with a grin.

She raised an eyebrow as he made a comment about a vampire such as herself, but just scowled and folded her arms as he commented on the fact that she was obviously relatively new to this. “Is it that obvious?” She mumbled. But the offer of treatments and of finally getting answers was just too tempting. Plus, Markus seemed to be more experienced, and he might be a relatively good source of information. And he was a pretty elusive person, so she would be lying if she said she wasn’t curious about learning a little bit more about him.

“Alright, I’ll grab his feet, you grab his arms,” she said, bending down to grab the man’s feet. He was broad and muscular, and there was no way Evelyn would have had a hope of moving him by herself. But Markus looked strong at least, so they should be able to manage. Especially because she was pretty sure she’d heard that lycans were stronger than regular humans.

“So, a question for you. Like you said, I’m pretty new to this. I knew a hunter at one stage but he wasn’t a... hunter as such. His family were hunters, but he wasn’t. But none of them had a mark like that guy does. Why do they have a hunter’s mark? Because it makes them stand out, and they’re easy for us to target. Otherwise, we’d hesitate because we wouldn’t know if they were just some poor normal person or not, and they’d have a few seconds of an advantage on us.”