At that moment, I wondered if he had Santa blood in him.
Santa was an offshoot of the elven race, but a different sort of being. The mystery surrounding Santa created wonder and enchantment here at the North Pole. Before I was born, when Santa started his story more than a century ago, everyone had questions. Those questions never stopped. Santa wasn’t talking.No one even knew how old he was. But surely he’d had parents. How else did he get here? There had to be others of his kind. Was that rare DNA spread secretly among certain elves? Or maybe Santa’s kind was born of elves but a mutation?
Santa seemed content to stay to himself. He had no mate, no children. Yet he was jolly and full of generosity and love. He’d created the year-round Christmas village, imported the forest for the reindeer to play in, and paid for everything from bottomless funds from a source that people could only speculate on.
I believed he was a true immortal.
Keir finished his speech and we went back upstairs. I followed.
“Is the weather really a worry this time?” I asked.
“We never know for sure. We have to be prepared.”
“Show me what you have,” I said. “I’ll start analyzing right away.”
10
KEIR
The northern lights played outside my office window, gold-green tonight with streaks of pink. The storm was slowly moving in but had not yet arrived. The skies remained clear.
I’d been working all day on new analytics. The structure of the storm didn’t look right to me. Nor to Fallon. I had my team doing analytics as well, while Fallon worked on theories and speculations. We needed to prepare for all possibilities which, when dealing with nature, was obviously impossible, but we were doing the best we could.
In the meantime, I was also concerned about Fallon. He was young, but that wasn’t necessarily the problem. His background was what made him a bit socially awkward. Raised by elves. I was an elf and I understood there were some cultural differences. They shouldn’t matter here, though. Not on my team. I was, after all, an elf among shifters. I certainly didn’t get invited to shifter parties, nor did I expect to, but Fallon being left out was not something that set well with me.
I had feelings for him. Protective ones. Alpha ones. I couldn’t deny that to myself. But I was also selfish in my instincts.I wanted impressive results at work. Fallon could give me that. But Fallon froze and couldn’t work as well when he lost confidence. I’d become aware of it during the first flight test of the sleigh just after I’d hired him. He had eagerly come up with ideas only to freeze when I’d invited him onto the sleigh to examine the dash computer.
Fallon was made for great things. With his delicate sensitivity, I needed to balance that and I had to be smart about it. His abilities awed me. To harness them required me to move smoothly between him and the team at Control.
I walked into Fallon’s office and he immediately gave me his attention. “Any more updates on the storm yet?” he asked.
“I’ll be the first to hear of it if there are.”
“I got a program to study it myself, hoping it will help. I’ve been looking at the properties.” He turned his screen so I could see it better. “Comparing them to other storms here in the past, this is weird.”
I looked at his findings. “Thatisweird.”
He sighed and closed his eyes.
“Thoughts?”
“I have some.”
“Want to brainstorm for a bit?”
He nodded, his features brightening. Our sessions together were a joy. For both of us.
We spent the afternoon speculating and trying to draw up equations to support our best theories. It was exhilarating. Whenever I came off a session like that, I had a high like I’d just had the best sex. Combined with my attraction to Fallon, that tripled.
Later, I sent Fallon home for a few hours’ sleep. He promised he would return for a midnight shift. Then I went back to my office to do more work. No sleep for me short of cat naps on my office couch. While much of the world was attendingChristmas parties and watching Christmas movies, we here at Santa’s Village didn’t get to start celebrating until it was actually Christmas Day. And after. There was simply too much work to be done.
I informed Santa of the unique nature of the upcoming storm. He emailed and thanked me. He did not indicate concern. But then, Santa never showed upset or signs of anxiety. If optimists were glass-half-full types, Santa’s type was his glass was always filled to the brim.
Fallon returned at midnight.
“Did you sleep?”
“A little. But my mind is still going fast from this afternoon. You were here all this time?” he asked.
