I tapped my foot against the floorboards, glancing over my shoulder to the window behind the couch. Nothing yet. I bit my lip. Allen entered the room, kneeling in front of me and wrapping his hands around mine. "Love, they'll be here soon. They're being driven here in armored cars, and they're all safe. The snow is a bitch to drive through. No worries."

I pressed my lips together and nodded. "Right, right, I'm just..." I took a deep breath. "Anxious to see them. And excited too. And with everything going on with my dad-"

"I will handle your father, my love. You just relax and enjoy the holiday time with your family. If your father starts acting up, I'll be quick to take care of it. Just... enjoy them being here."

Releasing a deep breath, I leaned into him and breathed deeply. "I'll try. Thank you, Allen."

"Of course, my love. Now, I have a question. I just want to be prepared- should I expect the cold shoulder now that your family is gonna be around?" his tone was teasing, but there was something underneath. Oh my Allen...

With a shake of my head, I sat up straight. "I might not be as kissy-touchy. But that's more because public display of affection is weird. But I'm not gonna pretend that I don't like you, or something. I love you. And I don't think it's helping my family's perspective of you that I pretend that I don't. They'll just have to deal with it."

He grinned, pride shining on his face. I couldn't help but kiss his cheek. "How about your family? When are they coming?"

"They'll be here in the morning, along with that new guy... Leon's brother. He asked if he could bring him along, and Sophie said that she'd poison my turkey if I didn't just follow along with whatever her mate wants... mated life hasn't improved her behavior in the slightest."

I laughed and nuzzled my nose against his, when he stiffened against me. "Sounds like they're here."

I blinked and nodded, flying up from the couch and heading for the hallway. And true to Allen's word, I'd only just managed to step into my boots and out onto the front porch when three armed cars drove between the trees and in front of the house.

The car in the front opened first, and spilling out came my Nana, Pops, and my grandma and grandpa. They stood shivering a looked around. My brows furrowed in concern. Their jackets definitely weren't suitable for the cold- and... and Pops looked exhausted. I hurried down the steps, Allen skipping down along with me.

Before I had the chance, Allen had stepped past me. "Oh goddess, Mr. White. You must be exhausted after to long journey. Come on in, get warmed up. I can show you your bedroom so you can get some rest, if you'd like."

My Pops smiled at him. "Yes, please. Thank you. I'm a bit tired- Zara, honey?"

My Nana pressed her lips together and nodded, and hurried in along with Pops and Allen. Allen smiled over his shoulder just as he walked into the house, and then I was left alone in the snow to play hostess for my family.

In the car behind the one my mom had come in, my aunt, uncle and cousins came toppling out. I wasn't even sure how Allen had managed to get them out of the other Alpha's pack. I had an odd feeling it hadn't been cheap... or particularly legal, either.

The last car, naturally, had to be the one my dad was in. I stared after the tinted windows, and raised my eyebrows. The door opened, and I had to take a deep breath when my father stepped out.

His skin was ashen, his cheeks hallowed like he hadn't been eating properly. I swallowed thickly, and walked past the rest of my family, throwing them an offhand comment about getting inside and getting rid of their jackets and shoes. I walked up to my dad, arms crossed. He looked me up and down, and I looked at him.

"You... look like you've been doing alright, Paigy."

I nodded. "Yeah. Things have been really good between me and Allen lately, despite... everything. So I've been doing great, mostly. You look terrible, though. Haven't you been eating?" There was no use beating around the bush.

He shrugged. "Haven't been very hungry."

I clicked my tongue. "Papa... don't even start that. The least thing, the absolute least thing you can do after all the shit you pulled at my goddamn birthday, is to take care of your own basic needs. You don't get to make me feel bad for being happy."

His eyes met mine. "That's not... well I..." he furrowed his brows. "I didn't... I didn't realize..."

I huffed. "Didn't realize what? That you're my goddamn dad, and I love you? Care about you?"

He shook his head. "No, not that, or well, maybe that too, but... I didn't want to make you feel bad. About being happy. You're my kid, of course you should never feel guilty for being happy."

Tears burned in my eyes. "Well, then stop acting like the things that make me happy, like Allen, are somehow directly offensive to your existence. Be the goddamn adult you're supposed to be, please."

His brows furrowed. "Paige I-"

I held up my hand to stop him. "Dad, I don't want to hear your excuses. We were wrong about what wolves... what they were like. We were wrong about all of it. I've admitted that I was wrong. If you can't that's... disappointing, to say the least, but then that's how it is. But I don't want to hear all your little explanations as to why you can't admit it. Let's just get inside. Allen baked honey hearts for all of us, and I've really been looking forward to tasting them." I turned around on my heel, speeding up my pace of walking when I heard the snow crunching under my dad's feet behind me as he followed. It was somewhat reassuring that I at least didn't have to drag him into the house."

I kicked off my boots, and saw that my entire family, minus Pops, were all standing, looking lost in the hallway. I took a deep breath, and gestured to the familyroom. "Come on, we can sit in here. Allen baked for us, he'll probably bring it in here when he's showed Pops his room."

My family followed my lead, happily being herded into the living room and sitting down on the couches and chairs, looking around curiously. My cousin Parker was sleeping peacefully in my cousin Vanessa's arms.

I cleared my throat, and took a seat on the couch that me and Allen always sat on. His spot remained empty and waiting for him to join me. "Welcome to Canada. I'm really sorry about dragging you all here on such short notice, but I was super worried, and I didn't want anything to happen."

My mom nodded, a weak smile on her face. "Oh, it's alright, sweetie. It's not your fault. This place is... very nice." She looked about the room, the hundreds of years old photos, and even older walls.

I nodded. "Yeah, this place is great. Lots of peace and quiet."

"My favorite part of the year has always been coming up here. Hello everyone, how nice to see you all again." Allen said from the doorway, walking around the couch and sitting down next to me. I scooted a bit closer to him, and he put his arm around me. My family watched every movement closely- especially my dad, my Nana, and Vanessa.

Allen kissed my head for emphasis, which I was going to scold him for later. "I hope you all had a pleasant trip up here, although it seemed that your clothes couldn't quite keep up with the cold. Do you not have proper winter coats?"

My aunt shuffled a bit with her cardigan. "Oh no, it's quite alright- we'll manage."

Allen shook his head. "No, no way. With all due respect, Mrs. Thyne, you're Paige's family, and therefore mine. And I sure as-" he looked at Parker. "-heck don't let my family walk around, being cold. Once Paige's grandfather has enough energy to go, we'll drive into town."

My uncle shifted in his seat. "Uh, Alpha Allen, it's generous of you to offer, but-"

"Mr. Thyne. You are not going to make pride keep me from buying you kids proper winter gear when there's literally a foot and a half of snow outside. I can afford it, it's not up for discussion." Allen looked at him, his eyes level and serious. My uncle cleared his throat and nodded.

"Thank you, uh, Alpha Allen."

Allen shrugged at my side, tugging me a bit closer. I happily leaned into him, only feeling uncomfy about it because of the alert eyes following our every movement. "Don't worry about it. You're family now, all of you. Us wolves take care of our families. And I'm happy to do so. And please, for the goddess's sake, call me Allen. Like I said- family."

I snorted. "Your sisters don't even call you that, Alice." I narrowed my eyes and smiled at him.

He raised an eyebrow. "Don't you start, or you'll be sleeping on the couch."

I huffed. "Alright then. Will save me 2 minutes of disappointment tonight."

The last part slipped out rather, unfortunately, and I quickly surveyed my family's reaction. They looked more concerned, probably with my insulting him than angry or disgusted with the fact that I had just very clearly implied that I'd had sex with Allen.

He chuckled, and kissed my cheek, before looking at my family. "I'll go get some honey hearts I baked for us all Yesterday. Be back in a sec."

My family stared at me once he'd left the room. "What?" I asked.

My grandmother kept her voice quiet as she said. "How do you... aren't you worried, about talking to him like that?"

I smiled, making an extra effort to look as laid back as possible. "Not in the slightest. He's Allen. He loves me. I've got the big, bad alpha wrapped around my pinky. I can basically do whatever I want. It's pretty great."

My grandmother shifted a bit. "Oh, I... well, I hadn't imagined that."

"Eh, me neither. But I don't exactly mind it. Not at all, exactly. I say 'jump' he asks how high."

"I don't recall as much, my love." Allen said from behind me.

I arranged my face into the most unimpressed mask possible. "And I don't recall asking your opinion. Yet, here we are."

He rolled his eyes and leaned down. "You're terrible." he kissed my cheek.

I grinned at him. "Oh, you love it."

He pursed his lips, making a gesture with his face like 'maybe', and then set down a platter of heart-shaped, chocolate covered cakes the size of cookies. "Eat away. I've already saved one for Paige's grandfather."

Parker, who had been awake but groggy in Vanessa's arms, suddenly jolted awake at the sight of cookies. He was quick to grab one, and then looked up at me, and then Allen. With his fatty toddler hand around the cookie, the chocolate coating of which was slowly melting onto his hand, then walked up to Allen, and began tugging and pulling on Allen's clothes as he tried to crawl onto his lap. Allen chuckled and lifted my kid cousin up.

My aunt cleared her throat. "Oh, uh. Well... he's not usually this happy with people he doesn't know well. He almost always sticks to Nessa like glue. It's alright, if you don't want him to-"

Allen shook his head with a smile, ruffling Parker's hair. "Oh no, no worries. He's cute. I love kids. Nothing to worry about."

"Just... he's fragile, more breakable than... kids that are, well like you. So just be careful, please." Anxiety shone from my aunt Avery's eyes.

Allen smiled calmy. "I know. No worries. I'll be careful- right bud?" he looked down at Parker, who was chewing away at his cake. Allen chuckled. "Huh, what, don't wanna talk to me?"

My cousin broke in. "He's mostly non-verbal. We're pretty sure he's autistic."

Allen blinked and then looked down at him again. "Oh well then, you're off the hook for ignoring me, kid. You know-" he looked at my aunt and uncle. "If it is, there are great special ed programs in my pack. Also a few who teach sign to kids who are non-verbal, for one reason or the other. If it's something you're interested in, I'm happy to help you find a spot for him somewhere."

My uncle nodded. "Uh, thank you, erh... Allen. But he's still a little young for anything like that. But we'll certainly keep the offer, in, uh, in mind."

"Great. I'm more than happy to help. I have a cousin of my own who's also very neurodivergent, and she also has some struggles in her everyday life. What they need most is the proper support to develop tools to handle their neurodivergency."

My uncle nodded. "Right, right. But I don't think it's that bad. We'll see how it goes as he gets a bit older. Maybe he's just a late speaker, y'know."

Allen raised a brow, but then shrugged. "Maybe."

We talked back and forth, Allen and I engaging most of the conversation, but my family answered when necessary. But my dad didn't say a word. Not one. After two hours, footsteps sounded, and my Pops came trotting in, still looking tired, but much better than before.

Allen basically peer-pressured my family into getting into the armored cars once again. Allen and I drove together in his car, driving at the front and showing the rest of my family the way. We drove and drove, and then stopped by a mall. Allen worked sort of like a herding dog, keeping us all together as he acted like an overprotective mother, insisting that he'd buy proper winter attire for my family.

They hadn't realized exactly how cold it'd be, and since it had been such short notice, they hadn't had the chance to get a hold of warm clothes.

Not to mention, most of them, like myself when me and Allen had left the first night, had only grabbed and filled a backpack of clothes. It was worse with Vanessa though. She'd only bought a single pair of ripped jeans and two thin shirts in the hurry, because she'd packed a bunch of Parker's clothes into the same bag. So that was what she had. The clothes on her body, and a pair of jeans and two shirts.

While the others went off to go find coats, I tugged at Allen. "Would it be alright if I went off with Vanessa? She seems super stressed out. Maybe some, I don't know, girltime might help."

"Sure, you go ahead. You got your card?"

I told him that I did, and then I kissed him quickly on the cheek, before basically having to drag Vanessa away from the others. She laughed nervously as we saw the rest of my family disappearing into an outwear gear store. "Sorry, I just get a little anxious. Dad is.... kind of inconsiderate of Parker, sometimes. So I mostly watch out for him. It hurts my heart when he's upset."

I bit my cheek. "Well, nothing to worry about there, as you can tell, Allen is super nice about that stuff. So he'll watch out for Parker, if needed. But now, the two of us are going shopping. Girl bonding time it is."

We both laughed nervously, and then went into the first store we saw. Clothes. We looked between the racks, but nothing caught our eyes. So we went to the next one. And as it turned out, she really had only brough a pair of jeans and two shirts. She didn't even have underwear or socks. So that was what we went to look for first.

She looked through the racks of plain cotton bras, me helping her along. I looked for ones in her size, and went along the racks. I stopped when I got to the lacey stuff. I stopped at the sight of a red lingerie teddy, with a little fabric bough of holley between the cups of the breast. I grinned at the thought of wearing that in front of Allen on Christmas night. He'd go crazy.

"Why are you looking at that?"

I swirled around, blushing at the direction my thoughts had taken. Vanessa looked at me, three beige bras and matching underwear slung over her arm. I cleared my throat. "Just... thought it was funny. The idea of someone seriously buying that."

She furrowed her brows and then ran her fingers over some shaping bodysuits. "Does he... make you... do it? The sex? Does he force you to do it?"

I stepped back, and looked around. No one was in the underwear section other than us. "No, no he doesn't."

"But you guys still do?"

"Well, yes. But only... recently. It's still pretty new."

She nodded, not looking at me. "And... if you don't want to?"

I smiled. "Then it doesn't happen. Allen loves me. He doesn't make me do anything, and I mean anything that I do not want to. He never has. He's always so sweet. And he's taking things at my pace."

She nodded. "And... do you think all of them are like that?" Her voice broke towards the end of the sentence.

I walked up to her, and rubbed her arm. "Hey, Nessa, what's going on? What's wrong? Come on, let's find somewhere to sit." I walked her to the changing room, right past the lady standing there and monitoring, and pulled the curtain to cover for us before setting her down on the chair in the changing room.

"What's going on?"

She wrapped her arms around herself. "My... my sixteenth is next month."

I blinked. "Oh, right, January 2nd."

She bit her lip. "I don't know what to do. I don't want to leave my mom and dad, and Parker, and I'm so fucking terrified about what kind of a... mate I might get. I mean, sure, Allen is nice to you, but are all of them like that?"

I looked at her, and an odd, hollow feeling rang through my body when I realized I'd had this moment too. Just over a year ago- although it seemed much, much further away. Two months before my 16th birthday, a classmate of mine... Millie. Millie was her name. She'd stopped coming. At first, we figured she was sick, but then our teacher told us that Millie was a mate of a wolf.

Millie had been my friend. My good friend. We'd talked every day, during lunch breaks. We'd shared inside jokes. And then suddenly, she was gone. And not only that, but her disappearing like that, in the blink of an eye... it'd been two months before my 16th birthday, and I'd then realized that that could happen to me as well. And I'd broken down that night, completely inconsolable.

And after, I'd tried to repress every thought of Millie's existence whatsoever. So much so, that I guess that even after everything turned out alright with Allen, my mind had still considered the memory too painful.

I took a deep breath. "I... I can't say that all of them are like that. Like Allen. I don't feel the whole mate-thing the same way Allen does. But when he talks about it, he says that it's this undeniable love. He says that wolves just love their mates so much. That the fact that any of us humans think that we'll get abused by wolf-mates it so stupid, because it's impossible. He says it's impossible for wolves to hurt their mates, no matter what."

She bit her lip and still averted my eyes, tears trailing down her cheeks. I wrapped her into a hug, stroking her dark hair. "Listen, Ness, I won't tell you to just not worry and that everything is gonna be okay, because it won't do shit and you'll still be terrified. But... I was very very wrong, about what I thought that wolves were like. I was wrong about how they treated their mates, and I've been proven wrong more times than I can count. I love Allen, and he loves me. I can't give you any better comfort than that."

She shook a little and she sobbed. She kept her lips firmly pressed together and no sound escaped, but wheezing came out of her nostrils. I brushed some hair out of her face. "Listen, I obviously can't fix that you're scared, and I get it, 100 percent, but I'm really, really happy. And I can't say that it'll be the same for you, but if you do end up being a mate, which, remember, isn't 100% certain... there's a good chance, I think, that it'll be alright. Maybe not perfect and amazing, but alright, at least."

"And if it isn't?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. There are laws,