self-sufficient alpha male.

Avery Chase

It's the last Sunday in February. The night was very long, for those at the White ranch. One of the hands came back from the clinic with a sling and a bottle of pain killers. Three Guardians from Forgotten Questions ended up sleeping in cots and air mattresses in a spare room or office; they woke before the little girl did. The little girl: the cub. The one so far from home, so far from anything familiar. There was breakfast, and there was Calden sending Eva and Ellie off, and after a while they had to go in and just wake her up, even though it was nearing afternoon.

They talked. Calden, perhaps, stayed near, when he saw Jill's face, when he sensed that she didn't want him to go, when she was asking where Eva was and looking a little disappointed to hear that the kinswoman had gone. It was a long talk. There was lunch, there were discussions between the kinsman and the Guardians while Jill sat in the living room in Ellie's dress. Then the house was gradually emptied again. Then it was just Calden, cleaning up and sorting through his own thoughts.

He calls Avery but she doesn't pick up; maybe he leaves her a voicemail.

--

Some time later, when dusk is starting to settle over the sky and sink into his bones, his front door opens and closes, quickly, loudly. And from wherever he is in the house, Avery calls:

"Calden?!"

Calden White

In truth, aside from that one pivotal moment last night, Calden is largely on the periphery of what happens. That's how it should be. Jill stands at the center of all the commotion; Calden is not so insecure or arrogant as to try to make it all about him. It's not about him. It is her life that has changed drastically and irreversibly. She is the fulcrum: the reason his cousins made that latenight run to the clinic, the reason Eva and Ellie bundled out of there so early this morning, the reason the Guardians have come.

Calden, for his part, does stay near. He sees the way Jill looks at him and he stays. He doesn't interrupt. He doesn't even sit with them as the Guardians explain to Jill, gently and firmly, what it all means. But he takes the day off and he doesn't tend to the cattle and he doesn't mend that one fence that was damaged by that one landslide. He makes them sandwiches for lunch. When they are ready to go, he offers -- though they don't accept -- to drive them.

He gives Jill his phone number as she is leaving. He tells her, call me when they give you a day off. He tells her, and the Guardians, that he has a spare room. That he'll make it a bedroom for her. That he is, in a very real sense, related to her. They share blood and ancestry, however distant. He can't replace her parents -- won't try -- but if she wants, this can be a home for her.

And then they leave. And he is left alone with his thoughts, in the settling of the dust.

--

Things have more or less returned to normal by the evening. A ranch isn't something that runs itself, even with three ranch-hands. He's out on the land all afternoon. They don't get around to the fence. It'll have to wait til morning. There's a dead calf to clean up. There are two mangled steers, one of which has to be put down. There's a whole herd to calm.

It's nearly too dark to see when he comes back to the house. When he puts the horses up and claps dust off his chaps and sheds his coat and hat. He's standing in the kitchen, muddy boots still on, staring into the fridge to figure out what's the best and easiest way to throw dinner together,

when the front door opens and shuts. Quickly, loudly. In the chaos of the day he'd almost forgotten he called Avery. Her voice, the note in it, startles him a little. He shuts the fridge door and she hears him coming before she sees him, a little worn-looking, quite entirely unshaven, the smell of the wind still on him. They meet halfway between the front door and the kitchen.

"I'm here. You okay?"

Avery Chase

She's so well-dressed for having that borderline look in her eyes, that gaze that stands on a knife's edge between rage and panic, which could at any second tip backwards, fall, plummet into pure fury. She's wearing rather adorable short boots with gleaming metallic studs along the ankles, a low stacked heel, leggings with a black-on-black pattern, and a flowing hi-lo top of pale pink with cap sleeves that resemble nothing so much as softly curled flower petals. She isn't wearing a coat, despite the cold air outside. Her hair is, as it often is when she has recently shifted her shape, straight and perhaps a bit windblown.

Calden's right there, and he's fine, and that savage light dims again, doused by relief. She comes quickly to him, boots still on, throwing her arms around his neck and hugging him. "Oh, I feel ridiculous," she breathes, even though her arms are terribly tight.

"When I ran up I smelled a number of wolves and I smelled blood and for a moment my mind just leapt to the worst."

Calden White

They meet halfway --

they collide halfway. Calden coming out of the kitchen, Avery seeing him, that fire in her eyes; the way it banks but does not quite extinguish. Never quite extinguishes. She comes to him, she all but throws herself into his arms, her own wrapping tight tight around his neck. He hugs her back, reflexively, and then -- tightly, when she tells him what she smelled.

"Oh, sweetheart." He's never really settled on a term of endearment for her. Mostly, he calls her Avery when he's being sincere; Miss Chase when he's teasing. This one slips off his tongue, though; fits the moment, fits the mood. He holds her very tightly. "I'm sorry. It didn't even occur to me. I called earlier -- did you get my message? Did you run all this way?

"Everything's all right. We had a bit of a mishap last night. I'll tell you all about it in a moment -- but everyone's fine now. Everyone will be fine."

Avery Chase

"You called?" She thinks for a moment; wants to dig out her phone and look, but she would have to let him go, and so she doesn't. She squeezes him. "I haven't checked my phone since I started running up here." Which, as he knows, takes hours on foot, even on four feet. Sometimes she just likes to run, and run, and run,

all alone, with nothing holding her back, not even the wind, and no one to answer to.

Avery exhales as he rubs her back, holds her, whatever he does to try and be comforting. She knows he isn't hurt, she does indeed feel a bit silly for jumping so quick to near-panic, but she waits a while before her heart rate slows again. She calms slowly, standing there in his living room.

"Tell me," she says, when she can bear to take a step back and lift her head, looking up at him, hands on his upper arms. "What was the mishap?"

Calden White

"Oh, no."

So the story starts falling together. For him, at least. She ran here. She ran for hours, as she sometimes does, and -- he called, but cell phones don't ring when they're not even really in existence, and so she ran and ran and ran and meanwhile Jill got The Talk from the wolves and he made lunch and then they left and

she arrived. Smelled blood, smelled wolves. Smelled terror.

He is still holding her. She feels ridiculous; he doesn't dismiss her. Not her terror, not her feeling-silly. He holds her very tight and very close, his arms warm around her, and yes: he's rubbing her back. Briskly, then slowly, in soothing circles.

"I'm sorry, Avery. I didn't realize. I thought -- oh, darling. Don't feel bad. I can't even imagine, running up without knowing, just smelling it, and -- I can't even imagine."

They draw apart a little, after a while. Her hands on his biceps; enough room between to look at each other. She asks. He finds a little laugh in himself somewhere. Gives it voice.

"Well; her name's Jill," he says. "And she's eleven, from South Dakota. Come on," he finds her hand, takes it in his. "I just got in myself, and you've been running all day. Let's get out of the entryway. I'll tell you the whole story while I throw dinner together."

Avery Chase

Her name's Jill, and Avery has no context whatsoever for who 'her' is or why --

and she's eleven, from South Dakota, which at this point has Avery furrowing her brow, bewildered, her lips slightly pursed but open, as though she is about to ask him what he's going on about, and if necessary she will explain that she smelled at least two, maybe three werewolves, their scents lingering around his property, and so what he's saying makes no sense.

But he stops. He says they'll go, and he'll make dinner, and he'll explain. She soothes; she smiles, exhaling, and nods. "That sounds good," Avery tells him,

and so they do.

Calden White

And so they do.

And so he gets out of those dusty trailworn boots at last. And so he rolls up the sleeves of his sunbeaten shirt, and so he washes his hands, and so he goes back to the kitchen and back to the fridge and somehow with his lady here it's easier for him to decide what to throw together.

It turns out to be -- for once -- poultry rather than beef. Chicken breasts that he wraps in bacon with a few sprigs of rosemary from that little garden near the milking shed and tosses in the oven. While he works on the main course, she makes a salad: which is to say, he tosses her a bagged salad kit and she combines the ingredients and pours on the dressing and, y'know. Fluffs it a bit.

And while they cook, he talks. He tells her how last night, while Eva-and-offspring were visiting, Jimmy and Paul came back in a wild terror. How they brought back a little girl, who was also a little werewolf, who they'd mistaken for a coyote and shot and --

"They feel awful about it," he says quietly as he wraps those chicken breasts. "I don't think either of them got a wink of sleep last night. They didn't know any better and I don't think I ought to rub their noses in it, but -- on the other hand, they shot and killed an eleven year old girl. And the only reason she's still around is because her spirit was stronger than that."

He goes on, though. He tells her how, when he went out to help, the girl had woken up. Had raged back into her warform and tossed Paul six feet straight back, had been so angry and terrified and confused and conflicted. How he and Eva had guns on her -- again -- but hadn't wanted to shoot; had realized, suddenly and painfully, that she was trapped in that form, had managed to talk her down, had managed to end that tense stand-off, had managed to get her to write her name and her age and where she was from. Had coaxed her back to herself enough that she could find her way back to her human skin.

And then they'd called the Sept. And the Sept had sent two of their Guardians, and everyone had spent the night, and in the morning they'd sat there and told her what she needed to know. A little of it, anyway. The beginnings.

"They took her down to the Caern," he finishes. By now, the chicken is in the oven and the salad is waiting on the counter. Calden is loading used utensils and knives and the sort into the dishwasher, talking to Avery over the flatgrill and the breakfast bar. They both have drinks: nothing alcoholic tonight, just water on ice, rehydrating after a long day. "For her training.

"I don't think they'll let her get back in touch with her parents just yet. Her folks must be lost kin. Maybe Fianna by the looks of her, but ... so long lost that no one even knows where they, or she, came from. I think they decided it'll just be too confusing for them to try to process this and for her to try to explain it right now.

"So she'll pretty much be living in the Caern while she learns the ropes. I'm setting aside a room for her here, though. Whatever tribe she ends up joining, an eleven-year-old girl ought to have a place to call home."

Avery Chase

Avery takes off her boots. Her clean, metal-studded, fashionable ankle booties sit next to his dust-covered, slightly muddy boots near the door, and they pad softly across the floor together. She is bemused by the bagged salad but fluffs it up, drizzles dressing, helps get dinner together while he tells her about this tiny cub, this girl who isn't even bleeding yet, who was so small in lupus that they thought she was a coyote.

Calden only sees her when he glances at her as they maneuver through the kitchen together, but he can see the effect all this has on her. The pain her eyes. The ache, which -- not to dismiss the shock and guilt that Jimmy and Paul feel, which does matter to her -- twists her heart for this little girl. It stings her eyes, making them shine while she's absently, automatically sprinkling croutons on the salad. He hears her sniff; he sees her blink rapidly a few times, though her cheeks are a little pink.

There's a lot to process in this story, at least for Avery. There's the Fianna kinsmen she cares about and the Fianna kinsman she loves and the Shadow Lord woman and Shadow Lord child who were here, all these people that mean something-or-other to her were in danger, very real and very visceral danger. On some level, all she wants to do is protect them all by tearing whatever threatens them into bloody pieces. But then there is the girl. Just a little girl, alone and hungry and scared and trapped in a body that can feel almost nothing but rage, a body that turns all that loneliness and hunger and terror into absolute wrath. She feels faintly sick from heartache,

due, in more than a small part, to the fact that she knows exactly what it feels like to be shot, to die, to return. It still affects her, and it happened to her when she was in her twenties already. She can't even imagine what it was like for this cub. At least, Avery thinks to herself, it was not the first time she changed. At least there's that. For some reason, she convinces herself this makes it a little better.

"I'm so glad you're okay," she says quietly, after a long pause between the words he's saying and the words she chooses first. She's standing at the island, actually, hands on either side of the glossy wooden bowl that the salad rests in. He did get her water, which she needs, but her throat is a little too tight to drink right now.

Avery exhales, turning her head finally to look at him. "That could have gone so many other ways," she knows, "and I'm so glad it didn't. I'm so glad you're okay, and that Eva and her daughter are all right, and that Jimmy and Paul weren't gravely injured, and that the cub is safe." She gives a little nod, as though answering for herself some unvoiced question. She looks back down at the leafy greens, the croutons, the sheen of dressing. "I hope they let her spend time here. If you rip someone's humanity away entirely and teach them they aren't supposed to miss it... they won't. And they become monstrous indeed. She should be permitted to just be a child for a while, even if --"

even if Gaia yanked that away from her.

even if Luna did this to her so young.

even if the universe isn't fair, and is cruel, and has no gentleness at all.

A tight smile ends that sentence instead. She blinks a few more times. She breathes. "I'm just glad you're okay," she says again.

Calden White

She's not across the breakfast bar from him. She's at the kitchen island, which means she is closer to him, which means when he straightens from loading the dishwasher he comes around to her and, with very little preamble and no self-consciousness at all, puts his arms around her.

Again they're in each other's arms. Again he's hugging her, his embrace close and nearly tight. Perhaps for the first time it occurs to Calden that of all of them -- of him and Paul and Jimmy and Ian and Eva and Ellie and everyone, everyone -- Avery is the one who can most understand what it is Jill went through. That savage loss of what used to be her life. The way that she died,

by gunshot,

only to find herself alive again, alive and full of wrath that she simply could not contain.

Avery has over a decade on the little cub. She has a decade on her, and even so, Calden knows she doesn't like that scar on her body. She doesn't like what it reminds her of and, reminded of that in turn now, he holds her for a long time indeed.

"I'm okay," he says quietly. "I think Jill will be okay. I'm glad, too. That you don't mind, I mean. I didn't think for a moment you would, but ... it's still a pretty drastic change, having a cub in the house, even if she's only here rarely."

Avery Chase

Somehow she knew he was coming. That he would come, just like that, and slide his arms around her. She knew, and reflects on this knowing as she feels his arms moving around her. Her eyes close. Her shirt is very thin, laid over a just-as-thin camisole, and she can feel his warmth through the fabric. Avery turns her head to rest her brow against his jaw, and then she is turning more fully, turning into him, wrapping her arms around his neck.

She is so very warm. She is so much brutality, wrapped in slender softness, but he can still feel the rage quivering under her skin. Always. It is always there, the edge of violence. But she is not holding him for comfort, even though there were tears in her eyes for Jill, poor Jill, small and afraid and alone and trapped and hurt. She is thinking about what control she must have had -- because terror has its own kind of frenzy. But she did not kill. She did not run. She communicated, as best she could.

Avery cannot say she did the same. Even years and years later, much older. She just slaughtered.

His hair moves as her fingertips stroke the ends. She feels a sameness with Calden, despite it all. She is glad he is okay, despite being in a horrifically vulnerable place last night. He is glad she is here, he is reminded of the pains that she keeps so close to the vest.

When he says he's glad she doesn't mind, she draws back, curious, not quite grasping what he's even talking about at first, then realizing: oh. He's glad she doesn't mind that he's going to be hosting, on occasion, a little Fianna cub-girl. She blinks. "Darling, of course I don't mind. It's the kindest thing I've ever known you to do, and you are a kind man to begin with. I only hope she doesn't mind me being here when she is. And if I may be perfectly honest,"

as though she would be anything else,

"I would certainly prefer that you speak with her, should she visit, and ask her how she feels about it prior to inviting me. If you mean for her visits here to be a reprieve and a comfort to her, then I will not feel put out whatsoever." She pauses briefly; she means it, but she thinks he'll resist. "Having me here could make it very hard on her to feel safe." Avery pauses again; she hasn't given him a chance to respond yet. "Maybe I can visit when she is here sometime, introduce myself, and get to know her a bit, and go from there. It's all right if I come out and don't stay the night, if she's on edge having another wolf around."

Calden White

It's true that he was in an endangered, vulnerable position last night. It is equally true, however, that Jill was in much the same. She was threatened, she was terrified, she was lost, she was small and afraid and alone and trapped and hurt, and when Calden weighs his own experience against what Jill went through, against what Paul and Jimmy went through, even, he finds that he cannot be self-centered. He cannot think his experience was the worst, or anything close to the worst.

He doesn't even really think of it now. He'd almost forgotten his own danger until Avery burst in, frantic, smelling blood and wolves and thinking the worst.

And -- she calls him kind, now, for doing what he can't imagine anyone would not do. He is a little bemused, and gently amused. He kisses the top of her head, and then they unwind from each other, and she proves that she, too, is kind and considerate and so naturally good-of-heart that she likely can't imagine anyone not doing as she does.

"The first time she visits, if and when," Calden mulls, "I think I might just make sure it's only her. I don't want her to feel pressured to answer one way or another. Maybe after a few visits, I'll ask her if she wants to meet you. And I hope she does want to meet you. I think -- I hope -- she can see you as a sort of role model as she grows into her new life."

Avery Chase

Avery nods to this, all of this: that Jill should be able to come here and find a room and explore a little and settle in without anyone else. And maybe later he'll bring up Avery.

"She will be permitted at moots," Avery tells him, without saying she may be required to be at moots, "even now. She may see me there. But I will not make it a point to introduce myself. I'll keep an extra eye on her though."

She smiles. "So make sure when you ask her if she is all right with me visiting, you use my full name. Or close to it. I know you can't always remember."

Calden White

That draws a grin. It's a grin touched with a smirk; she is teasing him, and he teases back. "Now, it's hardly my fault," he mock-complains, "that your tribesmen can't convey a concept with fewer than ten words. Not that I fault them for it. We can't all be warrior poets.

"I'll tell her your name is Reverence of Dawn, Radiant Honor. And that you are a very honor Half-Moon of the royal tribe, and my dear friend. I don't think it'd be a problem for you to introduce yourself to her at the Caern, either, if you run into her," he adds. "You could even mention that you know me -- unless you think that'd make her uncomfortable."

Avery Chase

Not his fault -- not that he faults them.

Avery is aghast. Mock-aghast but aghast. How dare he. "My tribe absolutely can, but trying to encapsulate a concept that becomes a name in a couple of words seems disrespectful to the individual being thus honored, my dear."

Which is the truth. As she sees it, at least. Her name is long to be specific, to be sole, to honor her. And so it does. She smiles at him, leaning over and kissing him. Her hug returns, arms sliding around his neck again. She sighs to his shoulder.

"I really am glad you're okay," she says yet again, quietly.

Calden White

His arm slips around her waist. He holds her comfortably against his side. It feels good to stand with her like that, fitting together, complementary. Sameness, despite it all.

"I'm glad too. I'm glad we're all okay. And I'm glad she found us. I can't even imagine... North Dakota. Eleven. Trapped in one form or another, and then shot down. Christ." He turns; he buries his face briefly against her hair. Exhales, a bit of a sigh. "I don't even want to imagine. I'm just glad she's safe now."

For a while. Until she finishes her training. He doesn't want to think about that, either; it's a very select and deliberate sort of amnesia that all kin who care for Garou learn. He tries very hard not to think about what Avery does in the hours and days they are apart. He tries very hard to pretend her life is charity balls and benefit concerts and brunch and shopping,

even though he knows that is not at all the case.

After a while, quietly: "You know I love your name, right? The whole thing. All twenty-two words of it."

Avery Chase

He can't even imagine. Avery,

who has run so far from home she nearly starved, who was shot and returned, who has frenzied and been unable to leave one form for another,

can imagine. To an extent. She holds Calden back, while he buries his face in her hair. She says nothing. She strokes his scalp, slowly, agreeing with him though she never says a word. She doesn't want him to imagine. She is glad Jill is safe.

For a while.

--

Does she know that he loves her name?

Avery takes a moment. She blinks. She looks at the ceiling. She moves her lips: she's counting. Then she blinks again, looks at him. "Twenty-two if you don't count my human name," she corrects him. "Twenty-six if you do." She grins suddenly. "Which is how old I am!"

Calden White

She counting. He laughs aloud -- laughs, and then kisses her on those counting lips, terribly endeared. Twenty-six, she says then, which is also her age, and --

"It's slightly unnerving to realize you're almost as close in age to Jill as I am to you," Calden points out, wry. "Though, I just realized we never celebrated your birthday. For that matter," he frowns, "I'm not sure I even know your birthday."

Avery Chase

Of course that makes her wrinkle her nose at him. That she is almost as close in age to Jill as Calden is to her. And that he mentions it! So she gives him that Look, nose all wrinkled and lips all pursed, then leans over quickly and pecks his cheek with a kiss. She is starting to smell the fat-wrapped chicken, the sizzling pork, the juices cooking inside the meat.

So she eats a crouton. "Well I don't know yours either," she counters.

Calden White

He bows his head for that kiss. Smiles at her as she picks a crouton out of the salad and crunches it. Smiles at her, too, as she counters; smiles at her a little longer just because.

Then: "The twentieth of April. You?"

Avery Chase

The twentieth of April. She smiles at him, tasting a dab of dressing on her lips now. And saltiness. It's good.

"The thirtieth of July," she answers. "Do you want to celebrate them this year? Together?"

Calden White

He grins: "Do you really think I might say no?"

Avery Chase

"Well," she says, with utter sincerity, "you might have traditions I don't know about. Maybe every year on your birthday you sit in a room alone watching a favorite movie drinking scotch and eating a porterhouse. Maybe you and your cousins play cards and smoke cigars. "

Calden White

Calden lets out a laugh -- "I can see why you might confuse me with that masterpiece of a self-sufficient alpha male, but I am not, in fact, Ron Swanson. I don't have any special birthday rituals. I've spent some birthdays up here with the boys. I've spent some in Denver, and more than one at Ziggie's. A couple times there was some flash flood or wildfire or some other disaster, and I had to skip my birthday altogether.

"Provided nothing blows up this year," he says, "I'd love it if you and I could get together. You should take me to your favorite place and do all your favorite things. And then for your birthday, I'll take you to mine."

Avery Chase

Avery has no idea who Ron Swanson is. She is a little lost, charmingly so, because she does not conceal her bewilderment but does not feel any rancor or embarrassment or frustration at it. She does listen, though: no special rituals. He sometimes skips it, if Gaia decrees so. Which seems a little unfair, though,

tonight,

Avery is rather fixated on how unfair Gaia is. And if anyone would know, it would be a Philodox of the Tribe of Kings.

She smiles. "I'd love that," she says, softly, genuinely. She means it.

Calden White

"It's a plan, then," he replies,

that same softness, that same genuine gentleness. A moment of shared and quiet happiness. Then he straightens, unfolding his arms, un-leaning from the kitchen island.

"And," he adds, "you and I should watch some Parks and Recreation tonight. It's a TV show. There's a character on it named Ron Swanson, and -- well. I'll show you the episode in question.

"We should eat, though." He's tugging on oven mitts. "I'm pretty sure the chicken is ready."

Avery Chase

Miss Avery Chase does not watch a lot of television. She catches it in snippets, an episode here or there. She doesn't really mind. She is a solitary creature much of the time, and books unfold for her and her alone. She does not begrudge others their conversations about episodes, character arcs, storylines. She has heard of Parks and Recreation but never seen it. She agrees amicably to being introduced to the show, and to 'Ron Swanson', who she guesses is a masterpeice of a self-sufficient alpha male, given Calden's exact words on the subject.

She drinks water while he gets the chicken out. They are going to eat simply tonight: the bacon-wrapped chicken, the salad, the water. No rolls, potatoes, rice, risotto, none of that. No wine, no scotch. They find a spot to curl up and Calden pulls up Netflix to show her season three, episode twelve.

"Oh!" she says at one point, turning to him. "That's Parker Posey," who she apparently does know.

They watch the next episode as well, involving everyone getting so smashed that the Masterpiece of Self-Sufficient Alpha Maleness gleefully jigs to hip-hop wearing a sparkling lady's hat. By then she has finished eating, so she doesn't choke. But she likes the show. She likes the flawed but cheerful characters. She says to Calden at one point: they're so nice to each other!, which is mostly true.

They don't stay up late. Calden had two very long days; Avery ran all the way here. They curl up and talk after watching a bit of television: Avery lying between his legs and against his chest, Calden stroking her hair where it spreads over his own body, his chin resting atop her head. She tells him about her week, breezily; he tells her in more detail what all happened with Jill. She drowses on his body, suffused with his heat, until he hears her yawning and teases her softly that maybe it's time for bed.

And they do go up, putting dishes in the kitchen, loading the dishwasher together, taking glasses of water up. Patches found them some time ago, licking bacon grease off of Avery's fingers because Avery is apparently determined to spoil her. And Patches follows them up, too, padding-bounding up the steps at their heels, squishing alongside their legs to rub her side against them, wagging contentedly as she is permitted, once again, into Calden-master's bedroom. She sits to watch while they wash up, faces and hands and mouths. Avery likes to see her toothbrush in the stand right beside Calden's; she likes knowing that it's here.

When they've undressed, they go to bed together. Avery is actually in pajamas, soft cotton shorts and an even softer sleeveless top. They snuggle. They kiss a bit, even though neither of them is really thinking about having sex. And even though her hands on his arms and his mouth on her lips sends ripples of heat going through both their bodies, they... don't, actually, make love in the end. They fall asleep, warm under the covers, Patches laid out at the foot of Calden's bed to make sure they stay safe tonight all night always yes. There's time enough tomorrow. They aren't going anywhere. They're just going to stay home.

jill, 11, from north dakota.

Calden

This isn't Eva and Ellie's first trip to the ranch, and like the last, it's an overnight event. It's only reasonable, after all: it's a two-hour trip up from Denver, and staying only the afternoon would mean about as much time on the road as at the ranch.

So now it's sundown. The day is over, the horses -- because of course there were horses and horseback riding and expeditions to that gully in the north of his land where a little winter snow still lingered -- are put away, Ellie's hands and face are washed and the lights are on in the house and out on the large deck, Calden is firing up the stove to grill burgers and steaks.

It's warm enough these days that outdoor barbecues are not entirely absurd, though they'll still eat inside later. It's warm enough that he makes do with a thick-stuffed vest over the same flannel shirt he took them riding in, his bootheels still traildusted. Eva's younger children aren't here tonight, and neither is her mother-in-law.

It hasn't entirely escaped Calden's notice that Ellie gets just a little more of her mother's time and attention. Maybe it's because she's the oldest. Maybe it's because she's the only girl. Maybe it's because of the three children, wildness burns most strongly in her, and there is a phantom window of opportunity that narrows with every passing year. Month. Week. Maybe it's because she had a different father than the others, and though all three children have now lost their father, Ellie never knew hers in the first place. Never knew his family; does not have a grandmother to shadow her.

It's fair, Calden thinks, turning steaks over on the fire. It's only fair that she gets special treatment from time to time. A nice little mom-and-me weekend at a friend's ranch,

with real horses and real cowboys.

Eva

Ellie has done than merely wash her face-and-hands since returning from trail riding; she was sent to take a bath or a shower immediately on returning and told that she could put on her PJs or the dress she insisted on packing when she packed the Trunkee she has had since she was four, and which she is a little bit too big to ride on now, but which she still prefers over anything so mundane as a suitcase.

She's still downstairs (?), in the guest suite turned over to mother-and-daughter, where they can curl up together almost like a sleepover, while Éva lingers on the deck, a glass of red wine in hand, as Calden sears the steaks. Perhaps there was prep work in the kitchen to which she contributed - chopping greens and fresh vegetables for a salad, dressing it lightly in lemon juice and olive oil - or trimming the slender stalks of early-season asparagus shipped up from Mexico, yes, but so much like spring that it is impossible to resist when one sees it in the grocery story for a quick, flashing sautee.

Now, though: the table is set and the vegetables are ready to go and there must be a fire laid in the great fireplace and the two kinfolk are outside. Éva with a glass of wine in hand, and a dark leather blazer over jeans and a clean blouse, crisp in black and white.

"She insisted on packing a dress," Éva is telling Calden. "Bet you a dollar to five that she shows up wearing it and her cowboy boots. And calls her milk white wine and demands it from a stem glass."

A glance at the horizon, the last threads of daylight still barely visible, the warm light thrown out from the interior thrown out across the wooden decking. The scent of the steaks rich in the bright cold air.

Calden

"I am not," Calden says, quirking a wry grin over his shoulder, "going to bet against a mother about what her daughter is or isn't going to do. But I will say that's just about the cutest thing I've ever heard. I'll make sure to get her a proper glass for her white wine."

A drop of melted fat sizzles as a small orange tongue of fire darts upward to lick it from the steaks. Calden nudges the beef absently, testingly, then moves on to flip the burger patties.

"So how's life down in the big city?"

Eva

"That's where you got it wrong. Technically she's a pre adolescent, which means I am going to get virtually everything wrong. You should always take that bet."

Éva breathes out a laugh over the mouth of her wine glass. Shoots Calden a bright glance, which is illuminated but not sparking. This wry edge to the shape of her mouth.

"It's been quiet. Which is rather a relief after the summer and fall. I've been traveling a bit for work, too. Which sometimes takes me to the strangest places. What about you? Heard anymore from that Hawkes girl?"

Calden

"Oh boy," Calden huffs, wry humor now a thin veneer over genuine annoyance. "Have I. I think on some bizarre level she means well, though. Thinks she's setting wrongs right, preventing disasters. Something of the sort.

"I'm sure you've had similar experiences of your own. Got any tips?"

Eva

"Actually, I haven't," another quiet breath, quiet and warm enough that it makes ripples in the surface of her wine. "Perhaps it's a tribal privilege. Maybe it's my inclination toward a particular kind of discretion. But no: well-meaning busybodies have not tried to save me from myself.

"And I'm not sure I would tolerate it if they did."

tenderfoot

Outside, they both hear it: the sound of a truck's engine, the kick of gravel and dirt grinding up into the air from wheels turning rapidly onto the drive. Whoever is driving up, they're driving fast, and Calden knows the particular roar of that vehicle just before it cuts.

They turn and look, they go to the railing, and he sees ranch hands who should be out handling the ranch and watching over the cattle tonight coming up the drive to the house like the Devil itself is behind them. Which may make Eva and Calden both, given their experiences, look for that very Devil.

No devil to be seen. Just Jimmy and Paul, one in the driver's seat and one in the bed, and Jimmy positively leaping out of the cab to run around back to the bed where Paul is hunkered down. Ian must still be with the herd. But Paul is waving Jimmy off; they're talking but where they are, the wind is catching everything and making it hard to hear. That wind that keeps picking up, stronger than before. Good thing they're planning on eating inside. Jimmy starts running from the truck to the house. Not jogging.

Running.

He's going for a door, not seeing Calden and Eva up there, his eyes wild with a strange form of panic.

Calden

"Well, at this point I think I'm just going to remove myself from any conversation with Miss Hawkes that seems to be going that way," Calden says. "But enough about that subject. How's your mother-in-law? I seem to recall -- "

that's when the truck pulls up. The truck containing Jimmy and Paul but not Ian, slashing up onto the drive and rocking to a stop. Calden pauses, mid-sentence, mid-steaksearing, frowning. When his cousins start running for a door, he puts his barbecue tongs down. He kills the fire on the grill, lowers the lid, and -- with a jerk of his head indicating that Eva should come with -- heads for the large glass sliding doors into the house.

Eva

(Likelihood that Eva came to dinner armed. 1 in 10.)

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail )

tenderfoot

Paul stays in the bed of the truck, hunched over, his arms straight down but his back curved. He's not wearing his hat, and his hair is sticking up in multiple directions, blown by the wind. Jimmy is going full throttle, meaning that he's storming up the stairs when Calden and Eva come in from the terrace, his mouth open to shout for Calden, for Calden's dad, anyone. The blood is drained from his face,

and there's blood all over his shirt. Thank god Ellie didn't see him. Did Ellie see him?

He's the youngest of the ranch hands, the cousins that babysit Calden's herd. And he's shaken. Not shaking, but he's not okay. And with that, he doesn't know where to begin, except by blurting out:

"We shot her."

Calden

It's absurd, completely illogical, but Calden's first thought is

a night in April. A wolf in white.

"Who?"

Eva

The Shadow Lord is favoring Calden with a look of wry agreement and has her back to the drive when the truck comes tearing up. She's sipping her wine with the ebb and flow of the conversation, certainly intending to drink more than the glass or two she might ordinarily allow herself, but no more than three or perhaps four. Enough to become pleasantly inebrieted; to let down her ever present guard. Perhaps even to laugh, openly and without that particular edge of wry self-awareness that cuts into every evidence of her humor.

The look over her shoulder is brief; spare. She expects to see nothing more than a pick-up truck on a graveled drive. She doesn't know the rhythms of the ranch or the expected speeds or the needs of the stock or any of it. The sweep of headlights cutting through the darkness, and -

Éva breathes out a curse. While Calden is putting down the tongs and shutting the lid of the barbecue she is setting down her wine glass on the railing and easing a nine millimeter from her shoulder holster and scanning the driveway behind the truck, holding the weapon with a keen and steady hand.

Nothing. Just the men, running, which catches her heart all sharp beneath her sternum and sends her into motion, quick toward the glass door and inside -

"You shot whom?"

Calden and Eva speak quite nearly at the same time.

The muzzle of the weapon nine millimeter is pointed toward the ground. Inside, she has thumbed the safety back on and but for the answer to that question Éva is ready to circle the kinsmen and head downstairs to find her fucking daughter.

tenderfoot

"I don't know," Jimmy says, choking on the words, not even noticing Eva's firearm yet. "I swear, Calden, we thought it was a coyote going after the cattle like usual, she wasn't so big --"

He pants, gripping the railing of the stairs. "Shot her three times and she just ran at us like it was nothing, and so we kept shooting til she dropped. That's when she changed. It's just a kid, Calden, she's a kid."

Eva

Now at the top of the stairs, really a step or two down - holding that gun at a loose remove, though not carelessly - Éva gives Jimmy a glancing blow of a look. Asks:

"Is she in the truck?"

Calden

"Oh, god." Calden's hands just find their way to his head, clasping atop his crown as though to keep the top of his skull from flying off as the words sink in. "Oh, my god. Where -- "

Eva asks. Calden backs it up with a look: piercing, questioning. Is she?

tenderfoot

Jimmy just nods, panting a breath out. "She hasn't moved. She went down and then twitched a little and changed in front of us, didn't get up."

Calden

"Well," he's starting across the broad spaces of the great room now, around that rather grand staircase, past the formal dining table and toward the front door, "is she still alive? Christ."

Eva

Éva is quiet long enough for Jimmy to answer Calden. She just listens, then gives him a rather spiked look. While Calden heads for the front door, she herself is starting down the staircase up which Jimmy just came running. Her daughter, after all, is downstairs.

"I'm going to talk to Ellie. Where - " this is clearly directed at Calden's back. Her voice is rising to carry in the greatroom. "are you going?"

tenderfoot

They're heading out. Jimmy is following, feeling safer now: Calden is in his mid-thirties, Calden and Eva are adults who handle things like this far more often than the cousins do, it's going to be okay. He's calming a bit, now that he has questions to answer and things to say that make sense outside of his head.

"Paul said she is. She's --"

Someone outside yells. It's got to be Paul, it's a man shouting. Then thuds as he hits the ground. They can't see him but he's tucking into a roll as he flies out of the bed of the truck.

Calden

"Out," Calden answers Eva, which in the grand scheme of things is rather self-evident. "You," he drops a hand on Jimmy's shoulder as the young man starts to follow, "go downstairs. Stay with Eva's daughter. Keep her inside."

The front door is still yawing on its hinges. Calden pulls it open wide and steps out -- just in time to see Paul go sailing. Biting back a curse, Calden picks up his pace and runs for the cab of the truck,

and the rifle racked across the roof. Just in case.

Eva

The Shadow Lord sets her jaw; she is three or four steps down the stairs when Calden declares that he is going out and there's a stubborn set to her jaw as he does that. This time whatever curse she mutters is almost wholly non-verbal. Not even sotto voce, just evident in the spasm of her jaw.

"Take off your shirt," to Paul, who is bloodied, and now she's coming back up the stairs. One and then two steps. Her dark eyes cut over the ranchhand with a rather critical though dispassionate survey. "Tell her that I sent you. Lock the doors. Tell her there's something dangerous outside and she has to obey you and she has to be ready to run.

"Tell her to remember the code."

Another two steps up and Éva is in the great room once again. Calden pulls open the front door and Éva follows at a clipped pace behind. She does not see Paul go sailing but she does hear him and so she thumbs off the safety as she goes.

tenderfoot

Jimmy balks. "I've got --" he gestures at his bloodied flannel shirt. He knows Eva's daughter Ellie. She's a kid, too. She's a little kid who doesn't want pink boots. Eva tells him to take it off. Well: she is a Shadow Lord. He just nods, yanking it open because his fingers are fumbling with the buttons. He starts heading downstairs. His undershirt is soaked through; he takes that off as well, trying to remember everything Eva says.

Your mom sent me. I'm going to lock the doors. There's something dangerous outside, and your mom said you have to obey me and be ready to run and... remember the code?

Outside, Paul hits the earth, arms up to cover his head. There's even more blood on his shirt, on his sleeves, but it's not his, just like Jimmy's shirt isn't covered in his own blood. It's coming from that girl, that girl who is now not a girl at all, climbing over the edge of the truck-bed as Calden is running to his own, grabbing the rifle.

She's in glabro already, but she's not very large. She's only about five and a half feet tall in this form, her hair lank and dark and bloodstained, her eyes glowing golden, fur sprouting on her arms and claws and body and face that is reddish-grey. She's growing larger though as she digs her hands into the truck's side, denting it, pushing into crinos. The gunshot wounds she's suffered already are closing, healing, despite the blood she unleashed all over Calden's cousins.

Jimmy has run downstairs to Ellie. Calden is outside near his truck with his rifle. Eva is outside the house with her handgun.

She's just about the smallest war-formed monster they've ever seen. She's only just head and shoulders above Calden's height when she drops to the ground, eyes twitching between them, teeth bared in a snarl of warning.

Calden

"HEY."

Calden has a rifle in hand. The driver's door of his truck is open; the bed of the truck is between him and the small -- if such a word could ever be used for such a thing -- Crinos. He is not pointing the gun at her, though he does have it ready, the safety off, a round chambered.

"Calm down. It's all right. We made a mistake. We don't want to hurt you."

Eva

There is only so much a gun can do against a Crinos. How very well Éva remembers that singular night in June when she told Calden to smash her Lexus into a Crinos Spiral and they spun out into a field by a lake and -

So. Outside.

The safety off her nine millimeter, the weapon still pointed at the ground. Tension electric riding the circuit of her spine, an alertness, an awareness about her tall frame as she takes in the scene; glances at Paul where he has been thrown on the ground and holds the weapon, two-handed, see? Like a fucking cop.

"They thought you were a coyote - " Éva is neither particularly brace nor especially foolish, but she is edging forward as if to cover Paul. Not with her body with the possible range of weapon's fire. Except for that brief glance at Paul, her eyes are on the Crinos now, though. " - attacking the herd. They brought you back to make sure you were okay.

"You understand what I'm saying, right? Shift down. We'll help you, or we'll get you help."

tenderfoot

HEY.

She flinches, snarling, whipping her head towards Calden. Instinct has her moving toward him a bit, paws lowering to the ground, claws digging into the earth. Those claws are not the size of Avery's claws, not the size of Hector's or Erich's, but they are just as lethal. She growls low, but flinches back again, the sound turning slightly into a whine.

Paul is picking himself up. He was thrown, that's true, but by a glabro no bigger than an average-sized woman... that is, not an average-sized pro body builder. He's picking himself up, bruised but not broken, even though he's favoring one shoulder. Probably dislocated. He has no weapon. He's hanging back as Eva steps forward, adding her voice to Calden's.

It was a mistake. They don't want to hurt her. They thought she was a coyote.

She growls at that. They tell her to shift down and the growl whines again, keening again, as she hunkers down, clawing aimlessly and anxiously at the ground, shaking like a dog might. Only she's not trying to shake water from her fur. She's trying to shake off something else. This body. Her own rage. Something else.

Calden

To call this situation tense would be an understatement. The kin are not particularly brave nor particularly foolish. They are not invulnerable to fear, to the dreadful knowledge that as small, as lost, as uncertain as the Garou appears, she is a deadly thing and she could tear them to pieces in a flash. She was not, as she was for Jimmy and Paul, a quarter-mile away and unaware of their presence until they fired the fire shot. She's ten feet away. Twenty at best. It'd take her a single blink of an eye to get to them.

Two to tear them to pieces.

And yet for her, too: perhaps not a situation she feels entirely, or even a little, in control of. Hungry, hunting, and then suddenly shot at, shot down, piled into a car and hauled somewhere else and now,

now, her wounds still closing, she's surrounded and beset again. There are guns pointed at her again. Two of them.

And then --

one. Calden straightens from behind the truck. He raises his hands where the wolf can see him, and then he lets the rifle swing loose: muzzle to the sky, stock to the ground. "Okay," he says. "Okay. I'm going to put the gun down... if you'll shift down. Or at least sit. Okay?"

tenderfoot

She whines. She edges back, spine to the wheelhouse of the truck, flicking her eyes back and forth.

It's possible that right now, she doesn't know that she could tear them to pieces before they got a shot off.

Eva

"Paul," Éva's eyes do not leave the strange Garou, but there is a calm strength to her tone that belies the tension that must be evident in her body. "Get up and go inside. Let me know if you have trouble with the door."

The Shadow Lord is wearing hiking boots tonight, and the leather blazer over jeans and a silky blouse. The blazer is open and there is the hint of the shoulder holster that - yes - she apparently intended to wear to dinner evident beneath.

She is backlit and even as Calden reassures and promises to put his gun down, Éva makes no such promises. Nevertheless, the muzzle of the weapon is still pointed at the ground. Nevertheless, the safety is off. Could she pull it up and get off one shot, two, before she was taken down?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

-

"How old are you?" The strange beast's size is only now becoming clear to Éva. At first all she saw was monster. Now, with time and clarity: more. "My daughter's nine. I don't think you're much older, though I could be wrong.

"You're going to be okay. Alright? Everyone here is going to be just fine, and Calden and I are going to help you. If you can't get out of that skin, that's okay too. We can find someone to help you. Paul is going to go inside so he can call the Sept, okay? So we're going to let him go in. It might take a little while, but they'll be able to send someone to help you figure out what's going on.

"How does that sound?"

tenderfoot

Paul wants to stand his ground. He casts a look at Calden, but ballsy as he is, he's not an idiot. He moves for the door. In front of them, the cub -- there is almost doubt now that it is a cub, in fact -- snaps her vision to him, the thing moving, running, as instinct tells her to go after the Thing That Hurt Her. She doesn't see him much right now as the man who also hauled her into the bed of a truck and held his coat down over her gunshot wounds trying to staunch the flow of her blood. She was unconscious for most of that.

What she remembers is the world going white, and the surge of anger and pain coming from some hollow place up from inside her, wrenching her back into red and shadow and noise only to drop her like a stone into unconsciousness again. And none of that means anything to her.

Calden points his gun at the sky, Eva points hers at the ground. Neither of them are quite willing to set them aside yet.

How old are you.

My daughter's nine.

She's looking at Eva with those golden, searing eyes of hers. She's being told again that it's going to be okay. Even if

if you can't get out of that skin.

She whines. Loudly, achingly, clutching at the earth, whimpering. Because she can't, you see. She can't find her way out of this skin. She wants to talk, and answer, and she wants the pounding in her head to stop and she wants to stop wanting to kill everything that moves but she can't get out. The sounds she's making --

she keens like an animal. She is also, at once, in a strange and somewhat grotesque blend of noise, crying like a child,

curling up on the ground.

Calden

There is a brief moment where Paul -- thoughtful, levelheaded Paul -- casts a look at Calden, which Calden returns with an ever so subtle nod of his head door-wise. And meanwhile before them there is a wolf, a wolf who is almost certainly a cub, and almost certainly trapped in this skin, who Eva bargains with in that no-nonsense, maternal way that makes Calden think of the deals she strikes with her own daughter.

How about you take a bath now while Mr. White is making dinner, and then tonight you can stay up half an hour later for hot cocoa and marshmallows? How does that sound?

The little crinos claws at the ground. She keens like an animal, and also like a child, and Calden, heart twisting even as it beats fast fast fast out of adrenaline and fear, lowers his rifle slowly and carefully to the bed of the truck. Slips the safety back on.

"Okay," he says again, coming around the bed of the truck now -- walking low to the ground, hands held out and open. "Okay, then. You'll be all right. Can you write? Can you use your claws to write your name for us?"

Eva

As Calden edges closer to the young Crinos, Éva thumbs the safety of her weapon back on. With the safety engaged, she allows herself to hold the weapon with a bit less care, a bit more casually. It is now pointed directly at the ground rather than at the ground but in the vague-direction-of-the-strange-Crinos and as Calden asks if the girl can write her name,

Éva nods a quiet encouragement.

"If you can, it'll help us. Maybe there's someone at the Sept who knows you. Maybe there's someone you want to come help."

tenderfoot

Calden is the first to put his gun down. To turn on the safety and just put it down. He moves, his hands empty, and this time she doesn't flinch away or growl. She just trembles, crying the way she does, curled away from them. But after a while she -- trembling, not with terror but with the effort to restrain her own rage -- reaches out and claws, very slowly, into the dirt, in tall and ragged letters;

J I L L

And beneath that, after a few more seconds:

1 1

It takes her longer, more control, to get the rest out:

N D A K O T A

Calden

Calden edges a little closer, and a little closer yet, to read what the wolf writes. The letters are ragged. There isn't much light. Still, he manages to make out the words. A name. An age. Home state.

"Hi, Jill," Calden says, lowering himself little-by-little to the ground. There's maybe six feet between him and the girl. "I'm Calden. This is my friend Eva. My cousins Paul and Jimmy were the ones that brought you here. They're real sorry to have hurt you, okay? They didn't mean to.

"We're all kind of like you. But not exactly. We can't change our shape like you can, but we have friends who can. They're going to come help you change back to a girl, and figure out what to do from there. All right?

"Is there someone who can call for you?"

Eva

"Hi Jill." Quiet and sinuous and in the wake of Calden's greeting.

Éva does not edge closer. She does hide her wariness; the cutting edge of her fear and the other things that flare inside her with those very simple words. Jill. 11. NDAKOTA.

"I've been to North Dakota. Quite a bit recently? Our folks keep getting into trouble near Williston. Have you been there? You've come a really long way, all the way to Colorado, so you probably won't know any of the people we can call to come help you, but they'll be better able to help you than we can.

"Are you hungry? If you're hungry we can get you something to eat. It'll take a couple of hours for someone to get here, probably."

tenderfoot

She's grunting a little from effort, or maybe pain, though by now every single gunshot has healed. It's a bit awful, to think of how much steel now lives in her body. Maybe someday she'll be hardcore, she'll dig it out with her claws or find a kinfolk surgeon. Is it worth it? That depends on her. But right now she is healing, whole, and there are used bullets stuck inside of her.

Calden slowly lets himself down to the ground. Even crouched, even though she's curled up still, her head is above his. Every few words she misses one, loses the thread of what he's saying, but she tries to follow.

The truth is, they both have the blood of their tribes. They smell like rain and earth to her, and it is intrinsically comforting. Something about Calden seems wholly trustworthy, even before he put his rifle down. But Eva has a daughter who is nine. Eva knew, somehow, that she wants to shift but can't, she doesn't know how yet, these things just happen.

She doesn't attack when Calden comes closer. She slumps slightly, whimpering. They're going to help her change back to a girl. But she shakes her head to both of them: no one to call. No, she's never been to Williston. Maybe she didn't know until now that she'd run all the way to Colorado.

Eva asks if she's hungry. And then Jill moves. She lurches slightly towards the kinswoman, then stops, now kneeling on the ground, hunched over, drawing her hand-paws up to her face. She just... starts crying. Bent forward, brow almost on her knees, she just starts sobbing,

as her fur begins to recede. As something other than rage or fear or instinct pulls her away from the brink, back towards them. Towards rain and earth, things like 'friend' and 'cousins' and 'daughter', towards adults who are going to take care of her.

It turns out that Jill is actually tall for her age. She's lanky and angular, with mid-length brown hair. There is a thin white streak in the locks. She's dirty. Her skin is fair but it's positively packed with mud and dirt and bloodstains. She's tiny compared to both of them now, crying so hard.

Eva

"Come on, love." When Jill starts to cry, Éva at last puts her weapon away. Holsters it beneath her arm with only a small second thought and takes several half-steps forward, sinking to a low, crouch, the sort that humans often take with strange, distraught children and wary animals.

She is settled on her haunches, easily and thoughtlessly balanced and she half-stands and closes the distance to the girl as Jill slips into her girlskin.

"It's okay." A hand in Jill's filthy dark-brown hair, another on her shoulder, picking her up and turning her slowly and and steadily toward Éva's body. Murmuring, steady and quiet. "It's okay. It's okay. You did it, didn't you?

"We'll get you a bath, and some clean clothes, and a meal too. Calden was grilling steaks, but you can have anything you want. Popcorn or brownies or steak or a half-gallon of ice cream, the whole thing eaten straight with a spoon."

Calden

It is okay. She did do it. And as Eva gathers the girl up, Calden shrugs out of his vest and folds it over Jill's narrow shoulders. Sideways, because it's so large for her now that it just about wraps around her like a blanket this way, warm still from being on Calden's body.

"Come on," he says quietly, a hand on Eva's shoulder, another rubbing slowly and comfortingly on the girl's back. "Let's go inside. It's warm and we have a fire."

They rise together: two adults and a girl-wolf. Two adults carrying a girl-wolf, who would in any other setting be too old to be carried like this. What was it Eva had called it? A pre-teen, and therefore automatically the opposite of anything an adult might think.

Calden leaves his gun in the bed of the truck. At some point he'll have to come out and re-rack it, keep it from the elements. Not now, though. Right now, he opens the front door of that large, warm, rustic home of his, which smells like the salad dressing Eva used and the smoke-and-char scent of half-cooked steaks and burgers.

Paul is still on the phone. Clutching it white-knuckled. It's only been a few minutes. "It's all right," Calden tells him. "Tell them they can come in the morning. Or we can drive her down. Her name's Jill. She's eleven, and she's from North Dakota."

tenderfoot

Eva Illeshazy is nothing at all like Jill's mom. Jill's mom is in North Dakota. They are starting to wonder where their daughter is buried. It's been long enough that they should have gotten a ransom. They've been looking at everyone in the girl's life -- that's what you do when a child goes missing. Immediate family, extended family, family friends, teachers, coaches, people at church. Anyone and everyone who has access to the child, anyone and everyone who might be trusted enough that a child of age 11 would go willingly. Jill's mother and father, right now, are losing their minds. This is their nightmare.

Maybe if they knew that Calden and Eva were taking care of her, offering her popcorn or brownies or steak or ice cream, or anything she wants, they would pass out from sheer relief. Maybe one day they'll get to see her again, even if they can't know what she is. But Jill isn't thinking about that. She has no frame of reference for what her parents might be going through other than that one time she wasn't at the pick-up spot after soccer at the appointed time and her mom looked so pissed off, and she doesn't know that her mother's anger was actually panic.

All she really knows right now is that Eva is not like her mom at all, not with that leather blazer and that silky shirt and a gun, but there are common threads. The way she holds her, and pulls her in, and how she almost sounds proud of her for being able to make the change: you did it, didn't you? And the way she says bath, because moms do that, they always want you to be clean and they'll ask you if you washed your hands after you use the bathroom. Eva looks and feels and sounds and smells nothing like her own mom, but there is mothering there, and she sinks into it with ache and sorrow and desperate, desperate need; she has not had anyone mothering her for a long time now, and she is young enough that she needs it.

Calden does what dads do, even if he doesn't know it. He does what gentlemen do. He is out of that vest, which is going to be long on her, shearling-lined. He's going to make sure she's warm and she's covered up, because don't think for a second that Jill doesn't realize she's naked and there's a man right there, but he covers her up and rubs her back and when it's time for them all to get up, it's into Calden's arms that the girl goes. She's uncertain but that desperation is there, too: she is hiding from the world against the shoulder of someone stronger than her, someone who looks about as upset that she got hurt as she is.

They keep saying it's going to be okay. Neither of them have told her she did wrong. It's going to be okay.

Even if, god damn you Gaia, it's not ever going to be fair. She's eleven.

--

Inside, Paul is on the phone with one of the rangers from Forgotten Questions working a night shift. They've already got a guardian heading toward the ranger to talk to Eva and/or Calden. But Paul hesitates, and he nods, relaying what he does over the phone. When he hangs up, he looks at the girl, guilt and shame rocketing through his eyes. He shot a kid. He hasn't even told Calden yet about the one dead, two injured head of cattle out there on the pasture, not to mention how many are spooked beyond sanity, or how scared-angry the dogs were. Ian's got things under control now, but they still have a dead asset, two that might need to be shot,

none of which matters as much, right now, as the fact that he shot a kid.

He hangs up. He moves his eyes from Jill to Calden. "They said they're gonna send a couple of Guardians up here from Forgotten Questions. They won't barge in, but I think they want to stay nearby in case --"

his eyes flick at Jill, but he's conscious of her consciousness. He doesn't want to indicate that they're gonna be there, on the fringes of Calden's property, just in case this girl frenzies, just in case she loses control again. But the Guardians are wise, and the sept is old, and the White name is as known in these parts as the hospitality of Fianna is known all over the world: it will be better if they wait til morning. If they let the Fianna take care of her for tonight, feed her and house her and warm her and give her a safe place to rest, it will be better in the morning.

"I'm sorry," he says to the girl, to her back, because she is still slumped against Calden. "Jill --" he just learned her name. "I'm real sorry. I didn't know, I --"

She's tensing up, a soft sound in her exhale of breath that is almost a growl. She isn't looking at him. Paul backs off. He is still holding his shoulder. "I'm gonna see if Jimmy'll drive me out to the clinic," he says, a bit heavier. He excuses himself.

Jill relaxes again, inch by inch, saying quietly to Calden: "I wanna get down."

Calden

"If they're sending Guardians," Calden says, "might as well invite them in. I'm not gonna have people sleeping out in the cold like beggars. We can set a couple cots up in the study, and let Jill have the spare room. I just think it'll be better if she can get a good night's sleep."

Before. That's the word that's unspoken, and so is the rest of it. Before they take her down south. Before they keep her all but locked away in a Caern, cut off from her family, cut off from the rest of the world, while she learns. While they teach her what she is, and what that means, and why she was chosen, and all the other heavy, terrible, awful things that no eleven-year-old should ever have to learn. That no one should ever have to learn.

That's tomorrow. That's the future. Tonight: what is merciful in Calden wants to make tonight hot baths and ice cream and steak and a warm, soft bed.

Paul hangs up. His eyes are full of guilt and shame. Calden looks at him with compassion, but without urging Jill to accept that half-spoken apology.

"Go on," he says quietly. "I'm sure Jimmy'll drive you. Tell Ellie everything's all right and her mom'll be there soon."

--

Jill relaxes. She wants to get down. So Calden lets her down, keeping that vest wrapped sideways around her for warmth and modesty both. "How about I find you an old t-shirt of mine," he offers, "that you can wear like a big old nightie until we find something better? And then you can eat something. I bet you're starving."

Because: why else would she go after the cattle?

Eva

"You might take Ellie with you," to Paul. Éva's dark eyes are steady on him. She does not react to his guilt, and does not try to reassure him that all is alright. Not here and not now. Not in Jill's presence. "While we get Jill settled. If there's a line and it's taking a while I'll come down and pick her up."

--

"My daughter packed a dress for the weekend," Éva is telling Jill as they walk the girl back toward Calden's room to pick up one of his t-shirts. "You're taller than she is, but that shouldn't matter much with a dress, and I don't think that she will mind. Especially when she realizes we're all family.

"You can shower after dinner, and put on the dress then. Then you'll have it tomorrow to meet some more new people. That way you can feel like you look nice. If the dress doesn't work, we'll come up with something else. Okay?"

--

They do retrieve the t-shirt and then head back to the kitchen and by then Calden's cousins have loaded themselves into one of the trucks along with Ellie to head down to the clinic and Éva and Calden find themselves on the porch again, grilling steaks.

It hasn't been that long.

Their own dinner is forgotten. They pile food in front of Jill and watch her eat and do not finish the bottle of wine because there is a child in the house and she is a Garou and that would be foolish and they are not foolish.

After dinner: these familiar rituals. Bath and toothbrushing and Éva combing Jill's long hair carefully, to get the tangles out without making the girl cry.

And on and on. They put Jill to bed in a warm bed in her own room, which is far away from the room where Eva and her daughter are staying.

Oh the morrow, though -

tenderfoot

Jill has no earthly idea what a guardian is. Only that they are, as Calden and Eva claim, people who can help her. And 'guardians' doesn't sound scary, though she'll learn later that they are in fact quite frightening in some ways. A good night's sleep sounds good to her, though.

So does a hot bath. So does eating.

Eva decides that Ellie should go to the clinic, too. They'll have Highlights there, and crayons. A bit young for a nine-year-old but safer than being here, right now. Eva makes these decisions because she's the one in charge of Ellie's safety, Ellie's sanity. She trusts Jimmy and Paul. They'll get fresh shirts. They'll drive out to the rural clinic, get someone working the night shift to pop Paul's shoulder back into place. They aren't the types who will demand X-rays; this is the nature of living where they do.

It's Eva who will help Jill get changed into something more covering. Eva who will sit with her while she devours a whole steak and a burger and then, yes, some ice cream and maybe something salty like chips or popcorn. Eva who will make sure she has towels and so on and a fresh shirt to change into for bed after she takes a very long, very hot shower, who tells her not to scrub too hard at her skin to get the blood off, it'll come off, just be patient. Calden will make sure they find a nail brush so she can get the grime out from under her fingernails, too.

Calden will set up the cots and the spare room, waffling over a nightlight before he decides to plug one in and turn it on. Calden who finds a spare toothbrush for Jill, and Eva who combs her hair out after her bath while the girl sits silently, exhausted and well-fed and still terrified and sullen and very, very sad. It might be one of them, or both of them, who sit with her or stay nearby while she falls asleep. Calden who greets the guardians and tells them the cub is asleep, shows them where they can stay, offers them the same: hot showers, food, the hospitality they give because

they are all family, here.

No one sleeps very easily tonight. Not even Jill, who wakes at one point crying, muffling her sounds in her pillow, reciting to herself her house's phone number even though she knows she's not going to sneak out and call it. Jimmy and Paul come back, Paul in a temporary sling, Ellie asleep between them in the cab of the truck, Jimmy carrying her in to her mother. He admits they stopped at got burgers at some all-night drive-through. Says they let her get a small milkshake, too. Sounds very much like they were trying to make it up to her that the night didn't go as planned. Sounds a bit like they were trying to make it up to Jill, via Ellie.

Ellie is told quietly, half-awake between truck and bed with her mom for their sleepover-at-Calden's, that this other girl doesn't have any clothes of her own, and no: she doesn't mind. Not enough to argue. Ellie is not as young as most children her age are. Ellie is also a Shadow Lord, with the sharp eyes and keen mind that mark their tribe as much as warm hearts and open arms mark the Fianna.

--

In the morning, Jill is one of the last to wake. There's a dress for her to change into, which is not terribly girly, and two people who are not even remotely, slightly afraid of her sitting down with her in one of Calden's big rooms to start explaining to her

what she is,

and how she came to be.

valentine's.

Avery Chase

On at least a couple of occasions, Calden has been out to Avery's estate. This is the first piece of property she and her family purchased in Denver. It is the largest. It is where her father and brother make their home, and it is the actual address where Avery legally holds residence and receives mail. It is where he picked her up to go to the gala where Avery captured the fascination and loyalty of a room simply by standing up. It is also where they stopped, briefly, on the way to some other location while Calden was Super Drunk and kept trying to take his shirt off.

He has not been given a proper tour, or even been a proper guest. He has not been taken down to the room with the pool table and air hockey, or strolled the grounds, or looked down on the main hall from Avery's palatial bedroom. He has not been treated to anyone playing the piano for him in one of the parlors. But he's been here before.

--

On Valentine's Day, at the appointed hour, his truck makes its way not to the north gate into the courtyard flanked by garages, but to the east gate, where trees march to either side of him all the way up the red-brick drive. Through their winter-barren branches and trunks he can see a sculpted lawn, but the drive itself leads him toward a man who is waiting for him on the driver's side of the open way. That man is young, and Calden has met Chauncey enough times to know even at a distance that is not who is waiting for him. He is dressed smartly, all in black, wearing a black overcoat as well and a driver's cap against the chill, even though tonight is warmer than recent ones.

He inclines his head to Calden when he stops, door opening or window rolling down, and says: "Please permit me to park for you, sir," he says, and should Calden concede, they trade places. As the truck pulls forward, out of the way, there is suddenly someone else standing a few yards away, and Calden may recognize this one. This is the pale-skinned, dark-haired young man who -- though Calden likely is not privy to this -- cleans his lady's trophies for her, preparing correspondence for her enemies at times. He has slightly haunted eyes, but he is crisp and polite, serving as Calden's escort to the front door.

The front door is recessed through a smaller gate 'round the front of the house, but those wrought-iron, arch-topped gates stand open tonight, and the black door is unlocked. Colin, for that is his name, takes Calden's coat inside, as well as his hat or scarf or gloves or whatever else he might have. The entry hall boasts an enormous chandelier and a wide, curving staircase in white and pale blue. The house is glorious, the details vast and tremendous and hard to take in. Everywhere he looks there is some source of light, dim and bright, small and large, filling the place with an artificial starlight and sunshine. There are cut flowers all over the place. It is not the cozy warmth of his own place; there is no doubting that he is in the home of Silver Fangs.

--

And then she comes down the stairs. Well, first: he sees her up there, through the glittering chandelier, her hair all in curls, adorned by a fascinator that may very well be platinum and diamonds or white gold and some less-powerful stone. No matter; it gleams and twinkles. She is beaming at him, wearing a red dress, tea-length, A-line, all tulle and lace. Seeing him from up there over the railing, she just grins, then comes as quick as she can down the stairs, trotting over to him from the foot of them and throwing herself into his arms, wrapping her embrace around his neck, smiling up at him. She is wearing some delicate, light perfume, and her dress rustles where it presses against his pants.

"Happy Valentine's Day!" she tells him, giddy.

Calden White

Not to be a stereotypical Fianna, but Calden actually has not yet set a sober foot inside the Manor Chase. But then, despite their ten-and-a-half-month romance, this is the first time he has been officially invited to dine with her and her family at her family estate.

This is the first time, too, that he's driven through the east gate and down that treelined drive. This is the first time he's parked his truck -- which is a nice truck, even luxurious, but still very much a working vehicle -- at the roundabout and handed the keys to Avery's chauffeur. This is the first time he has been shown through the front door, and the first time his overcoat and scarf and gloves have been taken by that slightly offputting young man.

This is not the first time Avery has seen her paramour dressed for dinner, however. Dressed formally for dinner, we might add, and very classically: a black dinner jacket, a pressed white shirt. There was some internal debate about the tie; in the end, he eschewed the bowtie and went with a plain, well-knotted black tie instead. His pocket square has a bit of flair -- a neat trifold in red silk.

He shaved. His hair is recently trimmed. Wavy and thick and auburn; almost neat for once, rather than that great shaggy mess. His watch is nice, his cufflinks are conservative but elegant, and his shoes are polished. She can tell, immediately and without a doubt, that he has put an extra level of thought and care into his grooming tonight. He is, after all,

meeting her father.

--

The house is full of light and air and splendor. The faint scent of fresh-cut flowers touches the senses where he stands waiting for her. She doesn't keep him waiting long. That would be so rude. He is straightening his shirt-cuffs beneath the sleeves of his tuxedo jacket when she appears,

radiant,

dressed in the color of love and passion and blood and joy. He looks up at her at once, catching that movement out of the corner of his eyes. His eyes light up. Surely she can see that even from the top of that sweeping staircase. Surely she can see, far away as she is,

the way his breath catches,

the way his heart skips.

She comes down to him, taking those stairs so light and quick and merry. He has no patience; he forgets his manners. He meets her as she throws herself into his waiting arms, catching her as though they were long-separated lovers at the train station. Her dress rustles. The hem spins out as he whirls her, just once, laughing as she wishes him a happy Valentine's.

"Happy Valentine's," he returns. Her feet touch the ground again. He kisses her: it is a quick, light thing, not quite chaste but at least polite.

Then, unwinding from her, he takes her hand. "I brought a prime rib roast," he says, just as he promised. "I think Chauncey might have brought it in. I seared it at home, but it still needs some time in the oven. There's a bottle of scotch for your father as well."

Pause, there. He lifts her hand to his mouth, kisses her knuckles with his eyes bright with laughter.

"How have you been, Miss Chase? It feels like it's been longer than it has."

Avery Chase

Her lips, like her dress and her nails, are deep red. The way she kisses him is best called a smooch, gleeful at his presence and his appearance. When he sets her down, she steps backward, sliding her hands down his arms, taking his hands, beaming at him. He tells her about the meat he brought, and that the servant who took his car -- though that was not Chauncey -- may have brought it in, along with the scotch for her father. She notably does not see a bouquet of roses or heart-shaped box of chocolates in his hands, but she doesn't look for them, either. She just smiles at him.

"Chauncey has the evening off," she tells him, prettily, endearingly adding: "He's having dinner with his wife."

Which is just about the most adorable thing Avery can imagine, right now. She squeezes his hand, dropping one of them, as he lifts her knuckles to his lips and asks her where she's been. "I've been here all the time," she tells him, laughing at him. It has, after all, only been a week.

That is when footsteps come down the hallway. Avery turns her head, her eyes brightening a bit more, as her father comes into the entryway. His suit is black as night, his shoes polished and reflecting the chandelier above, his pocket square white and straight-lined. The only color he wears is a boutonniere, a sprig of little blue forget-me-nots with their gold-and-black centers with a tiny tuft of baby's breath. They are wrapped in black satin where they are pinned to his lapel. His eyes are as bright a blue as Avery's, his features as aquiline and noble. He is smiling.

"Good evening, Mr. White," he says, the smile growing as he heads over. "I would pretend to wait for a formal introduction, but I know who you are." He offers his hand, and Avery delicately releases Calden's so they can shake.

"He brought scotch for you, Father," Avery chimes in, but shakes her head, curls bouncing a bit, "but all he brought me for Valentine's Day is meat."

She grins. Her father laughs, shaking Calden's hand.

Calden White

Avery's father, like Avery's estate and manor, like Avery herself, is so utterly Of Falcon that a blind man couldn't mistake him for anything else. There is something impeccably elegant, something very old-fashioned about him. The walk, the attire,

that subtle, heartbreaking little remembrance of his wife.

"Mr. Chase," Calden returns warmly, clasping hands. "It's a pleasure to meet you, sir." They release and straighten, the three of them in subtle geometry: Calden and Avery's father and Avery herself. "I'd present the scotch, but I've lost track of the bottle."

Avery Chase

He still wears his ring. It's not on the hand that Calden shakes, of course, but it's there, platinum, shot through with flat-faceted diamonds in a band around the middle. It's a lovely piece of jewelry, light-catching and well-kept, polished and pristine, and he is still wearing it, a decade after she fell. That and the forget-me-nots: he sends a clear but quiet message that he will not remarry. She was his mate. There is no other.

"Please," he says, "Philip." Not Phil, of course. Philip. He chuckles. "I'm sure Colin can track it down for us," he says. Colin, who is standing near the door with his back to the wall and his hands clasped in front of him, does not need a moment of eye contact from his master or another word: silently, shadow-like, he vanishes.

"Oakley," Philip adds, speaking to Calden still, "will be joining us for dessert; he begged Avery." And he doesn't need to say it, really, but there's a girl, and it's Valentine's Day, and it didn't take much begging for Avery to agree not to be cross with her little brother for missing dinner with her beau. "Why don't we adjourn to the parlor? I believe Ms. Kendrick has set out some hors d'oeuvres for us there while we await dinner."

With that, he steps aside. The hallways are more than wide enough for the three of them to walk abreast, and Avery steps in to Calden's other side, slipping her arm through his, giving his bicep a little hug as they make their way towards the ample parlor, with its dark walls and baby grand and cream-colored armchairs.

They have not so much as entered, they have barely begun with Philip starting to tell Calden that Avery's piano lessons never did any good, when Colin enters carrying a tray. That tray has three crystal glasses upon it, and the bottle of scotch that Calden brought for Mr. Chase. He sets it down on the table among the armchairs, beside the platters of hors d'oeuvres, gives a slight bow, and departs again, just as silently. Just as simply.

Calden White

Let's be honest: Calden is a little -- no, not awkward. Not nervous, or uncomfortable. But this is his first time truly meeting Avery's father, and his first time truly in her home, and perhaps his first time truly and fully aware of the way she lives. The way her family lives; the life they are accustommed to. Parlors and hors d'oeuvres when company is over, servants and cooks and housekeepers and chauffeurs who get the holidays off to spend with family.

It's not unpleasant. It's not stiff. But there is a certain formality to him, a certain -- care, perhaps that's the word for it, in the way he carries himself. Presents himself.

It helps when Avery returns to him. Wraps her arms around his arm, hugs herself to his bicep. He smiles, then, and it is that warm-spreading smile of his. He has to catch himself from wrapping his arm around her shoulders, squeezing her against his side.

In the parlor, there are delightful little bites to graze on. There's a tray presented by Colin, three glasses and a bottle of scotch. Philip shares an amusing little tale about Avery's attempts at music, and Calden is standing by that instrument, lifting the fall to run his fingertips over the keys.

"My mother played," he says, "and two of my brothers. I, admittedly, didn't have the touch for it. I can strum a few chords on a guitar, and that's all." He quirks a grin at Avery. "So you've probably still got me beat."

Avery Chase

She

is so

happy.

Her father is here, and her lover, and they're all going to retire to the parlor for drinks and nosh, and everyone is dressed so nicely and she is getting to show off everything to him: the finery, the staff, the house, the way they can entertain even when it's just a small trio. She's giddy in her pretty red dress and her black heels, warm enough on her own that she doesn't need a shawl, a jacket, an arm to keep her warm. She burns hotter than anyone else here, even in the relative coolness of the house. She admits freely that she never had an interest in piano, maybe because you have to sit down when you play.

"If they had shown me pictures of the musicians who get up and kick their benches away I might have been more keen," she says, lifting a little heart-shaped snack to her teeth, nibbling while Calden departs from her immediate side, touching the grand.

His mother played. Her heart twists a little. His brothers, at least two of them. "I assure you, I do not," she warns him, as though he's about to ask her to play. "Oakley commands any instrument we hand him, but I just bash my hands on the keys until I get bored. He plays; I dance."

Philip has picked up the bottle to inspect it, his eyes keen on the label. "You really didn't have to do this," he tells Calden, sincerely, looking over. "This is a fine bottle."

Calden White

Bash my keys.

Calden laughs aloud. He can imagine it. His eyes twinkle when she says she dances. He lowers the fall again and pulls the piano bench out a little to take a seat -- not to play, no, not with his back to the keys. Just to sit.

"You do dance. That's how I met your daughter, Mr. -- Philip. She was dancing on my ranch. It may have been in the pale moonlight, at that."

He leaves out the other details. The elk. The kill. The steaks and the games and -- the rest of that. Of course he does. Philip, meanwhile, thanks him for the scotch, and Calden shakes his head.

"I'm glad you like it," he says. "I'll bring something else next time. My family's been living in the same house for generations now and we've managed to put together a pretty interesting collection in the winecellar.

"You know," he adds, "if you're ever up north with Avery, you should drop by. We'll open a few bottles. Maybe call my cousins over and play cards by the fire." He grins. It's directed at Avery. "We can see if Miss Chase bashes her hands on the deck until she gets bored."

Avery Chase

Philip smiles past Calden at Avery, whose eyes are twinkling as she swallows her little bite of that heart-shaped snack. "As she tells it," he informs Calden, setting the bottle down on the tray again, "she was hunting on your land. She didn't mention the dancing."

"That's because I didn't dance," Avery says, perhaps not remembering that happy swaying dance she did over the body of her elk. "He isn't lying about the cellar though, Father, he almost didn't let me leave without two bottles. So watch out. Also:" and this is directed teasing-sharp at Calden himself, "I know how to play cards."

She walks over to him -- her father, that is -- her tulle rustling, and gives him a hug from the side. He smiles fondly, patting her arm. "You should," she tells him, less giddily. "You'd love his house. It's all hearths and exposed beams and red plaid. It's all very manly and homey."

Without a hesitation, she leans over and kisses her father's cheek, and he chuckles. "Maybe I will," he says, and nods at the glasses to Calden. "Let's have a taste, then, shall we?"

Calden White

"Well, she was hunting. But when she finished -- " Their voices overlap; she says she didn't dance, and he laughs and insists, " -- oh no, I know what I saw. When you finished, you did this happy little swaying dance." He pantomimes it with his hands, his fingers, and grins. "It was so charming. I was so charmed."

He was teasing her. He was, but now he's just being honest: nakedly, happily honest. He was charmed. She accuses him of pressing bottles -- two! -- on her.

"I'll have you know, Philip," Calden interjects, laughing, "that I've since managed to sneak both bottles to her. We Whites don't joke around about gift-giving."

They settle a little. Avery hugs her father. Calden watches, his smile quirky and fond and touched. Then: smirking as she describes his home, very manly and homey.

"I have a dog, too," he adds. "She used to be a cattledog, but then she fell in love with your daughter and followed her everywhere. Now she sleeps on my bed and nearly dies of adoration every time Avery comes over."

He rises, then, as Philip nods at the glasses. Calden picks them up, two in one hand and one in the other, walking them over to Avery's father. While Philip opens the bottle, Calden sets the glasses down in a little triangle.

Avery Chase

When she finished hunting, she danced. When she finished dancing, she washed. When she finished washing, they ate. When they finished eating, they played. When they finished playing, they could. Not. Stop. Fucking.

Avery blushes though, just when he gets to the second part: when she finished gorging herself on blood and hot meat, she did a little swaying dance, happy. His pantomime doesn't help; she turns pink, shoulders hunching upward, as he tells her -- and her father's listening ears -- how charming it was. How charmed he was by it. By her.

"You've met your match, then," Philip says easily to Calden, regarding the Whites and their gift-giving habits. "Half of what I own these days is a gift from this one," and his hand patting Avery gives a gentle squeeze. She puts her head on her father's shoulder for a moment, draped there while she watches her lover, her beloved, who is just as touched by this sight as Philip is touched by hearing this story of their meeting, omitting even as it does the more sordid details.

"We've thought about getting a dog," he adds, as Avery withdraws her embrace and he picks up the bottle again to start opening it. "Since Avery tells me she's learned a gift that could allow such a thing." He begins to pour, a finger or so into each glass. There is a little crystal vial of clear water on the tray as well; Philip foregoes it for now, at least until after the first taste, before opening the flavors of the scotch with a drop or two of water.

He lifts one to hand to Avery, then another to Calden, and finally his own. "To the Whites," he says of his toast, "those in our company and those in our hearts."

Avery could just die, she's so happy. She taps her glass to theirs. "To the Whites," she adds, beaming.

Calden White

"And to the Chases," Calden completes,

because of course one does not toast oneself. Their glasses tap together, the fine crystal ringing musically, a pleasant hum in the air even after they lift the scotch to their lips. It's a potent whisky, heavy and smoky as Calden seems to prefer -- certainly not one of the milder, smoother breeds. Taken in savoring little sips as they do, it leaves a long, lingering finish that lends their pre-dinner hors d'oeuvres a unique twist.

The conversation returns to dogs, then. Calden offers to keep an eye out for the spring puppies. One of the border collies, perhaps, lithe and quick and bright. Or perhaps one of the great pyrenees, much larger, protective, affectionate. He reminisces about the dogs underfoot on the ranch since he could remember, generation upon generation of herding dogs, guard dogs. The pair of hunting dogs his father owned when he was a boy. The conversation drifts to horses,

to his land,

to the land, to this state, to their move from back east. There's a certain delicacy to this topic. An unspoken ache that Calden knows of and avoids. They move on to the snowfall, the winter, the skiing, and has Philip caught any of the Olympics?

--

The roast Calden brought was rather enormous, and even half-cooked as it is, will realistically take a couple hours to finish. It likely isn't ready yet when one of the serving staff -- Ms. Kendrick, perhaps, or Colin -- enters to announce that dinner is served.

Summoned, Calden rises from the armchair he'd settled himself in. He has the good graces to cede the honor of escorting Avery to her father, instead falling in at her other side.

Avery Chase

The three of them -- two fair and one ruddy, two golden and one oak, two falcons and one stag -- toast and drink to the honor of their families. They sip well-aged scotch that tastes like a peaty fireplace, which Avery barely tastes, for she unapologetically prefers the smooth, balanced bloodlines. She, with her blast furnace of a metabolism, nibbles on more of the snacks than her father and Calden do, though she mostly remains at Calden's side, her arm around his waist.

They talk of puppies and horses. She seems delighted at the idea of Patches having a pup, just for her family. It wouldn't be hers, of course, but her brother's, but she proclaims that Oakley should have a dog, now that he can. She is wary of the pyrenees, simply saying, smoothly: "Oh, I think a border collie would be much more manageable in a household like this one," without going into the details that her gift might not work on a breed known as wolf-killers; they might not see her as worthy of adoration quite as easily, she fears.

Avery may be wrong about that. But there is this: her staff won't mind not dealing with a great pyrenees.

She sips again, and they talk of horses and the ones Avery's family used to have, and Philip tells Calden a couple of stories of Avery-as-a-girl, but they aren't embarrassing. He brags about her accomplishments, a riding award when she was twelve, or her recent rank ascension, with equal affection. It's clear that to him, at least, she is the same girl. She has always been the same girl. And it's obvious, as they chat in the parlor, why Avery is so tender, so protective, so close to her family. To them, she is who she has always been, and the nature of her body and soul are tangential to the spirit of her self that they know.

--

It will take them a good hour to get through the courses that come before the roast, so in due time, the maid -- that frail, wide-eyed young woman with the small mouth and almost colorless eyes -- comes to the parlor door, dropping into a small curtsey and waiting to be acknowledged before she speaks, hands folded in front of her.

Philip does look at her, and she tells him -- more than 'them' -- that dinner may be served at their pleasure. Sir.

Calden rises, and Avery quickly finishes the latest bite, furtive but delicate. She hasn't finished her scotch, but brushes her fingers together and allows Calden to lift her from her chair, walking her to her father, who just smiles. He doesn't wave this away but gives his daughter his elbow. The way she takes it is so effortless, so familiar, that it's obvious how often in their lives they've walked like this, arm in arm, strolling through this hallway or that. At her side, her free hand brushes Calden's, lightly interlacing the tips of their fingers.

--

Dinner is taken at one end of a long table. The runner is covered with floral arrangements, candles, the like; they eat off of white china with silver cutlery. Whoever Ms. Kendrick is -- she does not serve, that is for Colin and the kitchen maid, Rosemarie to do -- she has a progressive palate, stylish but not trendy, blending the classic with the deconstructed. This is not the sort of meal one might have while hunched down around a fire, either in the era of cavemen or out on the range. Nor is it plate after plate of tiny gelatinous cubes of odd flavor; the portions are small but only to keep one hungry for the next, craving the next wave of flavor, texture, novelty. And Rosemarie, for all her seeming fragility, has an efficient grace all her own. Colin pours their wine and has brought in the scotch on a new tray, fresh glasses, as though it was never touched.

Avery sits across from Calden. Her father sits at the head. He keeps noticing the way his daughter looks at Calden. He keeps smiling, asking Calden about his ranch, his family, his business in the city, his friends at the sept, but: he avoids politics. He does not speak of either human nor lupine power structures. He does not talk about money when they speak of business, but about the people Calden meets, the events he has dealt with, how the floods affected him. When the prime rib roast comes, he proclaims it incredible. He admits he shouldn't have let Calden do this, a guest in his home, and that his reservations were high, but tasting it drives all that from his mind.

Calden White

This is, Calden is surprised to realize, one of the few meals he has shared with Avery while in the company of others. Oh, there was that gala that turned into something of a war. There was that barbecue back when the weather was warm and the moon was full. And there was a night at the ranch when his cousins dropped in unexpectedly, their boots dusty and their clothes smelling of cattle; washed their hands but not their faces, shared a hearty meal and a few beers with them.

That was perhaps the closest thing to a meal they've shared with family, his or hers. And that was so different from this. So much more casual. So earthy, so -- brutish, almost. Loud laughter and clanking forks and open fires and the like. With little in the way of finer manners at the table to begin with, Calden felt little compunction to divide his attention equally amongst all. And ultimately, at the end of the night, he felt little guilt when he kicked his cousins out after a last round of after-dinner drinks so he could have a little privacy with his beloved.

This is a different sort of family meal. It is exquisite and polite and there are many courses and the chandelier overhead glitters so bright. Ms. Kendrick has crafted quite the menu: a small parade of novel little dishes that rather flawlessly build up to the prime-rib roast. No one is drunk enough to shout and laugh, and no one is lightly to be. It would be easy to dismiss this meal as stilted, varnished and veneered, but --

it's not. That's the thing that strikes a soft, poignant note in Calden. There is nothing stilted or false about Avery's interactions with her father. There's nothing stilted or false about their regard for each other,

their love for each other,

the closeness of their bond. Sometimes, in brief little twinges, Calden almost envies his lover a little. He sees the way her father speaks of her, with undisguised pride and adoration. He sees the easy love she holds for her father in turn, the way they joke gently, the way they finish each other's stories.

He wonders, sometimes, if he ever had that with his own father. If he ever could.

--

The prime rib comes, and is praised so soundly that Calden flushes a little with pleasure and embarrassment. He waves off the compliments, thanking Philip, telling him it was the least he could do. They talk a while about beef, about suppliers in the city; Calden has a few recommendations. The conversation drifts momentarily back to business, to his trips to the city, his friends and his family and his long, old ties to this state.

As dinner starts to wind down, they eat less. They drink a little more. The wine and the scotch pool warmly in their stomachs; Calden lays his utensils down and leans back in his chair. He permits himself to sprawl, just a little. Just enough that under the table, the inside of his calf rests gently, steadily, solidly against Avery's. They are talking of more personal things now,

the trip Calden took through Europe when he was much younger, the time he spent on the coasts before coming home to his ranch. The other paths he briefly considered in life, and ultimately rejected -- a major in this, a doctorate in that; none of them equal to the simple, honest pleasure of turning a plot of land and a herd of cattle into a livelihood, a business, a career. He speaks of his family, his brothers and his father, his many cousins and uncles and aunts and all, and -- sparingly and sparsely, with a shine in his eyes that he hides by casting his gaze down to the tablecloth -- of his mother. They do not dwell too long on that subject. It is too personal, too private for a first meeting,

especially with a man who wears blue forget-me-nots on Valentine's Day.

--

A lull in the conversation, natural and easy. Calden sips wine, having had his fill of scotch. He is quiet a while, and then he lifts his eyes to Philip.

"I love your daughter very much," he says, frankly and quietly. "And I'm very glad to discover that her life at home is as happy and full as I would have wished for it to be."

Avery Chase

Oh, Philip takes Calden's recommendations, but he has no intention of undoing what his daughter has already wrought in their home: what beef they eat can be traced, to a morsel, back to Calden's own ranch. It has been so for months. He doesn't bring it up, but he smiles, dutifully and happily assigning to memory the names of Calden's suggestions.

Avery is as interested in Calden's travels as her father is; she's never heard these stories. She is quiet as he talks, feeling a slight sink in her heart and belly because she doesn't know. Almost a year now, and she doesn't know so many things about him. She chooses not to share with him, for now, stories of her own travels, her own experiences, in part because she cannot speak as easily about things she wanted to do and be and what came of those dreams: maybe she would have abandoned them by choice. She doesn't know.

Under the table, their legs touch. She feels warmed, sipping red wine instead of scotch, too. They are resting between the meal and dessert. Steadily, plates and platters are being swept away, silverware replaced. It is easy to forget the servants are even there, they move so stealthily.

He flat-out says he loves Avery very much. Perhaps erring a bit on the side of presumptuous, he talks of his opinion of her home life. Philip, for what it's worth, takes it in stride. He merely smiles. He reaches over, taking his daughter's hand, and she smiles back at him. Maybe they communicate in silence in that moment, but in the end of it, he squeezes her hand, and he turns to Calden, but then a few pairs of eyes look up.

There is a door somewhere being opened and closed, and moments later Avery is beaming and a young man walks in. He resembles their absent, passed mother the way that Avery resembles her father. His features have a sharply elfin look to them, not precocious or dainty but somehow both feral and ethereal. His eyes are somehow richer in color even than Avery's, approaching indigo; he has his father's leanly muscled but broad-shouldered build and height, the fair hair that will one day turn silver, ears that very nearly end in a point. He has a raptor's keenness of eye, a predator's easy grace in the way he walks.

It's at once startling that he has not changed.

He's dressed well, too, in a well-tailored, narrowly cut black suit with a thin black tie. He wears it easily, almost lazily, yet does not loosen his tie when he enters. This is a family dinner, but it is a family dinner with a guest. And lo: there is a spot beside Avery set, where one was not set before.

"Oakley," Avery is saying happily, as he walks not to her side of the table but to Calden's, first, extending his hand.

"Mr. White," says the young man, respectfully, inclining his head to his family's guest, his sister's boyfriend. "I apologize for missing dinner with you. I hope you did not take my absence for an insult."

Avery looks pleased enough to turn pink. Her baby brother! Using all fancy words! So polite!

After shaking Calden's hand he rounds to his father, passing him with a moment of friendly eye contact. When he comes to Avery he stands beside her, leaning over to squeeze her arms in a light hug and permits her to kiss his cheek, which he can't help but grin sheepishly at. He's a mannerly, well-bred teenager, not given to sulks or depression, but he's still a teenager. He finally seats himself at Avery's right, smoothing his tie to his chest as he does.

There is a wine glass in front of him. The maid comes round after a moment and pours it for him, not even that much smaller a portion than given to the adults, and he gives her a nod as she departs, but doesn't immediately lift a glass.

"I hope I didn't miss any stories meant to embarrass my sister," he declares.

Calden White

Calden has seen this young man once, the same way he once saw Avery's father: from afar, across a garden party full of colorful awnings and umbrellas, planters bursting with late summer blooms. And like Avery's father, like Avery's servants, like Avery's house and home and furnishings, he is utterly, thoroughly, quintessentially of Falcon.

And indeed, he is a teenager. But he dresses himself and comports himself as a man, and so Calden -- whose outlook is perhaps colored by his own experience growing up in the backcountry -- treats him as such. He stands to meet the youth, taking the offered hand firmly.

"Mr. Chase," he returns; there is no qualifier, no young or little or junior or anything of the sort. "You hardly need to apologize for spending Valentine's with your sweetheart. I'd be quite the hypocrite if I expected anything of the sort."

They separate. Calden reseats himself; as Oakley makes his way around the table, greeting first his father and then his sister, Calden makes eye contact with Avery and lifts his eyebrows in smiling, silent approval. An upstanding young man, his expression says.

"Sadly," Calden answers as Oakley sits and is poured wine, "not a single one. I think she's bought off your father, and I'll depart as story-less as I came."

Avery Chase

Oakley has seen Calden three times that he remembers: once when he was passing through a hallway and saw a happily drunk man sitting at the foot of the front stairs, leaning against the railing, looking sweaty and odd. He had frowned, and started to call for one of the servants, when he saw Avery coming back down the stairs, saw her pushing her hand into the man's hair, grinning at him the way she does. He never said a word about it.

He also saw Calden one night when Calden picked up Avery for a James Bond-themed gala. He was in one of the parlors, and he actually traded a brief hello before Avery came in to go out with him.

Then there was the garden party, where he played basketball and Avery waved to him before she left, her done-up hair cast down, a flower still adorning it, her hand linked with this man's. She has had ample opportunity to introduce them all, but personally, he doesn't blame her. Especially given the whole 'Fianna' thing.

Philip laughs. Avery just grins. Oakley's eyebrows go up. "Then you're in luck," he says, leaning forward a bit. "She hasn't bought me off, and I'm willing to accept payment in trade."

"Oakley!" Avery says, only half-feigning how aghast she sounds.

He grins wider at Calden, ignoring his sister.

Calden White

Calden laughs. "I'd accept," he says, smiling, "but I suspect you're too much a gentleman to actually do as threatened, Oakley. And then I'd be left looking quite the gossip.

"Besides," he adds, that smile casting across the table to include Avery as well, "I doubt her tales of woe could possibly be more embarrassing than mine."

Avery Chase

"A gentleman never backs out of a deal," Oakley responds, as to his qualities, sounding quite high and mighty. He smiles, and Calden suggests that Avery's 'tales of woe' couldn't possibly be worse than his. "Perhaps," is all her brother says, leaning back, lifting his glass.

Dessert is creamy, affected with traces and hints of fudge rather than composed entirely of chocolate. It is cool, rich, bittersweet, blending with the wine chosen for the meal. The servings are artful puffs and swirls, adorned with a gemstone-bright drizzle of raspberry sauce.

Oakley is a teenager; he eats his perhaps faster than is strictly necessary.

Philip is an older man, and only a man, not a wolf; he eats small bites, infrequent, savoring them each, supping instead on conversation.

Avery is somewhere in between. She is ravenous; she is always hungry. Later on she will devour the rest of that prime rib roast straight from the fridge. But she is with now three of her favorite men on earth, all eating and drinking together, and her father and brother look wonderful and are being so polite and Calden is here and he's so charming and her dress is the prettiest thing, the dessert makes her so proud of Ms. Kendrick, so she talks. She laughs at something Calden says, her ankle touching his under the table. She considers the pleasure, later, of eating the prime rib roast from the fridge, chewing on the meat and tasting the hint of bloody life, following it with a pint of Ben & Jerry's Karamel Sutra with its core of pure caramel.

But for now she is in her pretty red dress, laughing as candles burn low with her father, her brother, her lover, eating dessert.

Calden White

She is so happy. Avery is so happy, this luminous, adored center of their lives. And there is the truth of it -- she is the bond that links them all. Sister of one, daughter of the other, and beloved of the third: gorgeous in red tonight, in that dress with its little lace roses that spill down from the shoulder.

They share dessert, which is cool and creamy and rich and bittersweet. Calden finishes most of his wine, leaving a swallow at the bottom. He asks about Oakley's studies, and where he might go to college, and what he might like to do When He Grows Up. Calden, it turns out, has at least dabbled enough in everything to have something to say about just about everything Oakley mentions -- engineering and literature, the life sciences, history. He mentions that most major colleges have an astronomy course that inevitably requires 2am trips to the observatory,

and that if Oakley has the chance, he really should take that course, because never again in his life will he be given credit for simply stargazing. Even professional astronomers don't have that luxury.

The candles are quite small now. The last of dessert is gone. Calden swirls the wine in his glass simply for the pleasure of watching it move, and then lifts his eyes to Avery's father.

"Thank you for the lovely meal," he says, giving the elder Chase the honor due to the patriarch of the family,

even if Philip knows, and Oakley knows, and Calden knows, and Avery knows who really is the leader and protector and guardian of this little cast of falcons.

Avery Chase

In years to come, it will be Oakley who manages the household, the staff, the properties, the investments, the philanthropy. It will be Oakley whose marriage will join their family's blood and wealth with another's. He will manage things, he and their stewards, their staff, their loyal servants. They were both to be trained for this future, but Avery is on a different path now, and no one is deluding themselves about where that path ends. Not in bed, at peace, surrounded by fat and happy grandchildren.

For that price, and the price of being her family's guardian, protector, leader -- do not be confused; these are not gifts -- she receives two things in exchange: the ability to walk in the spirit world, to commune directly with Falcon, Gaia, Luna, and the sheer physical power and joy of shapeshifting. They are brutal terms. There is a reason no one is ever offered such a contract, but only finds somewhere in life that the deal has already been struck, the dotted line signed in heart's blood. It was decided before you were ever born.

She will never full detach from this family, though. She will never be so absent from Oakley's life or her father's life that his mate or his children do not know her. No matter how far she goes, how long she must stay away because she has gone utterly mad, she will come back. She will be anchored here, with them, and now

with Calden, too.

--

"A small price for your company," says Philip easily, "and smaller still with the gifts you brought." Scotch. The main dish. His presence, Avery's joy in his presence. Philip smiles, sitting up, his body language indicating that he will rise without moving yet to do so. "I would love to stay and talk more, but I have an early flight tomorrow. You're more than welcome to stay, of course. Rosemarie has an elegant touch with coffee, if you're so inclined."

Calden White

No one has risen from the table yet, but Calden coils his legs under himself, ready to do so, as he senses Philip moving toward the same.

"It's been a pleasure," he says. "I meant what I said about visiting the ranch. If you're in the area, drop by. You don't even need to call."

--

The gentlemen rise, and perhaps the lady as well. There are handshakes and well-wishings, and then Avery's elegant father departs. Avery's equally elegant -- though perhaps a little more elfish -- brother makes for a second helping of dessert. For a moment, they are left alone. Calden reaches across the table, his fingertips barely brushing hers.

"Are you staying here tonight?" he asks her softly.

Avery Chase

Before he leaves, Philip kisses the top of Avery's head. There is a pause there, blink and you will miss it, where he also inhales, the way he might have done when she was born, when she was small and sleeping, when her mother went back to war and her care was given into his hands and the hands of her nannies. She is a grown moment now, and yet there is that pause, that heartbeat of time where what is in Philip's heart twists outward like a rope weaving itself, tying him to her, for she is of his bone and blood, and she and her brother are all he has left -- in the most primal, most physical sense -- of his mate.

His hand is on the back of her head there, smoothing elegantly away. She smiles up at him, and he is shaking Calden's hand and assuring him he would love to visit the ranch one day, then departing. A footman is falling into step behind him out of nowhere as soon as he's in the hallway, following him up to his chambers. Oakley takes the moment to go get seconds, and Calden looks over at Avery, asking her his quiet question.

She smiles at him, teasing him by evading his fingers, then tapping the tops of his first knuckles with her own, as delicately as if she were playing an instrument. "If you are," she tells him, seeming coy, but it isn't that: it's just that giddy joy, which has not yet abated.

Calden White

It's like a miniature game of tag. His fingers reach for hers; hers evade. She tags him! His hand turns over, fingers parting for hers.

"I'd like to," he says quietly, smiling. It's not an answer he gives without thought, nor lightly. It is, after all, his first time officially meeting her family. And this is the house where her family lives and feels safe. And she is his lover, and her father's daughter, and her brother's sister, and --

he is not, he would never be utterly blind to how her family might feel. What they may or may not be comfortable with.

"If you think it's a good idea," he adds.

Avery Chase

When Calden shows her his palm, she finds it strangely reminiscent of Patches rolling onto her back, exposing her belly in a mixture of utterly trusting submission and plea for attention, for love, for touch. And yet it's not the same. Calden is not moon-struck by some gift of the spirits she employs in his presence to keep him from being terrified of her. Calden is not overcome by one emotion at a time, whether fear or aggression or love or contentment; he is more complex than that, more engaging. She would never deny some similarities, though: the wholeness of his affection, the fearlessness of it.

Many people give themselves over to Avery with their entire hearts, all their trust. Not everyone; enough that it's a trend. But Calden, for some reason, is marked as such in her mind as special: he gives her all of his heart, and he uses all of his will to do so.

Her hand slides into his hand, palms warming together. She smiles at him, has been smiling at him and everyone else all through the cocktail hour and all through dinner and dessert. "You're our guest, darling. We would not ply you with wine and scotch and then wave you out of our home,"

she says, as though they lived in some far-gone era when guests for dinner were only setting off a week or so, possibly a fortnight, at your estate, as though there would be hunts and dances and so on during that time, as though this were the regency era and not 2014,

though she also has a point: he lives very far away.

Her hand squeezes his. "We're all adults here, my dear one," she says, more tenderly. There's a beat: "Well, Oakley... he's almost an adult. As good as, most of the time." Another pause.

"Do not tell him I said that," she warns.

Calden White

There's something a little old-fashioned and nostalgic about both of them. It's one more reason they fit each other so well. She is a lady through and through, even if sometimes she wears the form of a beast. He has a gentleman's heart, even if he is also a herder of cattle. He keeps meaning to have one of those parties where your guests were guests for a week or more, or at least the closest modern American equivalent: a hurricane party, a blizzard bash, whatever one might call it. He could invite Avery and her family. Eva and hers. Tamsin and her pack, of course, and all his cousins; they could pack the house full for a good weekend or so, and while there might not be hunting, there would probably be dancing, and possibly some riding, and

even living so very far away, he would feel close to his friends.

"I wouldn't dream of telling him," says Calden, straight-faced, "just as I wouldn't dream of ferreting embarrassing tales of your youth from him." His hand squeezes hers; he smiles. "I have to admit a certain curiosity, though."

Avery Chase

"Oakley is bluffing," Avery says with an imperious flair, a wave of her hand: "I've never done anything embarrassing."

The young man, interestingly, has not returned from the kitchen. Perhaps he is as mature as he claims; or he took it to his room.

Calden White

"Of course not," Calden replies. He's smirking, just a little, just at the corner of his mouth. "The very thought offends the senses."

Avery Chase

She grins. She squeezes his hand. "It's still early," she says, and it is -- depending on who you are. It's a Friday night. It's Valentine's Day. Look at her pretty dress. "Take me dancing. Let's go get embarassingly inebriated."

She didn't get up at 5 AM this morning, or 6 AM. She's a creature of the night. Of course it's early.

Calden White

Well; it's not early for Calden anymore. But Avery's energy is infectious, and her happiness hard to resist. Plus, there's something to be said for that dress. It is made for going out.

"I suppose," he says, "I do owe you a bout of dancing." His fingers squeeze hers in turn, and then he lets go to push up out of his chair. "Where did your brother go? We should say a proper goodnight."

Avery Chase

She beams. She glows, sitting up a bit straighter, her curls bouncing a bit with any motion of her body. He is already standing a moment later, and she looks positive elated, grinning up at him, her eyes alight. The first time they danced was their first 'real' date; she wore gold, he bought her Sunshine. They danced again in summertime, at a party for people they both know, some professor or doctor or lawyer or something, and she wore her hair up but he took it all down just so he could touch it, selfish thing that he is.

If he didn't dance with her tonight she might never forgive him. Look at her dress.

Avery takes his hand as he comes around to offer it to her. "He's probably upstairs," she explains. "He's still learning the delicacies of discretion and courtesy. I'll tell him a quiet cough in the hallway before entering to say his goodnights would have been all right." She rises to her feet, facing him, smiling still, always. "Later, I will."

Calden White

"I forgive him," Calden says, the very soul of magnanimity. "Or I would, if there were anything to forgive. At any rate, maybe I'll see him again tomorrow."

Because he's coming back here. Tonight. After dancing with her, his lover and his love, on Valentine's Day, with her in her scintillating dress with its cascading flowers, in its eye-catching crimson. The very thought fills his heart to bursting. The very thought makes him warm from the inside out.

He folds his napkin over once, laying it down on the table. Coming around to Avery's side, he offers his arm to her. She is still, always smiling. So is he. Sometimes, at the end of a long night with her, he's smiled so much his cheeks ache a little, but

let's be honest. He can't even pretend to mind.

"I hope you know where we're going," he says as they depart the dining room, "because I certainly don't."

Avery Chase

For breakfast, she thinks. Her father will be gone by then, off to his early flight, but she and her lover and her brother will all be able to have breakfast together. Rosemarie's elegant coffee, hash browns, sausages or bacon or both, fluffy scrambled eggs or sunny-side-up or omelettes perhaps. Maybe they'll watch the news in some room or another, though not the formal parlor with the piano, some other room with a large television and good speakers and Oakley sitting in an armchair and Avery curled up on a couch with her boyfriend while she drinks her cran-orange juice and feeds him bites from her plate, grinning every time he nips a strawberry from her fingertips.

"We can get Colin to drive," she says quietly, as she rises, since Chauncey is with his wife. Her cheeks are flushed. "La Rumba," she tells him, as though she planned this. "I hope you don't mind Latin."

Calden White

Maybe.

Maybe they'll watch the news together. Or something cheerful and light: Saturday morning cartoons, another Pixar movie. Maybe Oakley will man the remote and Avery will snuggle with Calden, who'll stretch his legs out on an ottoman and drape his arm over his girlfriend's shoulders. Maybe Oakley will even be so mature as to not look grossed out. Maybe they'll be so mature as to not do anything to gross him out.

Maybe they'll spend the morning together lazing about, the three of them: Avery and her brother and her gentleman caller. Maybe in the afternoon Oakley'll go out for a round of tennis with a friend, or maybe he'll do regular teenager things like hang around malls and drive around joyriding. Maybe, left on their own, Avery and Calden will simply lay about the house,

or maybe they'll go out. Go to an arboretum, or maybe that planetarium where Avery once met a cosmic nursery full of infant stars. Maybe they'll go dancing again. Maybe

he'll even come home with her again, once more, a Friday and a Saturday and a Sunday morning spent in Denver with his love before heading north again. So far away.

--

That, however, is future tense. The now: the laugh, the slow-spreading grin as he takes her hand over his arm, leans down to kiss her cheek. Not quite the way her father or her brother kissed her. Warmly, and rather at length: his lips pressing to her cheekbone.

"Uh oh," he jokes, "I'm not very proficient at the salsa. You might have to lead."