FINALLY SETTLING IN

6 FEBRUARY, SATURDAY, PLAYDATE

I waited as my friends pulled on their winter coat. Ki had taken down my jacket for me, but I saw no point wearing it since we were only going to the garage and packhouse.

Just as everyone was almost ready, maybe Zara had lost a glove but Krystal was sure she wouldn't need it and it "had to be somewhere", but we were almost all ready and had spilled out into the long veranda, when a dark blue Merc pulled right up next to us.

Ben got out of the car to open it for Mum and Sabre to get off, "Luna is here."

"Wow, that was possibly the quickest ride I've ever had from Gate City." Mum said.She sounded like she had been holding her breath from the excitement.

Ki cast Ben a censuring look, but Ben only shrugged. So I punched him in the arm, "Don't speed when you're driving my mum!"

And then I noticed that Sabre was really quiet, "What's wrong with Sabre?"

"She gets nervous in front of new people." Mum brushed it off with a smile, but her hand was soothing the little girl's back, "These are Sam's friends from school."

Sabre nodded but said nothing.

I sighed and patted the red curls, "Friends, my Mum and little sister."

I'm sure the wolves who were also regarding the little girl quietly would know she was a human by now.

"Yes, she's human." I said just to get it out of the way.

"Sabre, my friends, some of them are human girls too." I told her. Sabre looked up at that, and then she said in an accusing tone, "I thought you hated humans."

"No, I don't hate humans! I have a lot of human friends." I quickly clarified.

Hahaha, kids say the darnnest things?

"Then... then you just hated me?"

Hahaha. What a smart girl! I'm sure she would do well in school... hahaha. I'm never going to be able to get out of this one. I gave Mum a fugitive glance.

"It's nice to finally meet Sam's friends from school." Mum smiled, "I've heard so much about you."

"Good things, I hope." Henry smiled, he reached out to shake my Mum's hand, "My name is Henry, it's nice to meet you Luna."

"Yes, of course good things! You must be the young Alpha Henry, thank you for looking out for our Sam." Mum shook his hand and smiled warmly at what appeared to be a very well brought up young alpha of a prestigious pack.

"And you must be Marcus and Liam. Thank you for your hard work too." Mum continued smiling. Then she turned her attention to the girls, "Oh, and what lovely girls my Sam made friends with! I'm so pleased to meet you too."

The girls looked pleased and embarrassed at the same time.

"It's nice to meet you too, Mrs Kingsley." Abigail smiled widely back.

My Mum looked surprised, and she smiled, "What pretty manners!"

And then Sabre silently tugged on Mum's hand. She was quiet, and she looked quite sullen. Why? Because I hated her? Such a petty child. Humph! I decided not to feel bad for her. I mean, I've been very nice to her lately! Why couldn't she let bygones be bygones?

I released the sigh I was holding very quietly.

"Well, I'm just going to bring the little one to her room for her nap, and it looks like you're on your way out too. Let's talk more over dinner later." Mum smiled again.

Ki immediately held the door open for Mum and Savy to enter the house. Mum thanked him and glided through.

"Wow, your mum's really classy." Zara told me.

"How come you have a human sister?" Leia asked me.

I also had pressing questions. Who told my Mum about my friends? Oh wait, don't tell me, her BFFs - Beta Friends Forever.

"Your mum seems really nice." Jasmine said.

I nodded at that, "Yeah, she is. But she's always on my case. It's always Sam this or Sam that."

Henry laughed, "That would be expected, given that it's you we're talking about."

"Hey, you're my friend! You're supposed to be on my side." I scolded Henry in jest as we headed towards the garage.

There was more laughter and then more insults, but that was just fun and I had finally relaxed.

I'm not sure why I was stressed earlier. My friends were here, and its time to have fun! I guess I was so anxious about what my friends thought about my home or more specifically what they would think about me after seeing my home, that I forgot that my home wasn't a building. It was my family and pack.

I grinned, "Hurry up and finish looking at the cars! I wanna go play something!"

Ki smiled and used a remote to have all the shutters lift. The garage lit up automatically, the cars gleamed like a fancy showroom display, "These are the cars. The blue ones belong to the princess."

Lies. Ki's car... urm... I looked at the row of blue cars and couldn't quite say which one was Ki's. I frowned. Cars really did all look rather alike. Well except for the Lambo because it was just like the other blue sport cars except flatter - pancake car.

Oh wait, my point was that Ki's car wasn't mine. It was his, whichever one it was. Hmmm...

"Is James here?" Henry recognized Mate's white convertible. For the first time in my life I noticed the liscene plate didn't have the usual row of alphabets and numbers. Instead it said, "JL3". Was that even legal?

"Not right now." Ki answered smoothly, "Although he does visit whenever he is in the packlands."

Henry nodded, but he was distracted by something else that caught his interest.

Of course, it had to be the Lambo. "My mum wouldn't let me get one."

I know! We could wrap it dark red and send it to him for his birthday! Oh wait, no. I didn't really want to send Henry to an early grave.

"It's probably cause she preferred you alive." I told Henry.

The guys all laughed it off. Was I the only one who felt that riding in that thing posed a very real bodily threat? No?

"If you want, we can take it out for a spin after the party." Ben offered.

Wait, what? Ben was being friendly?

Henry raised a brow, "Yeah, okay."

Of course he would want...

"But Henry..." Abigail definitely didn't expect to lose her boyfriend to a lambo. Oh the lambo was evil like that.

"We can take the Porsche out too." Ben said.

"I already have that one." Henry said.

After that we went over to the packhouse. If anyone noticed that the lawn right in front of the packhouse looked like a frozen smashed up cow pat sprinkled with a bit of snow, no one commented on it.

Once at the door, the warrior stationed there held it open for us, "Good afternoon."

He bowed politely as I passed.

You know what, let's just install automatic doors in the next renovation. Why post warriors to hold doors?

"These are our pack warriors." Ki indicated to the dark blue jacket on the guard, "They are very loyal to our Alpha and our Alpha princess. In the unlikely event that you meet with any trouble during your stay, you may turn to them for help."

Right, we still needed guards nowadays.

"Is it very dangerous out here?" Pearl asked.

Ki smiled, "We're in the Green Packlands after all. Next to us is the Warlock's land which has its share of rogues. It's very dangerous to step beyond Gate City if you do not belong to a pack here, but you're the Alpha Princess' guests. No one here will hurt you. And no one outside will be able to come close, not here in the Packhouse anyway."

Then Ki added a caution, "I know you might probably make a lot of new friends at the party, but unless the princess or one of her betas are with you, I would advise you not wander out of the packhouse at night."

My friends actually nodded seriously at that.

Ki led us to the seventh floor, "The guest suites are here."

"It's like a hotel." Zara said.

There were three rooms for the girls, and two for the boys. Naturally, Henry got his own room.

I entered the first room with the girls. We decided to explore all the rooms together, even though they looked quite similar. Each room had its own attached bathroom. It was really like a hotel.

"Whoa!" The room reminded me of the one where we killed the Ciara Vampire Lord in the other night complete with bedside light console and everything!

Ki graciously showed us where the minibar was. There was also a safe, bathrobes, towels, the bathroom was stocked with soaps and shampoos, new toothbrushes and toothpaste...

"It's really like a real hotel!" I exclaimed.

"What? Why are you acting all impressed?" Krystal scolded me, "Isn't this your pack house?"

I laughed, "Yeah, but I've never been here before."

Krystal shook her head at me, "It's your own home, Sam."

"She's too rich to know what's inside." Zara explained.

"I'm not!" I argued, "This house belongs to everyone in the pack. There are lots of floors I haven't been to!"

"Really?" Jasmine asked, then she laughed, "Actually, me too. I've only been to the first two floors of my packhouse."

I guess that's normal. Even though the pack house was the house for the pack, in truth, it was more like a community club and townhall for the pack combined into one building.

I mean, in the past... When the pack was new, I heard that everyone lived in the packhouse. They had all left their home packs, mostly young adult unmated wolves or couples. They followed Dad and Mum here to start a new life.

I guess the guest rooms were the refurbished studio apartments many of them had lived in till they earned enough to buy their own land and build their own houses.

The land on our pack was sold to pack members in 300 year leases. After which they were returned or released. We aren't actually anywhere near any of the leases ending though. I mean, our pack was really young. I remembered Flynn saying he was born the same year as our pack. How old was Flynn again? Sigh, anything older than 20 was really old and I stopped keeping track.

300 years was like forever! Dad wanted to give wolves a feeling of security. If they bought land, they got to keep it for their whole life and a bit more. The last thing he'd want for a old wolf in his "sunset years" was to worry about outliving his property. But he didn't want to make it forever because he said he'd seen too many urban development projects go wrong because of land ownership issues.

This way, our pack could keep progressing, give or take 300 years.

Seriously? 300 years?

We needed to be fair to the wolves who followed us, Dad had said in all zenness. We needed to keep a balance between meeting the needs of the individual and the needs of the collective.

We'll be all dead in 300 years! So I guess redevelopment would be in my future children's court? Good luck to that!

Anyway, we've got lots of land. Although Dad initially wanted to keep as much of it forested as possible... Efficient usage of developed land and all that, but Princess Town is here!

So far the plans for Princess Town was to build upwards from the onset. We were trying to keep a perimeter of forested area around each town. We have already begun prefabricating parts and surveying the land.

Dad had given us a plot on a hill. It was considered prime land.

Once upon a time, Dad had dreamed of building a small hut on top of that hill with nothing but a bed and a table and two chairs. He thought it would be nice to live there with Mum, but I don't think Mum felt the same way about it.

"Wouldn't it be nice! We would be able to watch the sunset every evening. And in the morning, I can just push all the furniture out of the house, splash the ground with water from the stream and the house would be clean! Then I can spend the rest of the day reading." Dad told me his plan for the pretty hill with red flowered trees one spring.

"You'd also need a shelf to keep the books." I pointed out because I was practical like that.

Dad took pause as if this had not occured to him.

Mum laughed and shook her head, "You can do this when I'm gone."

Yeah, I don't think Mum wanted to live in a secluded hut on top of a hill without running water or electricity.

I guess Dad had decided that the Colored Mountains was a better retirement destination now, so the pretty hill with the red flowered trees was mine to build Princess Town.

Except that if we put Princess Town there, what would happen to the stream? Or the red flowering trees? Omo

"Earth to Sam. SAM!"

I blinked, oh yeah, friends... hotel room in the packhouse.

Krystal sighed, "I don't know why you keep zoning out like that!"

"I have a lot on my mind." I defended my momentary lapse of attention.

"Yeah, right." Krystal rolled her eyes.

"Haha, Sam... Your life isn't the most complicated thing." Zara informed me.

"Yeah, you don't need to hold a job, you don't need to get a boyfriend..." Krystal started.

"You don't even need to worry about what you eat or wear!" Leia pointed out.

"All you need to do is smile." Zara decided.

"Must be nice!" Abigail sighed, "Living like a princess in a lap of luxury."

"I'm so jealous." Pearl said.

The girls were now all in one room, getting comfortable on the two beds. I'm not sure where the guys disappeared to. Even Ki and Ben and Fluffy were somewhere near but not in sight.

I sat down criss cross apple sauce at the foot of one of the beds to join the girls.

"So what's up?" I asked.

"Nothing, just girl talk." Abigail smiled at me.

Okay... I had a bad feeling about this.