There was nothing more I could have asked on my birthday for than to have Elise with me.

In all honesty I had been stewing all day while I waited for her to call. And then she showed up on my doorstep.

Now she was sitting in my chair in my room, eating a cupcake like it was any other year. If I were in my wolf form my tail would be wagging.

She looked absolutely pretty and her shaking was not as bad as normal. Was it due to being home again? Was Serge hurting her more by keeping her away?

"Why can't you just stay in our territory?" I asked her without thinking.

She glanced at me with a deer in the headlights expression and I instantly regretted opening my big mouth.

"I can't," she said. She bit her lip and I realized my question had increased her trembling. Damn it.

Well, I had already screwed up so I might as well get some information. "Why not?"

"Because I can't function when h-h-he's t-too far away. H-he had to leave during the at-at-attack last night and i-it was terrible, Matt."

"But right now you're..."

"H-he's out in h-his truck."

Her words sapped some of my pleasure. I had an irrational urge to go to Ruth's room and glare down at him from her window, but I was not stupid enough to waste my time with Elise.

"Did he give a time limit again?" I snapped more harshly than I should have. I gripped my temper with both hands and forced it down where it would not upset her.

"Yeah, h-he said to spend at least an hour."

At least? I did not know what his game was.

It had to be an attempt to get back in everyone's good graces again after stealing Elise. At best he was sucking up to Nick after his huge screw up; probably trying to get on Elise's good side. It had not escaped my notice that she was already being too soft on him.

But why was he trying so hard? Was it just for the peace of the Trifecta, or was there something else?

Before I could figure out the bastard's game or come up with something to get Elise's mind off of him, there was a knock on my door.

"Who is it?" I asked begrudgingly.

My younger twin sisters did not wait for permission to enter. They pushed open the door and descended upon us like a plague of locusts.

They bore identical heart shaped faces with the same cute features, but it was blindingly simple to tell them apart because Joanna was in a hair dye phase and Lydia was perpetually in a not-doing-what-Joanna-was-doing phase. Joanna had gold streaks in her hair and gold painted nails and while Lydia's hair was a black as the day they were born.

"Elise, we heard what happened," Joanna said as she hugged my friend.

Lydia hung back next to me. "How are you doing?"

"I'm o-okay," Elise said, although it was obviously a lie.

"I heard you were living in Serge's house," Joanna said. "What's that like?"

"Good thing you weren't making out when we came in," Lydia commented to me in an aside while Elise described the bastard's lair to her twin. The way they worked together to tag team me irritated me to no end.

"Shut up, Lydia," I snarled under my breath. Interfering sister.

"What? She didn't hear me," Lydia hissed back. Her eyes were wide with fake innocence.

Elise continued talking to Joanna and Lydia was not finished with me. "Are you ever going to make a move?"

I had enough of the interrogation. "Okay, out."

"What? But I haven't seen Elise in weeks. She doesn't belong to you," Joanna complained.

Lydia taunted me in a sing song whisper. "At least not yet."

I got up and began shooing my annoying sisters out. "But this room does, now get out."

Both my sisters made a show of reluctantly walking towards the door. I scowled at them.

"You know, you're just lucky that Isaac took the basement when he moved home instead of kicking you out of his old room," Joanna pointed out.

"Yeah, you'd be back to sharing with Jesse if he had," Lydia contributed.

I frowned. I would sleep on the couch before I let getting stuck in a room with Jesse happen to me again, or I would take the basement, or rent my own place, or live out in the forest as an animal in my wolf form. At least in the forest I might get some peace. I shot another glare at my sisters.

"It was nice seeing you, Elise," Joanna said cheerfully as I slammed the door on their faces.

Elise rolled her eyes. "You should be nicer to your little sisters, Matt."

She always took their side because of Sean, but the situation was far from the same. I was the victim here. "They just came in to annoy me," I complained.

She stuck out her lip and looked at me with a patently false expression of hurt. "You're saying they didn't want to see me?"

I was trapped. If I disagreed she won the point, if I agreed she would keep up the pouting act.

I changed the subject instead. "Have another cupcake."

* * * * * * * * *

After a while of just sitting around talking, we started playing games on my computer.

My desk was a better setup for a single player, but if we went down and hooked up a console to the television in the more spacious living room, it would be encounter after encounter with my irritating family on the best of days. Today would be worse, because mom had invited the extended family over. The living room would be swarming.

Plus, the lack of space at my desktop had one upside, she was sitting so close we were almost touching.

Ugh, I was pathetic.

I considered. Was there some way I could introduce the topic of us without putting additional pressure on her? I almost wished she had heard Lydia's taunts just to get the ball rolling.

Still, I was not going to let my sister be the one to bring it up to Elise. I had to be the one to do it. If I could not even do that...

"Ha ha!" she laughed at me mockingly as her avatar kicked me in the chest.

"Oh no," I said sarcastically as I swung around to retaliate.

"Matt," she whined jokingly, dragging out my name.

I copied her tone, "Elise."

She looked into my eyes mischievously. Damn, she was something else. I forced my eyes back to the screen.

I took an uppercut to my digital face. She had the round as she pulled off a finishing move on me. My avatar died a rather painful looking death.

"What were you thinking about?" she asked. It seemed she had not failed to notice my attention had slipped from the game.

"You," I answered automatically.

She met my eyes. Her brows were raised in concern. "I told you not to worry about me, Matt."

"I'm not worrying."

"Uh huh."

Well, what could I say? Maybe this was my opening to tell her how—

There was another knock at the door. I scowled. "What?"

"Mom's yelling for everyone to come down for cake," said the brother who I had been forced to share a room with for most of my life. He spoke through the door, because for all his faults, Jesse at least understood the need for privacy unlike a pair of sisters I could mention.

I did not want to go down for cake, but Elise was already standing up. I paused the game.

"We've got cake here," I pointed to the half eaten box of cupcakes.

"I'm sure you'll finish those off l-later. Come on. They're all here for you," she said and she disappeared out into the hall.

I sighed.

I followed Elise downstairs.

My family was entirely set up in the dining room and spilling over into the living room and kitchen by the time I got down there. Elise was sitting next to my sister Ruth. Ruth's hair was light enough that it was almost blond which was quite unusual in my family. Most of us had black or brown hair in our human forms and light coloured fur in our wolf forms. My own wolf form was on the darker side of the spectrum.

There was no correlation I could spot between human hair and fur colour. Wolves of the Trifecta tended to have mixes of fur ranging from white to brown or dark grey whereas the eastern wolves tended to be grey or brown or darker colours.

If I saw a black wolf on the battlefield it was almost certainly an enemy.

But now, thanks in large part to my mom, there was a whole houseful of black and brown heads crowding around. Besides my five siblings and my parents, my grandma and almost a dozen cousins along with some of their respective parents were standing or sitting around talking.

I knew what my mom had thought she was doing. Like everyone in all three packs, she knew all about the mess with Elise and did not want me moping around feeling depressed on my twentieth birthday. Never one to sit around on her hands, she had decided to throw me an unwanted party to cheer me up as if I were a sad six year old.

If she had really wanted to cheer me up, they could have given me money I could put towards the motorbike I was saving for, but she unfortunately believed social interaction was more important than sweet transportation.

What no one seemed to understand was that I was not wallowing in depression; I was writhing in rage. Though my temper had cooled somewhat, I still wanted revenge on the bastard. I had dreamt the previous night that our Trifecta had dissolved into war and I was fighting with Serge on the battlefield. Just as he had hit the frozen ground and I had gone for the kill I had woken up, missing that sweet pleasure of freeing Elise from her troubles.

I had been filled with frustration. It had worn off as the day had gone on.

But now my frustration was renewed. Elise was here and my annoying family was interfering with my time alone with her.

Maybe the bastard had planned this all. No, he could not possibly be that good at strategy.

If I had imagined she would be here, I would have put my foot down about not wanting a gathering.

Since I could not change the past, I sat in the spot where my mother wanted me to sit and waited while they sang Happy Birthday to me. The song was loud and intrusive, a perfect anthem for my family.

Then Mom put a huge cake in front of me and dad snapped pictures, likely on her command. I inhaled deeply. I tried to blow all the candles out at once to forestall the stupid girlfriend jokes my family would surely produce if there were any left lit. The last thing I need was to give Lydia another excuse to make snide comments about Elise.

Fortunately I was good at huffing and puffing, so all that was left on the twenty candles was little puffs of smoke curling up into the air.

Mom and Uncle Kevin handed out slices of cake. People were helping themselves to drinks and the various snacks my mom had put out on the counter and side table. The amount of food was not surprising. Most of the people in the house had werewolf appetites and there were a couple of true wolves wandering around amongst them as well, begging for food as if they were puppies rather than mighty carnivores. They were as pathetic as I was.

I stabbed my fork into my piece of cake.

Elise met my eyes from the other side of the table as if she knew exactly what I was thinking and she empathized with my misery. I saw her mouth the word "sorry" and tried to figure out what she was sorry about.

That our game was interrupted? That my family was a bunch of overly loud loons? That she knew that I had fallen in love with her and she did not return my feelings?

No, she would have confronted me if she had noticed, the same way she called me out on other things. If she knew and really did not want me, she would find a gentle way to let me down. If she knew and agreed, we would surely already be a couple.

That left only the option that she was completely oblivious.

I watched as she brought a bite of cake into her mouth. At least she was eating something.

"Happy birthday," my cousin Ernie bellowed from across the table as he slid into the chair Ruth had vacated next to Elise.

"Thanks," I said begrudgingly.

Ernie then proceeded to try to strike up conversation with Elise. She seemed to be handling it with minimal trembling so I did not intervene, although it really annoyed me when he spoke to her in that overfriendly way of his.

I should have switched seats the moment Ruth had gotten up. As it was I could only hear bits of their conversation with all the loud yammering of my relatives behind me.

"You look good," Ernie said to her.

I frowned as my mother and a couple of aunts cackled at something and drowned out Elise's response.

Ernie kept looking at Elise's lips and it was pissing me off. I stood up abruptly and my grandma made a little sound of surprise.

"Sorry, Grandma."

"You're too fast for my heart, Matt," she complained with the same smile as my mother.

"Nothing's too fast for you. You're a wolf, Grandma."

She grinned at me. "You've got that right. Better go save that girl, Matt. Wouldn't want your cousin beating your time, eh?" She winked to emphasize her point.

It seemed instead of gifts this year I was getting big helpings of unwanted relationship advice.

It was the definite downside of having a big nosey family. The interfering group of werewolves made it their concern to sniff out things that were absolutely none of their business.

Still, aggravating family or no, I was still really glad she was there.