“Oh my God, this is all my fault! I insisted they could give you the presents in three days, when you’d be back, and they hated the idea.”
Max and Avelyn had chosen to raise their kids without lying to them about anything, not even about Santa Claus. So, they’d told them the story, but explained to them that Santa, in fact, was just a fantasy character, and the Christmas gifts always came from family and friends.
“Did you, or Ryan, by any chance, mention to them where we are?”
“Nope. No way!”
“Did you talk about it between the two of you?”
“Err… maybe? I… I don’t remember. Yes, we might have.”
Avelyn started laughing.
“I’m so, so sorry, you guys. I’m the worst aunt…”
“You’re not. They’re just hard to deal with. Wait… I think they’re here.”
Avelyn opened the door for Max and the pups. Already in his human form, he ran inside to put some clothes on. Nick, Luke, and Jake, though, sneaked past her, one at a time, and showed no intention of shifting. Their big paws left snow prints all over the carpet.
“Are they okay?” asked Josie through the phone.
“Yes, they’re fine. Call you later.”
She threw her phone on the table, and proceeded to cross her arms over her chest and glare at the three young wolves. They had grown a lot in the past year. They still had a long way to go before they reached their father’s dimensions, though. After a few minutes, Nikolas got bored of their staring game, growled, and went to lie down by the fire. Lucas and Jacob where a tad more well-behaved than their brother, so they stayed put.
“You know what? I’m not talking to your three until you shift.”
She knelt beside the Christmas tree and started opening her presents. Max was in the kitchen, doing some angry breathwork to calm his nerves, but when he saw her so relaxed, he decided it might be better to follow her lead. After all, the boys were his sons. Staying angry at them would only worsen the situation. Max himself had never been good at taking lectures. The pups had inherited that from him.
“Oh, wow! I love this!” Avelyn wrapped the soft scarf around her. “Thank you, Jake,” she said, reading the card.
The wolf pup reluctantly stepped closer to her, intentionally avoiding his dad, just in case, and licked Avelyn across her right cheek. She scratched his ear lovingly, and he relaxed. He still wasn’t ready to shift, though. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, but he was waiting for either of his older brothers to make the first move. Both he and Luke looked up to Nick, but Jake looked up to Luke, too, although the boy wasn’t quite aware of it.
Max opened his present from Jake, too. It was a scarf, as well, albeit manlier. He chuckled and wrapped it around himself.
“Oh, we’re twins now,” Avelyn laughed.
The scarves had the same bluish color, except Avelyn’s came with a snowflake pattern.
Luke, the artist of the family, had painted two small winterscape paintings for them. In one of them, a huge wolf was carrying a red-haired woman on his back, and in the other one, three smaller wolves were playing in the snow. Both had the Schloss, or… what Luke understood the Schloss looked like, in the background.
Avelyn’s eyes started watering when she unwrapped her painting, then saw Max’s, too. Max himself felt a tug at his heart. The pups were almost forgiven. He motioned for Luke to get closer, and ruffled the short fur on his head.
“Okay, now for Nick’s presents,” said Avelyn.
The wolf pup didn’t even look at them. He was staring into the fire, making it a point to avoid his parents, as if they had done something wrong, not him. As usual, Nikolas had been the leader, the one who’d convinced his younger brothers it was a good idea to sneak out of the castle, shift, and then run through the night for one hour and a half. They had wrapped the boxes in cloth bundles they could easily carry in their mouths. It hadn’t been difficult for them to reach the cabin. They’d been there before. In truth, they had thought their parents would choose a place much farther away than Triberg Falls, and when they overheard their Aunt Josie talking about the cabin near the Schloss, they couldn’t have been happier. Their plan was achievable! They could run through heavy snow for around two hours, no problem. More than two hours would’ve been a real challenge.
“Aww…” Avelyn melted when she unwrapped her last gift, pulled out the music box, and opened it. “This is perfect!”
It was obvious it was handcrafted. As “Silent Night” played, a black wooden wolf danced in circles, its head thrown back, as if it was howling at the moon.
“Baby, you made this?”
Nick growled.
Avelyn sighed, shook her head, then went to sit with him by the fire. She placed the music box between them, and let it play its song over and over.
“This is beautiful. You’re very skilled and talented, Nikolas.”