N.J climbed into my car and studied the various boxes on my backseat warily while plugging himself in with his seatbelt. I hadn't told him what my plan for today was and it was safe to say he didn't trust my mysterious activity.

"Care to explain?" N.J gestured to the boxes.

"We're moving across the country!" I exclaimed, pulling off before he had a chance to react.

"Thank god. I've been waiting for the day you'd ask me to elope together." N.J batted his eyelashes at me, "Hopefully it's coastal. Beach babes."

I shook my head at him, focusing on the road ahead. It was only a short drive, but with all of the boxes we needed it was easier to drive than to walk the distance. Even as two wolves, all those boxes would be too heavy to lug across the dense woods.

N.J wouldn't shut up with his questions as we drove, however, so I was eternally grateful that the drive wasn't long. Pulling up in front of Oscar and Ava's house seemed to confuse him further. I refused to listen to his endless questions as I climbed out of the car and began to unload the boxes. N.J didn't hesitate to open one and when he saw the paint cans inside, his brow creased with further confusion.

"What are you planning?" N.J asked, pulling one of the cans, a sage green one, out of the cardboard box that was near falling apart from the sheer weight of the paint cans.

"Keep it down, it's a surprise. I'll tell you inside." I rolled my eyes, taking the box with the paint cans from him.

He nodded and rushed inside, obviously thinking the faster he moved inside the quicker he could know. The kid was impatient. I lugged the boxes inside by myself, bitter that he hadn't offered to help. Just then, it was as if he realised, he came running back outside and took a box before running back inside equally as quick.

"Come on!" He yelled, "You move so slow, gramps."

I laughed at that, quickening my pace despite myself. I carried the box inside and straight up the old wooden staircase at the back of the house, winding up to a small box bedroom. I set the boxes down in the centre of the room and turned to N.J, who was carrying the second box.

"We're painting the baby room as a surprise for Ava's baby shower." I grinned, "I didn't invite Mila because she's shit at painting, but Oscar gave us permission to do what we like with the walls."

"We're doing a mural?" N.J grinned, "That's so cool."

I nodded, feeling pretty proud of the idea. N.J and I were both pretty artistic, so I thought it would be a cool thing to surprise Ava with. I wanted to give her something more sentimental than just some baby grows, I suppose. The boxes contained some green, black and white paints as well as red, yellow and blue so that we could mix the paints to get different shades and such.

"I was thinking, since it's going to be a half-wolf, half-human baby that it would be cool to make the nursery feel as welcoming to the pack as possible. We live in the middle of the woods, and the woods are beautiful, so why not make it a cute woodsy scene?" Explaining my thought process came out more soppy than I had expected.

"See, this is why she chose you as the god-father." N.J grinned, grabbing a paint tin and a screwdriver to pry the top off.

"Stop getting ahead of yourself." I chuckled, "We need to lay down the tarps first. We can't leave this place looking worse than when we came in."

N.J reluctantly set the screwdriver down and helped me lay out the floor protection, taping it to the skirting boards to keep them clean too. Oscar had kindly moved all of the furniture out of the room for the day so that we could decorate. Ava would kill us if we got paint all over her house.

I let N.J crack on with opening the cans of paint and mixing the colours while I set about drawing a rough-stencil of the design we would be painting on the biggest wall in the room with a pencil. I had brought along the canvas that I had painted the other week, the one of the view from the top of the pack house, so I was using that as a reference for the design.

It was good that I had N.J because he was a pro at colour matching my little design, and we ended up with a set of paints to work with that very closely matched my painting, despite it being on a much larger scale with completely different paints. The thought that the baby would get to fall asleep to that view of the sunset over the woods when it finally got here was quite touching, to be completely truthful.

Once I was finally happy with the outline, which took a lot of rubbing out and redrawing, we started with our base colours. The sunset included a lot of pinks, oranges and yellows, so N.J worked with those colours while I handled the greens of the trees down at the bottom of the mural. We were actually working pretty effectively together and N.J had even put some music on so that we had a bit of entertainment while we worked.

Oscar had taken Ava out for the day to get her out of our way to keep it a surprise, so we had a limited time slot, but we were moving pretty fast with it. Now that the base colours were down we could finally sit down to have a drink and something to eat while it dried a bit. I had set up a little heater in front of the wall in the hopes of speeding it up and luckily it seemed to be working well.

"It's gonna be a sad day when the kid grows up and decides he wants a more grown up bedroom." N.J grinned, looking at the work we had already done.

"We'll be called back in to paint the walls jet-black and hang band posters."

N.J pouted, playing with an odd patch of paint that had splattered across his forearm.

"I want my room to look like this." N.J's eyes flickered across the wall, "And it's not even finished yet."

"It's gonna look amazing when it's done." I agreed, cracking open a can of cola.

It wasn't long before we were back to work, painting on top of the base layer now that it had dried. If we were anywhere else, N.J would have almost certainly thrown paint at me by now, but he wouldn't dare mess up the babies present. That was a relief for the blonde streak in my hair, which had been stained by paint he had thrown at me a few times in the past.

It was nearing nightfall by the time we were done. Mila had dropped by with takeout for us all at lunchtime, but N.J was a growing, dramatic boy and was now claiming that he'd succumb to death by starvation if he didn't get dinner soon. I told him I'd meet him back at the pack house and set about cleaning up the room so it didn't look like a bomb had gone off while we had been painting.

I packed all of the paint tins away into the boxes before pulling up the tarp from the floor, exposing the dark-wood flooring underneath. The mural looked really good in here, especially after I moved in all of the furniture that Oscar had taken out of the room to save it from the hurricane of paint he expected N.J to be.

I pushed the crib against the bay window and even made it up, putting the sheets on and laying down the blanket they had bought across the bed of the crib. I hung the curtains next, sage green in colour, and shimmied the dresser against the other wall, leaving the mural wall free and on display in all its glory.

It fit really well in here, matching the sage green in other parts of the room and the dark-wood bark matched the floors and furniture, really bringing everything together. I placed a teddy on the dresser that I had brought with me and smiled at the room. It looked really good.

I took some photos to show Mila and N.J the final result and grabbed the now-less-heavy boxes, carrying them downstairs and out of the house. Switching my car engine on, I let Oscar know the house was now vacant and to keep her out of that room until the baby shower.

As I drove towards the pack house I decided that I would go to the shops and pick up some snacks for Mila, N.J and I. We had decided to stay in tomorrow night instead of going to the club and I was feeling pretty grateful that they were adapting to my decision to reign it in. They could just go to the club without me, but they were changing things up to include me. It felt nice.

Once I was out of the pack walls, the road switched to a considerably less well-maintained concrete path to a dirt one through the trees. With all the rain, my tires kept spinning slightly. I made a mental note to mention it in the next pack meeting and geared down to get a little more control over my speed.

It wasn't long before I was out on the main road, driving towards the only store that would be open this late in our small town. I'd usually bring the other two on drives like this, especially after dark, because Mila loves to drive around singing to music in my car. I wanted to surprise them, however, with treats for tomorrow.

Parking my car in the small carpark attached to the side of the old building, I swung my door closed and slid my car keys into my pocket. Shopping this late was a lot of fun to me because the store was quiet and still. The only other person that seemed to be in the store was the teen girl, probably N.J's age, chewing gum obnoxiously behind the till.

Grabbing my shopping basket, I set about musing through the shelves trying to decide what to get. Since I had a lot of extra space in my new room at the pack house, I could get some decorations and stuff too if I fancied it. Strolling around the empty aisles of the small, general store I let my eyes trail across everything on the shelves and took my time deciding what N.J and Mila would like, deciding on some brightly coloured, artificially blue things for N.J and some tropical, coconut-flavoured things for Mila.

Some fumbling happened across the store, but I presumed it was that chewing-gum girl stacking the shelves or something. A strange smell was in the air and I was conscious that it had a hint of pine and wild lilies mixed into the odour, which was the smell pack members held. It also had a smell of what I could only presume to be cologne, something sweet like chocolate and soft lavender.

It was a strange smell, and the faint pack smell being mixed in was rather suspicious to me. I knew a few of the pack members had worked here, or took weekend shifts here, but it wasn't strong enough to be an actual pack member. I had never smelt the pack scent be so weak it could easily go undetected before. 

Being so distracted by the smell, I realised I had been stood in the centre of the confectionary aisle for a while, just trying to decipher the scent. Icarus was on edge with the scent, which I took as a bad sign. The lavender smell seemed very familiar, but this scent was new.

I quickly finished up my shopping, just in case, and headed towards the bubblegum girl to checkout. She smelt entirely different to the other scent, so that was her ruled out, but the scent was getting stronger as the clanging sound grew louder. The other worker, whoever they were, was the one who had the smell.

It was irritating me that I couldn't figure out why somebody would have a pack scent that weak when the girl waved the card machine in front of me, waiting impatiently for me to tap my card. I did so quickly, my eyes darting over my shoulder every five-or-so seconds to try and catch sight of who was working here. Asking the girl would probably come across a little creepy.

Whatever it was, it was driving Icarus up the wall. 

"Thanks." I nodded to the girl, grabbing my shopping bag and heading for the exit.

As soon as I got back home, I knew that I was going to have to hit the library in Xavier's office for answers. I had lived in the pack for my entire life, and had met many other wolves from other packs, and yet I had never smelt that happening.

Luckily for me, Xavier was lingering around the bookshelves when I let myself into his office. He nodded to me and I returned the gesture, bowing my head slightly to show respect before approaching him.

"Xavier, may I ask you a few questions?" I started with.

"Of course." He slid the book he was holding back into its spot before gesturing to the sofas by the unlit fireplace, taking a seat himself.

"I came across a scent today. I don't know who it belongs to, but it smelt sort of like chocolates, lavender and a diluted pack smell? It was as if you took a pack members scent and dampened it to the point that it was barely noticeable. Very subtle, but it was definitely there. Do you know why that could happen?"

Xavier hummed, taking a moment to consider what I was telling him. He then stood up, picking up a leather bound book from one of the shelves at the back of his office that contained a lot of the history books. As he sat back down, he flicked through the pages, obviously trying to find a section that he remembered reading something useful in.

His eyes flitted over a page before he passed the book to me, pointing at a passage that read:

'A human may carry a packs scent for a number of reasons, albeit, it is a very rare occurrence. For instance, if a child is born with part-shifter ancestry then they may carry a diluted scent of the pack. It is also possible that they will be born with no pack scent, or even a normal strength scent depending on the genetic balance of the child.'

"I thought that we didn't have any part-human members yet." I frowned.

"Keep reading." Xavier prompted me, pointing to the next chapter.

'It is also possible that the dilution of pack-scent could arise from a member leaving the pack and joining another, or becoming a rogue. This is usually a temporary scent, akin to their pack scent fading away as they develop a new scent. It will eventually be replaced by either their new packs scent or the rogue smell. Most people will not experience this lingering of pack-scent, but it is a phenomenon that may occur if the person is reluctant to leave.

'The final event in which this may occur is the most unlikely to bring this type of scent to fruition, but has been recorded to have happened between non-human and human mates. In the rare instance that a wolf may have relations with a non-human before they are aware that they are mated, this scent may arise as a marker that the human has been through the mating ritual despite not yet being of age to mate. It works as a practical scent marker for other wolves, to keep them at bay and warn others that this human is to be mated to a wolf upon the age marker being reached.'

The words were confusing to me and I looked up at Xavier with an eyebrow raised, trying to figure out what the hell it meant.

"See, this is why we tell you kids that it's better to wait until you meet your mate to start engaging with all of that sexual stuff." Xavier seemed smug, "It's basically saying that if you have sex when you're underage, before you're aware that you're mates, that this can happen. It's like you've done the mating thing backwards; most people find out they're mates, then perform the mating ritual, but in this case they've already sealed the mate bond before the age marker for mates is reached so the scent is there."

I nodded, understanding a little. From reading the diaries, I knew that Xavier had waited, but that hadn't been the case for Cameron, so the smugness was a little hypocritical. It was also not the case for Gracie and Noah, but I wasn't going to be pointing this out to him, obviously.

"So it could essentially be any of those reasons?" I hummed, thinking back to the lingering scent in the grocery store.

"Well, yes, but I doubt it's the first one unless Ava has given birth early and left it in a grocery store."

That was true.

"Thanks, Xavier."

"You're very welcome. I like an inquisitive brain." Xavier grinned, "Take the book with you, it's quite helpful. It goes into a lot of depth into the variations and such, if you're interested."

I took the book, thanking him once again, before heading to my room. I could hear drumming coming from N.J's room and shook my head, glancing at the time. It was way too late for him to be practicing something that loud.

Creeping down the hallway, I slipped into my room and placed the bag of treats I got them on the floor, flipping back to that page in the book we were looking at. Xavier was right about it being useful, it was going into a lot of detail about the variations. The way that Icarus was alert and on-edge in the grocery store indicated to me that it may be something a little more sinister, so my gut was telling me to read a little more into the rogue section.

'If a child is born to a rogue and that child wishes to belong to the pack, then they may begin to develop the scent of the pack.'

I guess I'll have to investigate with Mila and N.J.