Eris bursts into laughter while I sigh, though with a smile, spreading my legs apart again as I stand up.

'I don't think Arthur would survive that, so let's prevent it,' I say to the two teenagers before entering the enormous house through the back door.

When I received a letter from the realtor and two days later bought the massive three-story villa on the outskirts of Livas, exactly on the opposite side of my other house, there was still a lot of work to be done. The floors were moldy, the walls had dozens of colors from the moisture, and I won't even start on the roof.

With the help of dozens of bags of money and carpenters, a completely new house stood there three months later.

Here and there, the wooden floor creaks under my black heels. It was already an old building when I bought it, and despite the renovations, it still is. The white walls have moisture spots here and there that I just can't get rid of. It's drafty despite the light blue curtains, and when the wind blows hard, you can hear the many windows rattle.

With four rooms on the ground floor, each equipped with two bunk beds, and four double bedrooms upstairs, there is room for twenty children. With eighteen beds currently occupied by children ranging from six to eighteen years old, and from elf to werewolf, it's never quiet here.

Nor is it now.

'I'm going to kill you!' shouts eleven-year-old Silver at eleven-year-old Winston as she chases him around the large wooden kitchen table.

The dining room is the most central space in the house. In the middle and to the left stands a massive wooden dining table with wooden chairs covered in green upholstery. To the right of the table is a seating area with a dark green couch and several green or light blue chairs. In the middle of the couch and chairs is an old wooden coffee table. Both parts of the room are decorated with paintings on the walls and here and there items the children have made at school or work, such as wooden figurines, drawings, or books.

'Try it, idiot!' Winston shouts back as he keeps running ahead of Silver around the table. The two young werewolves, both from different packs, have never liked each other. When I bought Silver from her father three years ago to prevent her from being married off to a sixty-year-old man the next day, Winston was the first we encountered in the hallway. They glanced at each other for a few seconds and immediately decided to make each other's lives miserable. Whether it's Silver's alpha genes, the fact they come from different packs, or simply their clashing personalities, I still don't know.

What I do know is that Arthur, our cook, is on the verge of killing them both. The middle-aged man, dressed in his light gray suit, stands by the table with a knife in his hand, staring at the two werewolves. Anyone else walking in might panic at the sight, but if you know Arthur long enough, you know the man has the patience of a saint and is anything but aggressive.

'Enough!' My voice echoes through the bustling dining room. The two werewolves stop running immediately and look at me. Winston's aggressive stance disappears as soon as his brown eyes land on me. Silver, on the other hand, looks at me as if she's about to direct her aggression toward me.

'What's going on here?' I ask as I step further into the dining room.

'Winston laughed at me when I fell during recess today, and he won't say sorry,' Silver snaps at me.

'It was really funny, though,' Winston doesn't help the situation at all with this comment. That remark makes Silver pounce at him again, and they start running around the table once more.

A sigh escapes my lips until a loud growl echoes through the dining room. Winston immediately stops running and lowers his head toward his alpha. Silver stops abruptly too but remains standing with her head held high.

I briefly turn to Alvan, who stands behind me, and give a grateful smile to the eighteen-year-old alpha of the pack that both he and Winston come from. With the rightful alpha in the house, even though his pack was taken over in a coup by the former Beta a few years ago and he's not yet strong enough to reclaim it, keeping Winston in check is easier with Alvan around.

The blond boy smiles and then takes a seat on the green couch.

'Winston, laughing at someone when they fall isn't nice. It's mean. Would you want someone to laugh if you fell instead of helping you?' I ask the boy.

'Don't think I'm going to help him,' Silver snaps again in my direction. I focus my gaze on her.

'You would laugh at him too and leave him lying there?' I ask her.

'Of course.'

'Then why should he apologize?' Her brown eyes look at me confused.

'Because it's mean.' I cross my arms.

'So, you think it's mean that Winston laughs when you fall, and you think he should apologize, but you would do the exact same thing to him? How is that fair?' I ask her. She opens her mouth to respond but remains silent and looks away. Then I turn to Winston.

'The same goes for you. Would you like being laughed at when you fall?' He shakes his head.

'If you both agree that you wouldn't like being laughed at, why do you do it to someone else?' The two children look at each other and sigh deeply.

'Sorry,' Winston finally manages to mumble.

'Yeah, okay, but if you do it again, I'll really kill you,' is the best response I'm going to get from Silver.

'Fine.' With that, they both walk off and resume whatever they were doing before.

I walk over to my stressed-out cook, who's been watching everything unfold.

'Sorry, Arthur,' I say to the man who's been working here for five years.

'I could have worked in a manor for some noble family,' he sighs, running a hand through his gray hair.

'That would be far less fun,' I smile. The man looks at me with a sideways glance and a faint smile.

'Much quieter.'

'You'd get bored quickly,' I state, knowing it's true.

'Hey, old man, are you going to help or do I have to do everything myself?' Indy's voice calls from the kitchen. Arthur's younger helper also takes up quite a bit of his patience, but he wouldn't last a day without that elf.

'Maybe,' is the last thing Arthur says to me before heading back to the kitchen to finish dinner.