“Now?” Gunner asked in his little, squeaky three-year-old voice.

“Son, you’ve asked that a dozen times, and the answer is still no. She ain’t ready yet. Girls take longer to—”

“I’m ready!” Ava called, bustling down the front porch stairs with the basket of warm, buttered blueberry muffins. “I was making breakfast for us.”

Trig, Colt, and Kurt stared at her like she’d grown a triple head.

“What?” she asked as she leaned down to give Gunner one. He was a bundle of excitement and currently touching every muffin, trying to pick one.

“You cooked for us,” Colton said suspiciously. “But you hate this time of year. I thought you were going to stand us up, but you made muffins like Suzy Homemaker. Who are you and what have you done with my sister?”

“In the traditions with Dad, I never made us muffins for breakfast. He was allergic to blueberries. We’re doing this one different.”

Trigger was grinning from ear to ear with an ax thrown over his shoulder, looking like a hot, tattooed Paul Bunyan. Kurt was frowning at his son, Gunner, who was still picking up muffins and putting them back to choose the one with the most blueberries, and Colton was now on his tiptoes, looking hopefully into the basket of pastries.

“Miss Ava, I have to tell you something!” Gunner yelled at an uncomfortable volume.

The boys all hunched their shoulders, and Ava thanked the heavens she didn’t have their sensitive hearing.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Mr. Colton teached me to draw a picture.”

“A picture of what?” Kurt asked.

Gunner pointed to a snow pile near the cabin. Squinting, Ava walked over to the drift and yep, that was a little yellow pecker he’d drawn while peeing. Fantastic.

“Goddammit, Colt,” Kurt groused.

“Okay, bright side,” Ava said, because she loved bright sides and could find them in just about any situation. “Gunner’s picture is way better than Colton’s big one,” she said, pointing to the shaky, giant pee-nis her stupid brother had drawn beside Gunner’s.

“Where are you going?” Trig yelled out.

Ava turned around just in time to see Gunner the Runner disappear into the trees. Kurt shoved Colton so hard he almost fell. “Never talk to my kid again, you delinquent asshole.” And then he went jogging after his son.

“What did I do?” Colt called after him.

Trig walked toward the tree line, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like “the cubs of this Clan are gonna be so screwed up.”

But she was human and didn’t have that good of hearing, so she was probably mistaken.

Munching on a muffin as she went, Ava made her way after the boys and hoped they waited for her near the tree line. She’d tried to keep up with them in the woods for about ten minutes on their first hike, then gave up. They all had speed and agility on their side, and long legs, even little Gunner, while she, the puny human, was clumsy and tripped every thirty seconds and got stuck in the snow drifts. She was training them to go slower and wait for her. So far it wasn’t going that well, but someday she would have them whooped into shape. Probably.

She ate three muffins before she found the rest of her clan. It wasn’t that hard because they were all yelling at each other about a hundred yards away from the house, each arguing they’d found the perfect tree.

“This one is tall and full,” Colt argued.

Looking nonplussed, Kurt cocked his head and insulted it. “It’s skinny as a bean pole.”

“Well, the cabin is kind of small,” Trig said, staring at the emaciated pine tree thoughtfully.

“I like that one!” Gunner said, pointing to a short, squatty tree with full branches. It would take up most of the living room with girth like that.

“That has my vote, too,” Kurt said, trying to snatch the ax from Trig’s hand.

Her mate yanked the handled blade away and pointed it at Ava. “She’s Queen of Christmas this year. Ava picks.”

“Well, I like that one,” she said, pointing to the winner. It was the most pitiful tree she’d ever seen, even more so than the one in the Gut Shot. The branches were bare in patches, making it look like it had mange, half the needles were brown, and the tree had taken damage to the top half of it at some point and was now growing at an angle.

“That is the saddest tree I’ve ever seen,” Kurt muttered.

“Don’t be mean to it! I think it’s cute. I’m going to name it Kevin.”

“Well Kevin is hideous.” Colt jammed his finger at it. “You’re gonna take the choice away from a little three-year-old kid for that?”

“I don’t think he minds,” Trig deadpanned. “Gunner’s too busy eating a snowball.”

Kurt looked down at his hungry son and snorted.

“Thirsty,” Gunner said around a bite of the white stuff.

“Why this one?” Colt asked.

“Because we used to spend hours searching for the perfect tree with Dad, and I want to do our traditions different. I want to pick the trees no one else would. It reminds me of us. Outcasts. None of this town would bet on us, but we’re still here, and I think we’re pretty cool.”

Colt blinked slowly. “You just compared us to an ugly tree.”

But Trig had already pulled the ax back to slam it into the trunk, and Ava just smiled. Of course, he would understand. Trig always had her back, just like she had his.

He made quick work of it and then took her hand as he started dragging it toward the house like it weighed nothing at all. Kurt and Gunner had a snowball fight while Colt complained about everything—the tree, the snowball that hit him in the ballsack, the cold weather, how Trigger’s horse had escaped again, about how he would never let a girl tell him which tree to chop down, and about how he’d eaten all the rest of the muffins and was still hungry—basically life in general. Her brother had never been much of a morning person.

And as for Ava…well, her nose might have been hurting from the chill in the air, but her cheeks hurt from smiling. She wouldn’t say it out loud to them, but she loved these crazies. And this morning had been fun. Humming under his breath, Trig wasn’t even showing any soreness from his Change, and he smiled every time he looked down at her, which was often. He kept looking at her lips, like he was just as enamored with her smile as she was with his.

And once they were in the house, they decorated that misshapen little tree with a box of old scuffed-up ornaments that Trig had dug out of the back of the bedroom closet. It was loud the whole time, mostly with arguing, and some with Gunner’s excited yelling. But Ava just absorbed it all. She didn’t mind the chaos this morning. Why? Because this was the first time she was decorating a tree in a decade, and it wasn’t horrible. It was fun because of the people she was with. Because of the Clan, her little make-shift family. Because of Trigger.

And oh, that tree wasn’t cute. Trig had to superglue a cardboard cut-out star to the crooked top because the old store-bought star-topper wouldn’t stay on and Colt had broken it in three pieces trying to force it anyway.

But so what? Kevin looked as good as a little outcast tree could look.

He was perfectly pathetic.

And somehow, someway, as she looked around at her little rag-tag crew…this place felt even more like home.