I wasn't quite sure how I had gotten stuck with decorating duty the day after Thanksgiving, but at nine in the morning, I found myself holding a giant pile of fake pine garland, following my Alpha's mate around like a pup while his actual pup watched us with fascination from her play pen. I wasn't upset about the decorating, really. It would be hypocritical of me to even pretend. I was the one who had introduced Jesse to Pinterest, after all. Even though he'd gone pin-crazy, he still had a ways to go before his boards caught up to mine. I was more grumbly about the fact that all the other men in the house seemed to have escaped it. I was in just as much of a post-Thanksgiving food hangover as anyone else, but this was Aspen's first Christmas. It needed to be perfect. 

"Do you think we'll be able to get the guys out of bed for tree hunting?" We placed the last of the garland and turned to a box of equally fake red berries. 

"I can guarantee Asher will be up," Jesse said with a gleeful smirk. "He is not missing his daughter's first Christmas tree." 

Sadly, even though Jesse had started us canvassing the property since August, there were no decent evergreen trees. They were there, but too big or too scraggly. We were making plans to start our own little Christmas tree plot for the future, though. It just didn't seem right, going to a stand and picking out something already cut down. We hadn't bothered with much beyond small gifts last year, we had been so busy working on Asher and Jesse's house.

That was our only option this year, though, and probably for a few more. Hopefully, our plot would be ready by the time Aspen really started building her long-term memories.

She yelled something at us in her incomprehensible baby jabber and Jesse turned with a smile. "What is it baby girl? You getting bored?"

Her face split into a giant, toothy grin, melting my heart. Jesse picked her up and bounced her on his hip. "You hungry?"

She shook her head no, which was the only answer she knew, so it wasn't exactly a reliable barometer. "Okay precious, let's get you some blueberries."

"I'll take her while you get that ready." I held out my hands and Aspen immediately tried to launch out of her dad's arms. He was well-practiced in her acrobatics, though, and had her righted in a moment.

"I guess that answers that." Jesse laughed.

"I'll drag in her high chair and she can eat while we finish up for the morning. Have to leave a few things for the other guys."

He handed Aspen to me and I pretended to stumble under her weight. "You must have gained five pounds overnight, little girl! I swear, she grows when we're not looking."

"No kidding!" Jesse called from the kitchen. "There's mornings I pick her up, and she just doesn't fit anymore, and I have to adjust how I'm used to carrying her."

Aspen buried her hands in my beard and laughed at its scratchiness. I tickled her face with it and she shrieked in delight.

"That's a good morning greeting," Asher said as he came down the stairs. Aspen turned at her father's voice and smiled, burying her face against my chest in happiness. "You look good. When are you going to find someone and start working on making some playmates for Aspen?"

"I'm just fine being the doting uncle," I said, trying to brush off his comment like I always did. It wasn't that I didn't want a family—a mate and babies—I did. But I doubted there was anyone out there who could put up with the true me, the beast buried under layers of control. The image of a willing and compliant fox flashed through my mind and I pushed it away. Again.

Asher took Aspen from me, tossing her up in the air, drawing an even larger smile from her, and the most beautiful rippling giggle.

"You better not be throwing my baby around," Jesse warned from the kitchen, appearing a moment later with Aspen's high chair and a bowl of blueberries. Asher and I shared sheepish looks while I took the highchair from Jesse and unfolded it so Asher could set her down. 

"You're just in time," Jesse said, his eyes glinting with a calculating gleam.

Asher didn't try to fight the inevitable, dropping a kiss on top of his mate's head. "At least let me get a cup of coffee first! Dallas, you made coffee, right?"

"Of course." Jesse's aversion to coffee was so strong, he wouldn't even make it for his mate, no matter how much the rest of us required it to function on a daily basis.

"Good man." He patted my shoulder as he passed me, and I couldn't help but realize how much he'd grown in the last year. He'd always been a leader, but ever since his pack had made him choose between them and his mate and we'd followed him, his team mates, now pack members, it was as if he'd finally started to fill out his own skin. I'd grown up in a den, unlike Kurt and Jesse, who'd been raised as loners. Until Asher hired me, I'd floated from job to job, not staying long enough to put down roots, always moving on when the beast started to latch on to the day-to-day annoyances of life, fighting him with change. I hadn't planned on joining a new den. Certainly not such a ragtag group of outcasts as this pack. Maybe it was because I had gotten older. Maybe I had more control of the beast inside. Or maybe it was simply that Asher was meant to be a leader, and the beast respected that. Whatever it was, I was grateful to have found this chosen family, to have found a place where I could find some rest.