Man-Wolf

End

McCall House, Beacon Hills Preserve
Kira's POV

"カイリー、お弁当を詰めるのを忘れないでください。 (Kylie, don't forget to pack your lunch.)" I reminded Kylie after she was done with breakfast.

"お母さん、私はそれを詰めています。 (Mom, I'm packing it.)" She replied and did as she said.

"좋은 아침! (Good morning!)" Scott entered the room with a greeting and a smile and we echoed his greeting while he proceeded to kiss everyone on the forehead, adding chased kisses for Malia and me, before bouncing towards the fruit basket and taking two bananas. "How is everyone?"

While the children answered, I noticed that Malia was looking at Scott as though he was a mystery and considering that she gave me the signal that let me know that he had another nightmare about Liam, I understood why she was a little puzzled by the spring in his steps.

Scott wasn't the only one with nightmares, far from it because we had our own once in a while about the War and what we did and didn't do in it. So each of us had to put up a show sometimes for Kaminari, Lunar and Kylie's sake.

Thankfully the show was supported by my bedroom as well as Malia's and Scott's being soundproofed. So the children didn't have reason to believe something was wrong or hear things they weren't supposed to hear.

We did let them know, however, that we sometimes have nightmares. One of the reasons we did that being that my foxfire sometimes acted out during tense nightmares while Malia and Scott could become violent in their sleep and react equally violent upon first waking up.

But Scott seemed genuinely upbeat right now, even to Malia and me, and we could read Scott's body language like no other.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Scott asked upon noticing our looks.

"What changed since I left your bedroom?" Malia asked in response.

"Nothing." He replied with a confused look.

"Really?" I asked, probably adding to his confusion.

"What's going on?" Scott inquired.

"Your mood just received an upgrade," Malia answered.

"Oh. My trip to Mystic Falls might be a little more interesting than I first thought." Scott said between bites of his breakfast.

"How interesting?"

"Let's just say the Association might open an office in Mystic Falls," Scott responded with a cryptic answer and then turned his attention towards the children. "Are you ready?"

"We still have ten minutes, dad," Lunar replied.

"I know, Lulu. I need to meet with your grandfather Ken."

"Why don't you leave us behind, dad? We can take my car." Kaminari suggested hopefully.

"Nice try but that's not happening, Kami. You're still grounded."

"Come on, dad. We've been grounded for two weeks." Lunar responded.

"More like thirteen days. You're one day short." Scott corrected. "And you're lucky I grounded you for only two weeks."

They were lucky. Scott wanted to ground them for months with minimum privileges for skipping school and leaving town without their bodyguards but I advocated for them without their knowledge on the way home from school.

After Kaminari and Lunar were kidnapped by Monroe's army and my mother was killed while trying to prevent the kidnapping and Scott killed Liam to save them, Scott and I and the Pack and the Association took their (and every child of our members) safety very seriously.

Their safety was our top priority and we made Beacon Hills as safe a city could be as possible and the fact that its people knew about the existence of the supernatural and our place in the hierarchy made it easier and gave us ears and eyes everywhere.

But that was the thing.

In more ways than one, Beacon County was our kingdom and Beacon Hills was our capital city and Kaminari, Kylie and Lunar were the Prince, the Princess and the Crown Princess, respectively. Eyes were always on them.

People knew the exact moment Kaminari and Lunar left Beacon Hills' boundary and those people included people who were not fond of us (Malia, Scott and I, the Pack and the Association), enemies we made and acquired over the years, and considering they were never seen outside the city without their bodyguards and what happened...

Long story short, Kaminari and Lunar exposed themselves to our greatest fear and Scott wanted to ensure that they never considered doing that again but I had to remind him that they were children, teenagers at that and that they, without a doubt, felt trapped and under pressure and wanted some freedom.

Compared to what we did and what our parents allowed us to do in our teenage years and early twenties, Kaminari and Lunar were tamed and we trained them to properly defend themselves against anyone and any being and any number of opponents to at least buy themselves some time to receive support or make a run for it.

As adults and most importantly, parents, we questioned our parents' methods of raising us and knew that we could never raise our children, in the same manner, they raised us but there was something positive and building to be said about their parenting methods.

The freedom they gave us allowed us to become who we were today and without it, we wouldn't have what we had, we wouldn't be who we were.

I got Scott to realize this fact and ease up on our children and think about giving them more freedom to grow and become who they want to, who they discover, they just didn't know that yet.

Scott was just relishing his last moments as a reasonably overprotective father like I enjoyed my last two weeks as an equally reasonably overprotective mother.

It was difficult but we had to give them more room to grow before they started truly rebelling and pushing their luck too far in pursuit of freedom.

The fact that they were around the age that I was introduced to the supernatural side of things helped me let Kaminari and Lunar grow a little because it was the same age my mother let me grow and my father supported my journey to self-discovery, going as far as inviting a certain boy to dinner.

As this thought crossed my mind, I smiled at the memory while Kaminari, Kylie and Lunar said their byes and left with their father who was going to return home to a surprise Malia and I had planned for him before his trip to Mystic Falls and we went to work.