A/N: Okay, first. Sorry for the massive delay on this chapter. Life dealt me a fucking shit hand. As I have mentioned in previous author's notes, I lost my home and everything I owned in the February floods here in Australia. Things are beginning to settle down now and hopefully I will start updating with some regularity.

It was the Monday of the last week of school when Alice came dancing across the cafeteria. "I just had the best idea!" Alice announced as she folded herself onto the chair across from me with grace. And wasn't that the most terrifying sentence ever uttered in the English language?

I locked eyes with my human friends, who seemed almost as wary as I was by Alice's announcement. "What's that?" Angela eventually spoke up, never the one to be seen as rude or impolite. Bless her.

"A slumber party!" Alice trilled.

My first instinct was to immediately retort: You don't sleep. Luckily I managed to bite back my witty remark and instead said, "Why?" The word came out sarcastically scathing, but to be fair, I couldn't fathom Alice's reasoning.

"Well, this is our last week of senior year, and then we have prom on Saturday. Soooo…" Alice grinned impishly, "I was thinking that everyone could come over to my house on Friday night, we have the slumber party of the century," knowing Alice she probably meant that literally, "and then we can all get ready for prom together on Saturday." Alice finished laying out her plan with a smile.

I cocked my head at her with a strange, confused frown. "Alice, it wont take us all day to get ready for prom." I pointed out slowly.

"Yes, it will." Jess and Alice spoke at the same time in equal parts confidence of their statement and scorn for my lack of understanding of the finer points of their fancy femininity.

I raised a doubtful eyebrow at them and was about to voice said doubt when Edward spoke up from beside me. "Best not to argue with them, love." He murmured softly in my ear, his arm that he had curved around my waist tightened infinitesimally. I could feel his playful smirk against the shell of my ear as he breathed the words to me, whatever plans that were running through the minds of the vampire/human duo of dread seemed to amuse him greatly. Which could only mean bad things for me. "You know Alice always get her way, and with Jessica with her well… Lord help you." Edward chuckled darkly.

Edward's teasing had gone unnoticed by our table-mates, who were eagerly discussing the very important slumber party plans. "… and Carlisle and Esme are going away for the weekend for a couples retreat," Alice continued to ramble. I knew that 'couples retreat' was code for hunting and most likely some time alone away from a house filled with supernatural teenagers. Time that I didn't want to think about. Your parents having dirty woodland sex? Gross. "So we could even have an after party at our house!" Alice continued gleefully.

Jess' eyes flickered nervously to me before returning to Alice. "You sure its a good idea to discuss the plans for a legally questionable after-party in front of the Chief's daughter?" She hissed under her breath, and I didn't have to be a mind reader to know that thoughts of underage drinking and general debauchery were dancing in her head.

I rolled my eyes. "Firstly, I'm not gonna snitch. Secondly, I don't even think my dad will care as long as no one ends up pregnant or in the hospital." Both Jessica and Angela seemed surprised by my declaration, but I wasn't going to elaborate further. Partly because I didn't want to, but mainly because I didn't know how to.

How could I explain that my dad was actually a werewolf pushing 800, and most likely didn't care about what a bunch of small town teens got up to as long as it didn't result in any extra paperwork for him? It wasn't like Charlie took the job as Chief of Police because he was a big believer in law and order, it was more about having mostly unfettered access to government data-bases and having the ability to covertly cover up any evidence of his fellow lycans should they pop-up in said government data-bases. Charlie had dropped little nuggets of knowledge like that over the last few months, just casually educating me on the finer points of the hidden network of werewolves across North America. Apparently, a large majority of the remaining werewolves in the world had migrated to the New World at the turn of the century; when Charlie had told me this he hadn't explicitly said which century, but I highly doubted it was any of the most recent ones.

After losing their homes, land, and families the werewolf packs of Europe had barely survived the Great Massacre. Vampires scoured the continent for any signs of the Children of The Moon – after the initial onslaught the Three Kings had put a bounty out on all werewolves, promising riches and glory to any vampire who could deliver a Lycan head. Luckily, the survivors were a scrappy bunch, and most vampires who sought them out never made the return trip to Volterra. The way Charlie tells it, eventually the hunt died down. It wasn't as if the Volturi had given up, but more like they had believed the war to be won, and any surviving werewolves weren't enough of a threat to warrant them anymore attention. But what truly spurred the werewolf migration was the Siberian Uprising. Over the Summer Charlie had shared more of our history with me, and it helped to put some things in perspective; mainly why Charlie never attempted to rebuild his pack.

A few hundred years had passed since the Great Massacre, and the remnants of the packs of Russia had banded together. Slowly they restored their numbers, having cubs and turning any human willing to join the cause. Unfortunately, before they were ready to face the wrath of the Volturi, they were discovered by a wayward vampire, who immediately reported the pack to the Kings. Their retribution was swift and vicious, and left no survivors. It also ignited a renewed blood lust for werewolf pelts. So, when the news of a New World reached the eager ears of Renaissance Europe, many werewolves were happy to make the move. They could begin to build lives, far away from the reach of the blood thirsty Volturi, still hidden, but more free than they had been in centuries. And as the years past and boarders were drawn and redrawn, the Wolves of North America made sure to stay connected. They would never place themselves in public positions of power, but would subtly situate themselves within human society to ensure their collective safety. These days that meant being Chief of Police in a nowhere town, or a Sheriff's Deputy in Georgia, or a back-room NSA analyst.

The point being, I couldn't begin to explain to my human friends why my Dad, the straight laced, no nonsense Chief of Police wouldn't care about an underage kegger, without sounding like a deranged lunatic.

As it stood, they were still looking at me like I was just a little bit crazy. "What?" I demanded.

"Your dad, the cop, wont care if we throw a party at the Cullen's house. A party that will have the entire senior year in attendance, as well as alcohol and probably drugs?" Jessica snarked.

"Drugs?" Angela repeated weakly, as if the idea unsettled her, but she didn't offer any other objections.

I felt Edward's long fingers gently squeeze against my side, a gentle warning, and a reminder of the thin line I was walking. "Well…. Charlie's already put in his resignation so like…. He's barely even a cop anymore."

"I don't think that's how that works." Jess replied, but a subtle smirk was beginning to curl her lips so I knew I had won.

XxXx

"You don't sleep." Carlisle pointed out kindly.

"That is so not the point!" Alice whined as she crossed her arms with a pout.

"Then what, pray tell, is the point of a slumber party?" Carlisle's warm smile was affectionate, but I could see a subtle hint of teasing there as well.

Alice turned to me, amber eyes wide and pleading. "Don't look at me like that, this is all you." I scoffed as I raised both hands up in mock surrender, as if I could physically distance myself from Alice's harebrained scheme.

Alice huffed dramatically and turned back to Carlisle, who was sitting calmly behind his desk meticulously filling out paper work with a fancy fountain pen. As soon as we had arrived at the Cullen house, Alice had physically dragged me into Carlisle's study. Apparently, after all her exhaustive talk at lunch about her grand slumber party, she had neglected to mention that Carlisle had yet to agree to any of it. Alice assured me on the drive home that it was just a formality, that Carlisle wouldn't deny her her fun, that all we had to do was go to Carlisle and fill him in on our weekend plans – the way Alice kept using words like we and our worried me – and it all seemed fine, in theory. The reality left much to be desired. I blamed the bizarre coven dynamics. Carlisle was the coven head, the leader, the decision maker, their creator, but he was also their… dad.

Which was strange.

One on one, each of the Cullen's more or less acted their age, or at least as much as a group of immortal vampires could. But put a few of them in a room together and suddenly Alice wasn't a hundred-and-twenty year old vampire who could see the future, she was just a demanding (and a little bit whiny) teenager. And just as suddenly, Carlisle wasn't a three-hundred-and-forty year old vampire with the worlds best track record, but rather a long suffering father of five, a man who loved his kids but was also very done. Likewise, put any of the 'kids' together and each of them would effortlessly fall into their predetermined roll. It was weird, but also strangely comforting. Not to mention amusing.

It wasn't like it was fake, or some sort of elaborate production. In fact, as I watched them interact with each other, I had slowly begun to suspect that none of them were doing it on purpose, if they were aware they were doing it at all.

Carlisle shuffled his papers into a neat pile, tapping them briskly on his desk before sliding them into a folder. He then turned his attention to his daughter who was standing before him with her arms crossed over her chest defiantly. Carlisle gave her a look as if to say 'well?'

Alice heaved out another dramatic sigh. "The point is to hang out in our pyjamas, watch romantic movies, paint our nails, talk about boys, and eat a bunch of junk food!" Alice gestured dramatically as she listed out the activities of a stereotypical slumber party with ease, as if she had painstakingly researched the topic by watching dozens of shitty 90's movies. Actually, knowing Alice that's probably exactly what she had done. I briefly wondered that if I went to her room and snooped around if I would find a journal filled with her notes on the subject.

"Alice, sweetheart… you don't eat." Carlisle replied smoothly, the warm smile still on his face but now there was a mischievous glint in his eye and I could tell that he was just teasing her now.

"Dad!" Alice whined and stomped her foot like an impetuous toddler having a tantrum. I quickly brought a hand to my mouth in an attempt to smother the snorting chuckle that her antics had caused.

Carlisle chuckled fondly. "Of course you can have your slumber party." He droned playfully.

"And the after-party?" Alice nudged excitedly, almost bouncing on the balls of her feet.

"Oh, I suppose so." Carlisle drawled plainly, as if granting Alice's request was some big inconvenience, but his growing smile told a different story. Carlisle wrangled his expression into something resembling a stern father. "But you are in charge of human-proofing the house."

"Yes! Thank you!" Alice squealed in delight before rushing around Carlisle's desk to pull him into a hug.

Carlisle laughed jovially and patted Alice's back affectionately before she pulled away and turned leave, pulling me along beside her. "Human-proof the house?" I repeated in confusion.

Alice's light laugh bordered on a giggle as she replied. "Yeah, I mean could you imagine the sort of trouble a human could get into if they got into Carlisle's office?"

"What's wrong with Carlisle's office?" I quizzed as I followed Alice down the hall towards the staircase. I was honestly hard-pressed to find fault with Carlisle's office, especially since he had removed that atrocious painting of himself standing with the Three Kings. No one had even mentioned it to him, after I had told my story to Edward – and by extension the rest of the Cullen's – the next time I had entered his office, the wall behind his desk had been startlingly blank.

Alice paused, twisting on the stairs to look at me a look of utter bemusement. "Sometimes I forget how different you are from the humans." She quipped, her voice had dropped in pitch and had become unexpectedly fond.

That just added to my confusion. "And what's that supposed to mean?" I grumbled sullenly, I thought I did a pretty good job at pretending to be human. Alice smiled and patted my cheek softly before turning and continuing down the stairs.

"I didn't mean it like that." She assured me when we reached the ground floor. I followed Alice into the front sitting room – the parlour, as Esme called it – and allowed her to pull me down onto my favourite sofa, the soft dark-blue tuxedo sofa that Esme had filled with an overabundance of fluffy throw pillows. I tucked my feet up under me and instinctively grabbed one of the throw pillows, the fluffy faux fur was so soft, and I could still smell a hint of Esme's warm scent that mingled with the smell of detergent where she had placed her hands to fluff the cushion, I hugged it to my chest as I made myself comfortable. Alice watched me settle myself with a fond smile before she continued her explanation. "I just mean, that aside from all your physical differences, you've got all the…."Alice paused for a moment as she tried to find the right word, she huffed out an annoyed sigh as if she was displeased with her word choice. "Mental differences." I didn't know what to say to that, so I just raised a questioning eyebrow at her and inclined my head slightly, urging her to continue her explanation. Alice pouted lightly, "Humans are just so… nosy." The word held a surprising level of disdain, well… surprising coming from Alice, the sentiment was something I would expect from Rosalie, or even Jasper, but not so much from Alice. "Well… maybe that's not fair." Alice relented with a sigh as she leaned back into the sofa and copied my movement of hugging a fluffy throw pillow to her chest as she spoke. "They are just… curious, I suppose. Its the number one reason we have to move as often as we do, human curiosity. And if that curiosity lead them into Carlisle's office? With all his books, all his handwritten notes on vampire vs human anatomy? It would be a disaster. Or if they snooped in Edward's room? That boy had diaries going back to the 20's."

"They are not diaries, they are journals." Edward's sneered at his sister from the entryway. I snickered at his offended expression as he entered the room. "Alice does have a point though, humans are very curious by nature. It's inevitable that a few of them will go snooping, so it's best to lock away anything that is… incriminating."

"If you say so." I shrugged noncommittally in Edward's direction. I was just excited to attend my first ever slumber party, and then go to my senior prom, and then graduate – fuck the next week and a half was going to be busy. I couldn't wait.