"Alex!" Dawn squealed when she saw her Alpha and rushed forward for a hug. She was loving having what she considered a big brother looking out for her.

"Squirt's got a crush going on." Faith teased. "Did your Queen have to lay down the law with her too?"

Dawn felt grossed out by the thought of a crush on Alex and said so. "Ew, no. Gag!"

"I take it you haven't explained?" Joyce asked.

"It's not our secret to tell, Mrs. S." Alex told her. "We just brought Faith over to introduce you all to her. She just kinda jumped to a conclusion, that's all."

"So there's a secret regarding the Squirt?" Faith asked.

"Does she set off your demon senses?" Cordelia asked. "She doesn't set off Buffy's, but I'm curious if you'll react differently."

Faith considered the question carefully, obviously there was something concerning them about the kid, but what? "Nope, not a tingle." She assured them. "So why's it a question?"

"Last Halloween, someone my Watcher used to know used Magic to play his idea of joke." Buffy said grimly, it was still a painful subject. "If you bought a costume from him, you turned into that costume. He thought it was a joke. Kids turned into actual monsters, not demons, monsters. Mindless, usually imaginary creatures. I turned into a Lady Knight, I killed monsters to protect people."

"Who weren't actually monsters." Faith got it. "You didn't know."

"And no one blames me, but I have to live with it." Willow rubbed her arm sympathetically.

"And the Squirt?"

"My name is Dawn." Dawn informed her. "I went as a sassy werewolf. The Magic made me a real werewolf, a brand new kind and I got stuck. Now I'm a werewolf."

"Brand new kind? Diana told me about werewolves and how they're people with a virus and are a kind of shape shifter and not actually wolves or demons for that matter."

"I am, a wolf, I mean. But a human shaped one instead of a wolf, wolf, like them." She waved her arm at Alex and his pack. "Three vampires, real vampires, found me just after I transformed. They wanted to use me to get Buffy. I tore them apart."

"Woah! Three vamps? Best I've managed at one time was two."

"Same here." Buffy grimaced. "The vampires knew about Dawn because they'd been studying me. Including one vampire that I didn't even realize was a vampire. If it wasn't for Alex and them being able to smell the fact that he was a vampire, I might never have known. Anyway, after Dawn dealt with the vampires she thought she'd killed people of some sort and ran away. She was looking for other wolves. She's a cub, the kid version of a wolf and wolves take care of cubs, even if they're not their own cubs and she was acting on instinct at that point. She ended up in the woods Alex and his extended pack call their own. Alex and Cordelia found her and brought her to Cordelia's home. The extended pack offered her protection by adopting her into the pack. Alex and Cordelia made her part of their own personal pack, which makes her family as far as they're concerned."

"Oh, so more like a big brother then." Faith nodded.

"Which is nice." Alex said. "Jesse is like a brother and now we've got a baby sister. A smart and cute baby sis."

Dawn beamed and snuggled against his side.

"You grew again." Alex looked her over from head to foot. "You spent the whole summer in LA and just got back just before school started. Less then three months and you grew. Stop that, being cute is one thing, you keep growing and you're going to turn pretty and than boys are going to start noticing. Which is dangerous for their health."

"So Faith," Joyce said as everyone laughed at the expression on Dawn's face as she wrestled with conflicting feeling, boys? Not quite yet. Alex feeling protective? Nice. "Where are you staying?"

"I've got a place at a rent a week motel. It's temporary, I have to let Buffy's Watcher know I'm around and he'll let the Council know so they can assign me a new Watcher."

"Do you have any idea why they think they have authority over you?" Joyce asked. "Mr. Giles has never given us a straight answer on that question or given any evidence to support the claim and his attitude bothers us all."

"He never explained?"

"He told Cordy's dad it was privileged information." Alex told her.

"Diana, my Watcher, told me it's because it's to keep us from being used by unscrupulous governments or something like that. An independent organization that can gather and train potentials."

"But how do they get custody of all those girls?" Joyce demanded. "How can that be legal?"

"Diana explained that, she took me out of foster care. Anyway, for most of history and in large parts of the world still, girls weren't and aren't even really citizens, let alone having any real rights. Boys got the best food, the education. The Council finds Potentials, girls who could become the Slayer and gets custody of them so they can train them, but also so they can be taken care of. A Potential gets things most girl never get, good food, an education and given that most never activate, a home for life. They never have to worry about being married off to have one less mouth to feed, stuff like that."