"Nessy Rex Whitepaw!" The elegantly dressed husky woman marched toward our table, her voice carrying that special maternal frequency designed to pierce teenage defenses. "Where have you been? We've been calling you for two days! You were supposed to come home for dinner after your book sale!"

Nessy drew inward beside me, her ears flattening against her head.

"H-hi Mom," she managed, her tail tucked firmly between her legs. "Hi Dad."

The tall male husky adjusted his glasses, his stern expression softening slightly at the sight of his daughter, but then his nostrils flared again. His eyes narrowed as they darted between me, Nessy, and the rest of our pack. "You…" he let out, staring at me.

Oh yeah, he knew what I did last night. I knew that a meeting with Nessy's parents was due, yet did not expect this sort of a complication to fall on me so soon, since things like 'relationship bonds' simply wouldn't be possible for a human to smell.

"Explain yourself, young lady," Nessy's mother demanded, crossing her arms. "We thought you were maybe at the temple last night. When you didn't call or come home, we called Sister Zheniya, but no one answered. In fact, not a single monk picked up! We even drove there this morning and found the temple completely empty, the front doors torn off the hinges! The entire place was ransacked! It was awful! I was worried sick!"

"And now we find you here, smelling like—" her father's voice fell to a scandalized snarl, "—like you've been participating in some kind of…"

He was probably going to say orgy, but couldn't manage to do so in public. Yep, this is my life now.

"Like... multiple individuals and... intimate activities?" Nessy's mother filled in with a hiss.

Nessy's younger siblings, who had been hanging back, pushed forward with identical grins of mischief.

"Ooooh, Nessy's in trouuuuble," sang the male husky teen, tail wagging.

"Nessy's got a boyfriend! And… three girlfriends!" added the husky girl as she sniffed us. She elbowed her brother, curly black and white tail wagging as she giggled furiously.

"Miles, Roxy, that's enough," their mother snapped, her stern-looking eyes still drilling a hole in Nessy and me.

I glanced across the table at Adelle. The cheetah was intensely focused on licking the inside edge of her extra-large water glass, as if the most fascinating thing in the world was happening there.

Ah, she was professionally avoiding this social situation.

Nessy's ears remained flattened, her paw squeezing mine under the table so hard I was losing circulation.

"I... um... these are my friends," she said, her voice small. "My new… Syn-pack."

"A Syn-pack?!" Nessy's father barked. "What?! Since when?! How long have you known this human?" He accusingly waved a hand at me. "Why haven't you…"

"A Syn-pack implies an absolute bond with a single human. And who are these... individuals?" Nessy's mother butted in. "And why do you smell like all of them?"

"Well, urmm, you see… it's a rather long story—" Nessy began, her voice breaking on the stern glares of her parents. "Actually… the reason why I came here was… erm..."

"Hi Mom!" Candace suddenly piped up with a cheerful wave.

The entire Whitepaw family froze. Nessy's father's jaw dropped open, his glasses sliding down his snout.

"I... what?" he stammered, looking between Candace and his wife with growing confusion and alarm. "Natalie, do you know this fox?"

"Where the Abyss would I know her from, Rex?" Natalie stared at Candace with narrowed eyes. She leaned forward, sniffing deeply, then gasped, her paws flying to her mouth. "No… it cannot be."

"What?" Rex demanded. "What cannot be?!"

Natalie's mouth opened and closed like she was a fish trying to survive outside of its natural watery habitat.

"Natalie," Nessy's father growled. "What's going on? Is there something you need to tell me? Do you have another daughter I don't know about?"

"What? No! Of course not, Rexbert!" Natalie exclaimed, aghast. "I've never seen this fox before in my life!"

"Then why is she calling you her mother?" Rex demanded.

"She... she just smells like Nessy, that's all!"

"Hi Dad," Candace grinned even wider.

"Would you stop that?" Nessy hissed.

"What?" Candace turned to the husky. "Your parents are lovely and a middle-class-wholesome fam unlike mine. Very caring. I think I'm going to keep them."

"You can't just… keep my parents," Nessy let out.

"Why not?" the fox asked. "This is how I roll. I bind things to things."

The twins, Miles and Roxy, were watching this exchange with identical expressions of delighted fascination, their heads swiveling back and forth like they were at a tennis match.

"This is better than Pawtube," Miles whispered loudly.

"Mom had a secret fox baby," Roxy giggled, earning her a mortified glare from her mother.

"Roxy! I did not have a secret fox baby!" Natalie hissed.

"This is ridiculous," Kristi muttered, pinching the bridge of her snout.

Adelle, meanwhile, had progressed to stuffing her entire fluffy face into her water glass cat-style, still steadfastly avoiding eye contact with anyone.

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I cleared my throat, deciding it was time to step in before this situation spiraled even further out of control.

"Mr. and Mrs. Whitepaw," I began, my voice as calm and respectful as I could manage, "there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this. Perhaps we could all sit down and discuss this like—"

"And who are you?" Rex cut me off, his eyes narrowing at me. "Why haven't I seen you in town before? Why do you smell like my daughter and these prads?"

"This is… my Syn-pack mate, Alec," Nessy interjected. "I've known him for… uhhh… twenty three, no… wait… forty years? Am I really that old? Slayer. Technically, I'm not, I guess… Uhhh…" Her train of thought had seemingly derailed itself trying to tabulate the exact number of years she's known me across two separate timelines.

"What are you even stammering about, Nessy?" Rex barked. "How could you have known this human for forty years?! You're eighteen!"

"Technically, yes, but also no," Candace interjected smoothly. She placed a silver-white paw on Nessy's arm. "Let me handle this, sweetie." She smiled at the bewildered husky parents. "You see, Mr. and Mrs. Whitepaw, your daughter and Alec here knew each other in a previous quantum probability continuum loop. They were soul-bonded across an infinite Astral divide, and another version of them spent a lifetime together until Nessy died in the Superstore dungeon. Thereafter, her soul was subsumed by Leviathan of the Wormwood Star singularity and divided by the Slayer, the reincarnation of whom is basically sitting right—"

"Candace," I interrupted, sensing this was going in the wrong direction entirely, "maybe I should explain."

"Please do," Rex said, nostrils flaring. "I don't have patience for fox tall tales."

"Sir, my name is Alec Foster. I'm new in town, transferred to Ferguson High. I met your daughter at school, and we..." I hesitated, searching for the right words.

"Had wild, passionate relations!" Candace finished helpfully.

The Whitepaw parents stared at her, Rex's glare intensifying.

"What my... packmate is trying to say," I intervened, shooting Candace a warning glance, "is that we've all been through some rather unusual... experiences together that have... created a strong bond."

"Unusual experiences?" Natalie repeated, her voice rising. "What kind of 'unusual experiences' result in my daughter smelling like she's in a relationship with four strangers?"

"We fought an eldritch parasite nest!" Candace announced proudly. "Together! As a team! That tends to bring people closer. Also we're not strangers. Again, this is a yes and no situational paradox."

"A what?" Rex adjusted his glasses.

"She means we helped the Ferguson city Administration clean up the Krishna temple," I clarified quickly. "There was a... spiritual contamination issue."

"In the monks' heads," Candace added helpfully. "Big mushroom parasites. Eating emotions. Very gross. We murdered them all."

"Rescued," I corrected. "We… rescued the monks. That's why they aren't at the temple."

"You… rescued the monks?" Rex blinked.

"By murderizing the fungal squid entity!" Candace beamed.

"So where are the Krishna monks now then?" Natalie asked.

"The monks got eaten by an unstoppable, crystal murder dragon tank from another dimension," Candace clarified, making chomping noises with her mouth.

Rex and Natalie exchanged horrified glances.

"The Krishna temple was actually a very dangerous dungeon," Nessy added. "A secret dungeon."

"Nessy," Rex growled, "are you... on something? Is that what this is about? Has someone given you Topaz?"

"What? No!" Nessy protested. "Come on dad, you'd smell that a mile away."

Rex sniffed the air and stared at Candace.

"I'm on Topaz!" Candace volunteered. "Or I was. But I'm cutting back. Alec is helping. With the power of love and amazing se—"

I clapped my hand over her mouth. "Could you please stop helping?"

She chomped on my finger, licking it. I drew my hand back glaring at her. She grinned foxily at me. I let out an exasperated huff. She winked.

Adelle finally emerged from her large water glass, droplets clinging to her orange fur. "Look," she growled, "your daughter is fine. She's part of our pack now. Deal with it."

"And who are you?" Rex barked.

"I'm Adelle, this delver pack's Berserker," the cheetah said, then pointed at Kristi who had her furiously blushing face buried in her violet claws. "That's Kristi, our Knight and Prima of the Strand Estate Syndicate that owns Citadel Ferguson. That's Candace Rhinehart, our loopy Binder, the Rhinehart Estate Prima. Your daughter is our lovely Bard. And this," she slapped my shoulder, "is our Alpha. Now can we please eat breakfast in peace without all of this shouting in public?"

"Alpha?" Rex's eyes narrowed. "Are you telling me this... human... is claiming dominion over my daughter?"

"No one has dominion over anyone," I started.

"He's my blood and soul-bonded mate!" Nessy blurted out.

The entire café seemed to fall silent, but that was probably just my imagination due to how tense and angry Nessy's parents looked.

"Your... what?" Natalie whispered, her paw clutching her chest.

"Blood and soul-bonded?" Rex repeated, his voice tense like a violin string about to snap. "A… full Nazarite binding?"

"You… You've eloped?! WITHOUT TELLING US?!" Nessy's mother exploded, making Adelle twitch and almost jump out of her seat.

"Kind of," Nessy nodded. "Except I performed it myself. With my blood. And Alec's."

"WHAT?!" Both parents shouted.

"Using my skill!" Candace raised her paw. "Since I was in Nessy at the time. I mean—not physically in her, my soul was, we did a soul fusion—it works without issues, by the way, because we're technically the same soul that's been fractalized in half by Alec after everyone died horribly."

"A fusion?!" Nessy's father looked like he was approaching a heart attack or an aneurysm.

Roxy tugged on her mother's sleeve. "Mom, what's a blood-soul-bond? Is it like marriage?"

"It's way more binding than marriage," Candace informed the teen. "It's like super-marriage. Mega-marriage. Marriage on steroids."

"This is the most exciting morning ever," Miles whispered to his sister.

The café manager, a portly otter, approached our table nervously. "Folks, is everything alright over here? We're getting some complaints about the... volume."

"Everything is fine," I assured him, while simultaneously trying to signal our waitress that we needed our food immediately, preferably through a dimensional portal that would allow us to escape this situation.

"No, everything is not fine!" Rex countered. "My daughter has apparently joined some kind of... A cult!"

"It's not a cult, it's a Dagaz pack," Candace corrected. "Completely different tax bracket."

"A what pack?" Natalie asked.

"Dagaz. The rune of transformation. The number eight sideways. The infinite loop." Candace traced the symbol in the air, silver fractals dancing from her claw tips. "We're all connected across time and space. Particularly in hotel rooms."

"That's it," Rex declared, grabbing Nessy by the arm. "You're coming home right now, young lady. We're getting you deprogrammed."

"Dad, no!" Nessy tried to pull away. "You don't understand—"

"I understand perfectly. These... people... have clearly manipulated you into a relationship! That's what cults do."

"Actually," Candace interjected, "if anyone's the cult leader here, it's your daughter. She's the one who planned all of this and divided her soul in the first place to… make me. That's why I qualify as your daughter, because technically I am Nessy, just one who grew up without you in my life. Technically all four of us qualify as your daughter if we're talking in soul-alignment terms."

Natalie choked.

"Nessy, what is she talking about?" She demanded, staring at Nessy.

"Mom, it's… really complicated, okay?" Nessy let out. "This is why I couldn't talk to you about this over the phone. There's just so much that happened and it's all so… insane sounding now that I think about it."

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