"It's not awkward," Alec assured him with a shake of his head. He knew he was awkward and, at times, standoffish but the whole of the party wasn't awkward. He didn't feel forced to talk with everyone and if he wanted to stand off to the side, no one was going to nag him about him. "If we were all here, my mother and father and sister, then it'd be awkward. Isabelle would be fine but my mom and dad are intimidating and...set in their views."

It was the kindest way to say that his mother and father wouldn't have been happy to be around mundanes and Downworlders. They would have made that distrust and even disdain known in both body language and words. They weren't shy people.

"They're worse than me where that's concerned," he confessed quietly, shaking his head. Alec wasn't going to apologize for the way he viewed the world but he would warn people against it, at least. He'd been raised to see people specifically, to judge them against what they were and it was very hard to break free of that rigid, regimented way of thinking.