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Reese sat on his bed staring into space when Adam knocked softly and entered the room.

"Hey, how you doing?" Adam asked, concern etched into his face.

"I've been better," Reese answered with a wry smile. "I was sort of expecting it, I knew I didn't really have a chance of getting her back, but Noah was still hoping. He tried over and over to call to her wolf, but her wolf never responded at all. Not a whisper, not a feeling, nothing, no emotion, absolute silence. If I hadn't seen her shift with my own eyes I would have thought she didn't even have a wolf."

"At least it's over," Adam said. "That's about the best I can come up with right now, your dad should be back soon, the other patrol should be on its way back."

"Yeah, great," Reese sighed, explaining to his dad wasn't going to be fun.

"I don't think he will be upset; I think he and the Luna were expecting this," Adam said. "At first I think they hoped you guys would work things out, but I think Luna figured out really quickly that Harper's heart was completely taken."

"Yeah, it was pretty plain to see," Reese said. "What about you? Any progress?"

"I'm losing her," Adam said, he stared at the floor. "She's so taken with Eden, and there's so much anger in her toward me. Even her wolf has stopped really responding to mine, I think the bond is really breaking since she accepted the rejection. And we found out something tonight about the siren mating bonds, I'm not sure I should tell you..."

"Go ahead," Reese gave a little snort. "It's done."

"They have the full mate bond now they've marked each other," Adam said slowly. "They didn't think Matt was Harper's second chance mate because she didn't feel the sparks when they touched, but now they do. She also got the siren mark, it's a design that looks like a tattoo on the chest, which they didn't think she would get because she's not a siren. So if Celie and Eden do get together, they will have the full mate bond when the time comes. If she'll get the full mate bond with Eden then I can't even use the mate bond as an excuse to give me a chance anymore. The only thing I can think of to mention now is having pups, I mean, you saw her with Faru, she loves kids. Maybe thinking she won't get pups of her own might sway her, but at this point, I'm not even sure that will work."

"I'm sorry, Adam," Reese said solemnly. "I was really hoping you had a shot, especially since she still felt the bond when we got here, and you felt the sparks when you touched."

"Yeah, I thought I had a shot for a while," Adam said. "But I don't think that anymore. I'm not giving up, but I'm not pinning all my hopes on it either."

Before Reese could reply there was a knock at the door and Alpha Lucas stuck his head in.

"How are you doing, Son?" Alpha Lucas asked.

"I'll be ok, Dad," Reese replied and tried to smile, but he knew it was halfhearted at best. "It sucks, but I was expecting it."

Alpha Lucas just laid his hand on Reese's shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

"I'm sorry, I was hoping..." Alpha Lucas trailed off.

"Me too," Reese said. "But I figured out right after we got here that it wasn't going to happen."

"So did I," Alpha Lucas said. "But I was still kinda hoping."

**

Celie, Eden, Porter, Harper, and Matt were toasting with a fresh bottle of champagne when a knock on the rec room glass door startled them all. They jumped up, prepared to fight some tritons when they saw a small group of sirens at the door.

Eden quickly ran over and unlocked the door to let them in. There were two men and three women in the group, and they greeted them with happy smiles. Two of the women were twins with long auburn hair and bright green eyes, the two men had blonde hair, and the last woman had dark brown, almost black hair and deep blue eyes. Their names were Sana, Mena, Laro, Javen, and Hera. Mena and Laro were mates, and Javen and Hera were mates, but Sana was as yet unmated.

"We heard your call and came as quickly as we could," Mena said after the introductions.

"Wait one second, let me get the others," Porter said quickly, he didn't want to leave Reese, Adam, or Lucas out of the discussion.

Celie and Harper took a few moments to get food and drinks for the new sirens, they were sitting down with their plates when the wolves entered the room.

"Now, sorry about that," Porter said. "I just wanted to make sure everyone was here, so we didn't have to repeat anything."

Eden and Matt quickly explained the situation to the shocked group, they had never heard of tritons behaving in such a way and were very alarmed.

"We picked up many triton scents on the way here," Sana admitted to them. "We honestly wondered if we were just picking up off scents, we didn't think there could be so many in an area like this."

"How many scents?" Matt asked, learning forward.

"At least a dozen," Javen answered, causing them all to exchange worried looks.

"Well, we knew for certain there were nine out there because that's how many attacked during the storm," Reese said. "I was hoping that was all there were left, but I guess there are more out there than we knew."

"The patrols aren't seeing any signs of them though," Alpha Lucas said.

"And we haven't seen anything on the cameras either," Celie said. "So maybe us wolfing out really did scare them off land and stop them from coming onshore."

"Wolfing out?" Hera asked, confused.

"Yeah, we're werewolves," Adam said. "We can shapeshift into wolves and back again. When the tritons attacked during the storm, they couldn't get in the doors, but they could see us, so we shifted into our wolf forms in front of them and scared the crap out of them."

"They ran away as fast as they could," Celie laughed.

"You...shapeshift into animals?" Javen asked slowly.

"Yeah, hey Porter, shift into your wolf for them," Celie gave him a cheeky grin, causing the others to chuckle.

"You too?" Porter shook his head. "You've been hanging out with my mom too much, you know that?"

"Well, someone needs to, and you shift the best," Celie insisted. "Look at them, they think we're crazy."

"Ok, fine," Porter said, glancing at Sana.

He peeled off his shirt and pants but left on his boxers not caring if they ripped and shifted seamlessly into his enormous grey wolf. He got a kick out of the shock on their faces, he stood still and let them stare at him for a few minutes, then he turned in a circle so they could get a look at the whole package. Then he turned and bared his teeth and growled at them, causing them all to shrink back in fear. He then picked his clothes up in his mouth and went into the other room to change back.

The sirens sat in stunned silence for several minutes.

"You're all these...werewolves?" Mena asked.

"Yup," Harper answered simply, nodding her head.

"How many of you are there?" Laro asked.

"Well there are hundreds of thousands of us worldwide," Alpha Lucas started, then he motioned to Adam, Reese, and himself. "Our pack, which lives far from here, is around four hundred wolves. But there are two local packs here, which are helping us patrol the beaches."

"My pack has about six hundred wolves, and the Keys Pack is around a hundred," Porter told the shocked sirens. "But we have close alliances with wolves in packs north of here and could potentially call in hundreds more if we needed them."

"How is it we have never seen or heard of such beings?" Mena looked at the others, then focused on Matt. "Did you know of these beings?"

"I knew there were legends of them, but I didn't realize they were real. I found out that they actually exist two years ago, when I met my mate," Matt put his arm around Harper. "I have not shared her existence with others of our kind until the tritons threatened us, nor did she reveal our kind to the wolves until we needed their help fighting them."

"Yeah, we had no idea you existed until last week," Adam said. "It was a...shock to us to find out. We thought your kind were just made up myths from the ancient world, we had no idea you were real."

"We think them seeing us all shift, and realizing we were a threat to them is keeping them from coming onshore, because they don't know what we are, or how many of us are here. But they are still out there, probably waiting for us to swim out in the ocean or get on a boat so they can attack us in the water. We can't fight them there, a wolf is useless in the ocean, we can only damage them on land." Harper said. "Only sirens can confront them out there, we can't track them, or compete with them, we can back you up if you can lure them on land or something, but in the water..."

"I hadn't thought about that..." Eden said, frowning. "If we could lure them on land somehow, we could setup an ambush, but I don't have any ideas as to how to lure them to a location of our choosing."

"If they are truly after our kind, we could lure them simply by being near the water, if a small group of us is sitting on the beach and they see us and think we are alone they might take the chance." Javen mused.

"Like we are convening a council," Matt said, giving Eden a look. "It might take several days, but if we are visible and the wolves are not, and they think we are alone, it might work."

"We can't do it here," Porter said. "Key Biscayne is too visible, there are too many people here and not enough places for us to hide the wolves. We need to do this on the mainland, away from the population, near woods where the wolves can easily conceal themselves in wolf form and be ready to fight. Because we know we need numbers, and we can't get hundreds of warriors on this island unnoticed."

"You think we would need hundreds?" Sana's eyes were wide.

"I think we don't take any chances," Porter replied. "We need to wipe them out, we need to hurt them so badly they won't even think of coming against us again for years, if not forever."

"Yes, I agree," Eden said. "We need far more sirens, we need as many as we can get, and we need to conceal their presence too. We need to show them they cannot beat us on land or in the sea. If we simply defeat them on land they will just avoid human populations during mating season, we need to ambush them from land and sea and kill as many as possible."

"Do you know any sirens who live on land?" Matt asked.

"Yes, my eldest sister lives far to the north of here, we had just finished a visit with her and were heading for warmer waters when we heard your call." Laro said.

"Can you help us contact her?" Harper asked. "If we can get them to send out a call, and draw sirens to them, we can fly them down here, the tritons would never even know we've got siren backup, it would be a complete shock to them. They are no doubt monitoring the waters here, counting the siren scents they find, bringing in as many as we can overland would give us an enormous advantage."

"Does your sister know other sirens on land? Can we spread the word?" Matt asked.

"Yes, I believe she does," Laro nodding. "And there are many sirens living in the waters off the coast where she lives, her calls would bring dozens in within a day."

All the wolves perked up.

"Within a day?" Reese asked, glancing around. "We thought it would take weeks to get that many sirens here."

"We might have to charter planes for them though, they may not have the credentials to fly commercial," Harper said.

"We have two private planes," Porter shrugged. "I think the Keys pack may have one as well."

"What?" Celie asked pretending outrage and smacking Porter's arm. "You've been keeping the private jets to yourself when you could have been taking me on fabulous vacations around the world?"

"Cel, have you met my parents?" Porter rolled his eyes. "I'm lucky they let me drive their car. I can just imagine the look on my mother's face if I asked for the jet."

This made them all laugh, thinking of the look Luna Penny would likely give Porter if he were to even hint at such a thing.

"Well, you're about to ask," Eden laughed.

"No, Harper is about to ask, they love her, they'll give her anything she wants," Porter returned. "There's no way they'll go along with it if I bring it up."

"Harper has that effect," Alpha Lucas chuckled.

"No, I don't. Celie can ask, they love her too," Harper argued.

"No, if I ask they will think I'm just doing it for Porter, and they'll say no," Celie grinned, fist bumping Porter at the defeated look on Harper's face.

The visiting sirens just listened in confusion, not understanding half of what was being discussed.

"Well guys, I think it's been a long day, we need to figure out where everyone is going to sleep," Harper said, yawning.

"Back on the couch," Porter sighed.

"I would volunteer to sleep on one of the couches, but I'm too big to fit on one," Eden smirked.

"I'm almost as big as you," Porter grumbled, making Eden snort.

"I can bunk with Reese," Adam volunteered.

"I can sleep on a couch," Alpha Lucas shrugged. "I fall asleep on one half the time at home anyway."

"Sounds good, we'll work on permanent accommodations tomorrow." Matt said.

"We have plenty of room at the pack house, and we have two open safe houses, the patrol teams have been staying at one, so it and Harper's condo are full at the moment. We can always do short term rentals too, there are a ton of them in this area, we do that all the time when Mom's family comes to visit. They never want to leave..." Porter grumbled the last bit, making Celie and Harper chuckle.

"Look at you, Port," Celie said. "You're all in charge and shit, your Mom and Dad are going to super impressed."

"Not likely," Porter snorted.

Harper had been staring off into space for several minutes while they were discussing sleeping arrangements when she stopped everyone.

"You know what, I just thought of something," Harper said, focusing on them again. "If we're going to do this, we need to use the one thing we have that they will never have, the one thing they will never understand that will give us an unbeatable edge."

Everyone stared at her silently.

"Technology," Harper said. "We have cameras, motion sensors, we have buoys that can use sonar, and under water cameras that record everything, we can pick a location and wire it to the hilt. Not just on land but in the ocean as well, we'll know everything they are doing. Let them scout it and we'll see everything, and they'll see nothing. Hell, we could probably go to the university and get some wildlife tags and freakin tag one then track it back to wherever they are."

"Why haven't we thought of this?" Celie smacked herself in the forehead. "And weapons, we can get black market weapons, I'm sure the packs have contacts. Let's get some machine guns, grenades, hell we could get depth charges and drop them in the ocean when we find out where they are!"

"We go full scale world war three on their asses, terminator mode, we don't stop until you are dead. Period." Porter said, nodding. "It doesn't have to be silver, right?"

"No, regular bullets will kill them, but they heal fast, so we'd have to be sharp shooters or use a hell of a lot of bullets." Matt said. "Until now we've hunted them passively, we'll kill one if we find it, but I think, now that we know they're evolving and fighting back, we have to hunt them down, because they've started to hunt us down."

"It may be the only way to stop them now," Eden nodded, he turned to Celie. "You will have to teach me these things, I have lived most of my life in the sea, and I don't understand half of what you are talking about."

The new sirens all nodded; they were lost.

"No problem at all," Celie smiled.

"And Harper's right, we have far more advantages than they do, we have a million tools at our disposal to help us find them and kill them," Matt said, shaking his head. "We've just been doing this the old fashioned way because we are stuck in our ways too. But we need definitely need to utilize modern technology against them, it will win this fight faster than anything else."

"Terminator mode," Celie laughed at Porter. "I'll be back!" She tried and failed to mimic an Arnold Schwarzenegger voice.

"We totally have to watch that tomorrow," Porter chuckled.

"Movie marathon!" Celie cheered and high fived Porter.

"I feel like I have a couple of kids when you two are together for too long," Harper shook her head. "You're like twins and you devolve into twelve year old's when you're together."

Porter turned to Harper with a completely straight face.

"Mom, can we stay up late and eat ice cream and play video games?" Porter put on the puppy dog eyes. "Pleeeeease?"

Celie tried and failed not to laugh at Harper's long sigh.

"I'm going to bed, you two can stay up as long as you want and eat whatever you want, just don't wake me up or bitch about being tired tomorrow."

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