Word Count: 3429

Harper was exhausted, when they finally got back to the house after an entire day of shopping she was ready to drop. Celie however, seemed even more energized than normal, nothing made Cel happier than trying on and buying new clothes and shoes. And boy had they tried on and bought new clothes and shoes.

Harper just couldn't understand how Celie was still so hyped up, because on top of the never ending shopping, Luna Diana had brought Ara and Faru with her, and Celie had carried the boy around all day. He'd missed her so much he grabbed onto her the second he saw her and was still hanging onto her now that they were back at the house. Ara had lamented that she was losing her only child to Celie who just grinned and offered to take him off her hands permanently.

They had finally returned home just as the sun was starting to sink in the sky and decided since everyone was at the house they would have a catch up meeting to go over everything that had happened in the past few days. Now everyone was seated around the rec room with drinks in their hands making small talk and comparing notes.

"So, since the storm and us showing ourselves to the tritons none have been seen onshore, either on our cameras or on our patrols," Alpha Alexander started. "This is great news for us, we're still patrolling every beach in the area, but are more worried now about keeping people from swimming at night than seriously worrying about land attacks by the tritons."

"There was only one incident that our patrols mentioned that I found odd," Porter said. "There was a small group checking out an area near Matheson County Reserve and they found a strange couple on the beach out there. They got really defensive when the wolves politely asked them not to go swimming at night, the man put on some sunglasses when he saw them even though it was dark outside, and never said a word. The woman did all the talking and she was extremely rude, telling our people to get off the beach and leave them alone."

"Well, there are some weirdos in Florida," Alpha Michael said. "They were probably out there doing drugs and were afraid you were going to report them."

"I don't know, David said the whole experience just made his fur stand up," Porter said, rubbing his chin. "He said the guy was covered in scars and smelled weird, like swamp water or something. Then later they saw her leaving, but the guy wasn't with her and there were no other cars around."

"Oh my god," Harper looked up, eyes wide. "I think I know what is going on with the tritons...Well, I have a theory, anyway, it may not mean anything."

"Your theories have been spot on so far Harp," Alpha Lucas said. "Share."

"I've been wondering how they evolved so fast," Harper said, her eye brows were drawn together, and she was frowning fiercely. "It just doesn't make sense, I mean, it's seriously been bugging me. But it just occurred to me...what if they haven't evolved on their own like we've been thinking? What if someone is teaching them?"

Glances flew around the room and the implications crashed through everyone's mind.

"They couldn't have done it on their own in a year or two's time!" Harper said, shaking her head. "They just couldn't have, no species on the planet could evolve that freakin fast. The only explanation is they're being taught by someone. What if the scarred guy was a triton? He smelled weird, like dirty water. He put on sunglasses at night so they couldn't see his eyes. He didn't speak to them at all. The woman was rude, protective, and tried to run the others off and keep them away. Then she left alone, and he was nowhere to be seen, and the only place he could have gone is either off into the woods or out into the water."

Everyone was staring, stunned at Harper as she spoke.

"What if she found him, wounded, and nursed him back to health? What if she somehow tamed him, taught him, and he's passing those teachings on to other tritons?" Harper said. "We see that happening in the wild, where someone will nurse an animal back to health from an injury and that animal is tamed. It happens in animal sanctuaries all the time. Wild animals on land can't be taught language or skills, but a triton could. They're smart, we know they are, they have the same brain as sirens, they can learn. It's just that their nature has kept them from creating a civilization, but if there was an outside influence, it might be able to overcome that. Maybe she's trying to domesticate them."

"Oh. My. God." Celie said slowly, her eyes wide. "That makes total sense, but how could she tame him? Seriously, he should have eaten her."

"If those scars are bad enough, he may have been near death, and too weak to hurt her," Matt reasoned. "Then he figured out that she was helping him, feeding him, being kind to him and he felt gratitude toward her. Or was just curious about her and interested in communicating and learning from her."

"Plus, they could have slowly been evolving on their own, and her influence just sped it up," Eden said. "Like we said before, we've seen less and less human deaths over the recent years, they may have already been leaning in that direction, and she was the push they needed. Or this process has been going on longer than we think, she could have found him years ago and been teaching him all this time and he's just now passing it on to others."

"We must get other sirens here to speak on this," Ara said. "We must get the old ones here to help us understand. This idea makes sense, it answers the questions we had regarding their behavior."

"It would never have occurred to me that they could be in contact with humans," Laro said. "But your theory does make sense, it makes much sense. I don't know how such a thing could have occurred, it seems strange considering their nature, but it is possible."

"We need to find out who she is, and if there are others that know about them." Celie said. "It could be more than one person, she could have help if she told anyone."

"She could be a scientist, a marine biologist who discovered him, and wanted to study him," Matt suggested. "There are rumors of us, reports, legends, what if she believed them and went looking for him?"

"If he was hurt that bad, she must have had some kind of medical training to save his life," Harper said, nodding. "So a scientist, especially a marine biologist, would make sense."

"This is unbelievable," Adam said, shaking his head.

"We need to go back to that location and watch for her, then follow her and find out who she is," Celie said. "He can't stay on land for long, so she's meeting him at the water, we need to get her description to the wolves patrolling so they can keep an eye out for her."

"Yes, then we need to stay away from her, so we don't spook her away from their meeting place," Porter said.

"I could be way off base here," Harper said. "But this fits and it doesn't hurt to look into it. If it turns out we are right, we need to take her out of the equation somehow, she would be able to recognize cameras, she will know about the technology we plan to use to fight them."

"Are you speaking of killing a human?" Hera asked, eyes wide.

"No, of course not!" Harper answered quickly. "There are a lot of ways to get rid of someone, if we find out where she works, we can bribe someone to send her on a business trip, or just lure her away somehow."

"We could capture her and explain to her how freakin dangerous these things are, and convince her to help us, instead of helping them," Porter suggested. "She probably doesn't know about their history, their nature, she just thinks...'oh goody, I found a merman, he's like a primitive aqua man'." Porter clapped his hands and made an excited face.

Celie cracked up, laughing so hard she snorted.

"If she's a scientist she will never help us wipe out a species, even if we tell her they are dangerous," Luna Penny said. "She will be on a crusade to stop us from killing them, she could even decide to expose them in an effort to save them."

"Then what do we do?" Sana asked.

"We kill all of them," Reese answered. "If they just disappear, what is she going to do? She may go look for more, but it would be really hard to making lightning strike twice in the same place. The chances of her being able to locate and domesticate another one is slim. Her tactics would have to change, she'd need a boat and equipment and all kinds of stuff to do an ocean search for one of these things. That takes resources."

"Reese is right," Harper said. "All we have to do is keep her, and any friends she may have helping her, away from the battle we have with them. As far as she will know, her pet just swam away, or stopped coming on land or to wherever they meet when he can't shift into human form. She probably has a boat of some kind, hell it could even be something as small as a kayak, all she needs to do is get out into water that's fifteen feet deep or something."

"If she's a scientist or something she may have a big boat, research vessel of some kind. But finding her and figuring out who she is will tell us that," Matt said.

"If she had a boat they would have been meeting on that instead of the beach probably," Celie reasoned. "There would be virtually no chance of anyone seeing him or interrupting them if they were out on the water."

"What if they are mating?" Mena asked slowly. "What if that is how she found him? He came to shore and somehow...found her attractive and wanted to be with her... or something..."

"Why would he want to be with a human?" Sana scoffed, and cut her eyes toward Harper and Celie. "He must have been desperate to want a human instead of someone of his own kind."

"I can think of many reasons he'd rather have a human," Matt snapped, instantly pissed.

"As can I," Eden said harshly. "Many."

Ara turned sharply and eyed Sana with outright hostility, she had grown close to Celie and Harper. They had welcomed her so openly and with such kindness she considered them friends.

"If you don't like humans, or anyone not 'your kind', there's the door." Harper glared at Sana and pointed. "It won't hurt my feelings if you show yourself out."

"Shit, mine either," Celie laughed. "You're just taking up a bedroom someone else could be using."

The others in the room nodded, also voicing their agreement.

Even the members of her own pod stared at her with narrowed eyes.

"I meant no offense," Sana said stiffly, withering under the scrutiny of everyone in the room.

"Sure, you didn't," Porter scoffed.

Mena continued after a few tense moments of everyone staring her sister down.

"If she found him some time ago, he could have figured out how to bond with her, if he did she will know when he dies." Mena said.

"Oh well," Eden shrugged. "Tritons die all the time, and if they are communicating she knows that. She's helping him fight us most likely, she'll just have to assume that he ran into one of us in the water and he lost."

Celie jerked and stared at Eden for a few seconds, then glanced at Harper with a horrified look on her face.

"If she's helping them fight us, she knows where we live and she could be watching us," Celie said. "Maybe I'm being paranoid, but we should check and see if there are cameras or anything like that around the house or beach that are not ours."

"If that's the case, then she's definitely a threat, not only to you but to us as well," Alpha Lucas said. "If she discovers werewolves exist she's a problem. Then, yes, I will be talking about killing a human."

The sirens gasped hearing that.

"You don't understand," Harper said to them. "We cannot allow humans to know about us, we can never allow them to find out on a large scale. There are some that know of us now, a small, organized group, and they hunt us whenever they find us. They attack our packs and kill our kind all the time. Many centuries ago, they hunted us to near extinction. That's why we are legends and myths to them, they either think they wiped us out, or that we never existed at all. If they find out about us, they will hunt us again. You haven't had those things happen to you, if you had, you'd know it's not a risk we can take."

"We only share knowledge of our existence with our mates or people we trust as family," Porter said. "We want to live in peace with them, and we do live in peace with them, but they've shown they can't live in peace with us. We cannot risk humans finding out, because we can't run from them, we can't hide from them. Unlike you, we can't get away from them, we have to share this world with them, because there's nowhere else for us to go."

"They have hunted us a well," Hera said sadly. "But it was many ages ago, and we hid from them effectively."

"Yeah, I imagine being able to disappear into the deep blue sea is pretty easy," Porter said. "They didn't have the technology to dive deep and look for you until recently. You were able to go the one place they couldn't get to, no matter how hard they tried. We didn't have that option, when they nearly wiped us out, the only thing we could do was retreat into the mountains and the harshest climates, where we often starved and struggled just to eat and feed our pups. Then slowly, after centuries passed, we came back into the world after they forgot about us."

"Now we thrive, but only because they know nothing of our existence, and we keep to ourselves," Alpha Alexander said.

Everyone was silent for a few tense moments before Harper blew out a heavy breath.

"Wow, so ok, we have some serious investigating to do," Harper said. "We need to find out if any of this is even possible. Those two people on the beach could just have been two really bitchy people who stink and were out there doing drugs and trying not to get caught."

"Right," Luna Diana chuckled. "Hitting the meth pipe and taking a bath in a canal would explain those two. Not like we don't see that every day in the homeless population down here, but it never hurts to follow up."

"I'm going to hit the electronics stores tomorrow and pick up as many cameras as I can, we should also go on amazon and just load up on any of that stuff we may need," Matt said. "We'll get everyone together and start putting up cameras anywhere we think they could be meeting. We need to identify the woman, first and foremost."

"I think I can help with that," Reese said, glancing at Adam. "We may need to call Callum back; he can hack into local businesses and traffic cams to see if we can find her car or her picture. A snapshot of her license plate will give Callum enough to track down her name. He can also look at traffic cams around the house to see if that car or any other suspicious cars have been hanging around this neighborhood, scoping the house. He might even be able to come up with a gadget that will scan and let us know if there is a camera or device transmitting a Wi-Fi signal around here, that would help us figure out if we're being watched."

"Would he need to be here to do that?" Harper asked, frowning. "I mean, can't he do most of that remotely?"

"It's easier from here, because he can hack into a business's Wi-Fi network easier than trying to go in through a network firewall. All he has to do is sit in their parking lot or somewhere nearby." Adam said. "If he tries to do it remotely, he has to get through their ISP, which is seriously protected."

"I'll go back to the pack, take over running things for a while and send Callum back here to help you out," Alpha Lucas said. "He's not only a computer genius but also an amazing warrior, better than this old wolf if it comes to a serious fight. I can send a few warriors with him, just in case you need some additional backup here on the island. Maybe we can find a rental house or apartment nearby for longer term, because it sounds like this might not be as easy as waiting out mating season."

"This has gone from slightly off to full blown crazy in just a few days," Celie said. "I gotta say Harp, you've always been a brainiac, but everything we've figured out has been because you're sitting there thinking overtime. So cheers to you, Chica, we wouldn't have figured any of this out and would have been dead meat in no time at all if not for you."

"Hopefully, it's just a theory and not true," Harper responded with a halfhearted smile. "I really don't want to have to fight humans too."

"We haven't wanted to fight humans for several millennia, but we have still had to," Adam said, shaking his head sadly.

"I don't know about you guys but I'm starving," Celie said. "How about we order a ton of food from Panna Key? I'll run and get it. I don't want to cook and it's getting late."

"I heard that," Harper sighed as she got up to get the takeout menu from behind the bar.

**

"Who wants to ride with me to get the food?" Celie asked.

"I'll go," Adam said before anyone else could answer.

Celie cringed internally but just smiled.

"Cool," She said, "I don't think I'll be able to carry all the bags in by myself."

"You want me to go too, Cel?" Porter asked, eyeballing Adam.

"You can if you want, but you don't have to, I'm sure we can get it," Celie answered, giving Porter a look, and a blink to let him know she didn't need him. This was her perfect opportunity to talk to Adam alone and make sure he understood she was never going to reconcile with him.

Celie mind linked Harper.

Harper snickered from across the room.

Harper answered.

Celie said.

As Celie was pulling on her shoes she noticed Porter approach Harper and saw Harper start laughing hysterically.

Harper linked Celie with a grin.

"I'm taking your Jeep, Harp," Celie snickered, then turned to Adam. "You ready?"

"Yep, let's hit it," Adam replied.

Celie turned and sent a wink and smile to Eden as she headed toward the door.

Celie linked Harper again as she swept out the door.

Harper linked back.

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