Having Eliza and Jack under their care necessitated a change to their routine for the couple. They couldn't have all of them go on the boat, there just wasn't enough room for two extra people on most tours, so Karano took the boat tours with Eliza while Hazel stayed with Jack. It was safer anyway, as Jack was still nervous around the noise of the boats, and it gave Hazel a great chance to bond more with him.

That actually turned out perfectly, as Eliza was still thrilled to be on the boat, and Jack turned out to be a very bright boy once you got past his shyness. Hazel got several books downloaded from the Dade County library, and they spent the day searching for plants, animals, and bugs around the pack houses. In the evenings, Jack would eagerly show Eliza and Karano what they'd found in a soft voice, and it was heartwarming to see him interacting with them more and more.

The evenings were a little cramped, but each cabin already had two bedrooms, and they just brought one of the spare cots from the office into the second bedroom for the kids to bunk up in. Eliza didn't mind sharing, and it put Jack at ease to have his sister nearby. It was easy to see that now that Jack was so much more comfortable with them, that he'd be a regular visitor, just like Eliza was, even after Maria got home.

Not that the women minded, because bonding so well with the kids gave them added assurance that they were going to be able to be good parents together, and they couldn't wait. They hadn't had luck when trying to decide about who could be a surrogate, as any of the current pack members that were in the right age bracket were already thinking about having their own kids. Not to mention that it was an expensive undertaking! Instead, they were looking at donors, which was still pricey, but more affordable for them. It would just take a little bit of saving.

Everything was going perfectly until Maria texted them on the morning that she was supposed to be returning. They'd set up a little group chat so she could send messages to the kids, and either of the women could reply. They'd been sending her pictures of their activities to keep her a part of them as well. But now, it was more worrisome.

Maria – We're being followed by some of the old pack. I thought we lost them, but they're behind us now. There are multiple SUVs, and we're not sure how many pack members are in there.

"Damnit!" Karano muttered. "I'll go tell Wesley, and you try to find out when she'll be here. We'll have to make sure we're ready. I don't think we're prepared for a fight, nothing like this has ever happened."

"Got it!" Hazel said and started typing.

Karano was knocking on Wesley's door in a flash, and never waited for an answer. Luckily, Wesley wasn't busy. "Maria just texted. She's being followed, and she thinks it is members of her old pack. If I was placing a bet, I'd say they were coming here to attack us, and then take her back, plus anyone else they want. We know they allow duels to take away a mate that was chosen by a goddess, so we don't know what else they might think is a proper pack tradition."

Wesley stood up, a grimace on his face. "Do you know how many of them there are?"

"All she said was multiple SUVs, so that could be anywhere from ten to forty," Karano answered with a shrug.

Wesley just sighed, then sent out an alert to the pack via the pack link for everyone to assemble in the diner. "We'll see how many we can get, but I doubt we have more than 15 fighters, and none of them have any real training." The pack was so isolated, that this situation had never come up.

"You know that Hazel and I can take most of them down if you just protect the kids," she suggested. The power she'd felt in the fight on the boat had made her feel invincible. "I doubt very much they're expecting a pair of hybrids to be waiting for them. Hell, you could probably get most of the kids on the air boats and take off with them at the first sign of trouble just to keep them safe."

"Maybe we'll do that with some of the older wolves, but you know I can't let you fight alone. Hybrids or not, we have a responsibility to defend the pack. I may have fallen down on training us on that aspect, but we'll still do our part."

"Fine. But at least stand behind us? I'm hoping the shock of seeing us will blunt their attack."

Wesley nodded at the idea. "We can do that. If you can scare them, break their momentum, then we can try to scatter the rest."

Karano smiled grimly. "I think we can handle that."

Wesley opened the door to head out into the diner. "Let's let everyone know the news then."

According to the texts that Hazel had been trading with Maria, there were four SUVs, and then a big van as well. If they were fully loaded, they could easily have almost thirty people coming to invade the pack. Even if the they had all of the adults fight, the pack would be lucky to have fifteen, though it was more likely ten, as some of the older members had agreed to take the children out on the boats, along with a pair of new moms that couldn't leave their babies, if they needed to escape. If they had to, those members could move the rest of the pack deeper into the swamp and start over.

"I want to help!" Eliza told Karano and Hazel when they brought her to the dock. "I have my knife!" she pulled it out, showing them just how fierce she could be.

"I know you want to, Eliza," Hazel assured her. "But there are going to be some very bad wolves, and we have to make sure you're safe. That knife might not even hurt them!" Hazel knew the knife really would work, silver and werewolves didn't mix well, but she also didn't want Eliza to risk herself in this fight, as much as she wanted to.

"Eliza, you're the bravest kid I know," Karano said as she knelt next to the girl and looked into the hazel eyes that were filled with tears. "If something bad happens, we need you to take care of Jack and the others."

"But my mom will be fighting, and both of you will too," Hazel whispered. "When my dad fought, he didn't come back."

Both of the women pulled her into a hug. As much as they wanted to promise that it would all be okay, they just couldn't. They were both feeling the nerves, and the fear crawling up their spines. They'd just dealt with José, and they thought they'd finally be free of bad things, only for this to happen. As confident as they were about their own abilities, they couldn't protect everyone, and there were probably going to be a lot of invaders.

"We'll all do our best to come back to you," Hazel promised. "But no matter what happens, every one of us loves you, okay?"

"Yeah, okay. I love you too," Eliza said glumly.

With that, the pair went back to the entrance to the little complex. The boats would stand by, and leave if the intruders went for the docks, or it looked as though the fight were lost. In the meantime, there was a defense to prepare.

"How much time do we have?" Karano asked.

"If Maria's estimate is right, about ten more minutes," Hazel replied. The current plan was for the pair of them to meet the invading group in the parking lot, with Wesley, Paul, and Jerry behind them. Maria and the friends she was bringing would also join the fighters, and there were four more wolves hiding in the cabins that would be behind the vehicles, which they hoped would surprise the enemy with an attack from the rear. That meant that they would only have thirteen defenders including the three that Maria had with her, and none of them had a lot of combat experience. Perhaps the friends Maria was bringing had trained with their old pack, but that would be it.

If those vehicles were as full as they thought, then they could have more than double the pack's numbers attacking. Odds are they would all be trained, and most would have been in blood fights since their pack allowed duels. Even with two hybrids, it would be dicey. Wouldn't it? It wasn't as though Hazel and Karano had been in real fights, the one on the boat hardly counted, so they had no way to judge how well they could fight an angry werewolf. Yes, they felt much more powerful, but to what extent they wouldn't know until the battle. At that point, it would be a big trial by fire.

To get ready for the assumed battle, everyone was stripped down to their underwear in anticipation of shifting for the fight. Right on time, Maria's car skidded into the parking lot, and parked in front of her cabin. A man nobody knew got out of the driver's side, and then two others from the rear while Maria got out of the passenger's seat. The four of them jogged over towards Wesley. One of the women stopped stone still, looking at Wesley in shock, and everyone had a feeling that Wesley had just found his second chance mate as the pair of them couldn't stop staring.

Not the best timing, but there were some fleeting smiles until we heard the roar of other vehicles approaching. The lead SUV slowed when it saw us waiting, then pulled over and stopped. There were others behind it, and before long there were half a dozen assorted SUVs and vans parked at the entrance, and a bunch of men were getting out of them. It was hard to get a good count of them, but Hazel and Karano were estimating that there was at least a couple dozen attackers, all were men, which wasn't shocking since they seemed to enjoy multiple wives.

"Can we help you?" Karano called out to them.

A beefy man stepped forward, a smirk on his face as he looked over the two scantily clad women in front of him. "Aye, I think you can! We were here for our pack mates, but we might just take you two as well!"

"No. You have no pack mates here. And no, you can't take us either. Why don't you turn around and drive home and save everyone a lot of bloodshed."

"Little girl, my name is Alpha Benton Day of the Black Tooth Pack up in Wyoming. Maria there is the mate of one of my Gammas, David Dillon. We're taking her home, along with the other pack members she just stole from their home, and we'll take whatever else we want while we're here. The Black Tooth Pack doesn't take orders from any woman!" The Alpha was turning red in the face, as the smiles on Hazel and Karano grew wider and wider. They were hoping to identify the leader so they could know who to take out first, and he had kindly identified himself.

"I'm not his mate! You just let him kill my true mate so he could pretend to be mine! He already has two other women that aren't his mate, and that pack is sick!" Maria screamed from behind them.

"Our pack has been around for a long time and has a proud lineage!" Benton yelled back at her. "Now pack up your stuff and come on! We don't want to kill an entire other pack over this!" Another man, this one tall and sinewy, leaned over and whispered to him, and he nodded with another smirk. "Oh, and my Beta here would like to challenge the mates of these two fillies here to a duel, so he can claim them as his mates." He gestured to Hazel and Karano at that point. 

The pair just laughed at them, causing them to all to grow red in anger. "That would be difficult!" Hazel replied. "Since she is my mate!"

"Women can't be mated to one another!" Benton cried out! "You'll both be Finn's mates instead. Now, come on, let's go!"

"Who takes over your pack when you're dead?" Karano asked as she took a couple of steps towards them. "Because you're going to die in under a minute, so I hope your pack won't be leaderless!"

"Enough of this! If you're not going to come quietly, then we'll take you by force!"

"Believe me, she never comes quietly!" Hazel said with a smirk. "I'm sorry it has to be this way, but if you're trying to take our pack members, then you're all dead." On that note, she and Karano shifted into their bipedal hybrid forms. The two towered over the Black Tooth wolves, who were whining in fear even as they started to belatedly shift into their wolf forms, and then the pair was among them with their claws shredding.

Alpha Benton had a large rust colored wolf. No doubt he was impressive to other wolves, but Karano pounced on him, lifting him from the neck and slicing through his spine even as Hazel was disemboweling him, sending his guts everywhere. As they promised, he was dead in under a minute. There was a fateful pause for the attackers when they saw their Alpha go down so quickly, and then Hazel and Karano split up to kill more of them. Hazel jumped on the Beta who had wanted to be their mate, while Karano waded into a group of other wolves. There were other invaders that had raced past them, and they could only hope that Wesley and the others could take care of them.

Everything became a blur for the next minute as the couple ripped through over a dozen of the invading wolves. Limbs and sprays of blood flew through the air as the hybrids lay waste to anything that got within reach. As fast as they were, that was almost everything. There were still some living wolves from the Black Tooth Pack, but they were all circling and afraid to make a move. That didn't help the attackers, as Karano and Hazel were happy to jump on them instead.

"No! Leave my mom alone!" Karano heard Eliza scream, and she turned, seeing the small brown wolf of Maria being dragged by the neck by a larger black and grey wolf. What terrified her more was that Eliza was somehow on the larger wolf's back, plunging her little knife into his neck, over and over. Karano bolted in that direction, just as the wolf bucked the little girl off, and swiped at her head. With a desperate dive, Karano was able to catch Eliza before she hit the ground, and turned to the wolf, only to see it collapse as it gasped on the ground with blood pooling about it as the crimson liquid fountained from the neck wounds.

Wesley was also on the ground, with a wolf clamped around his right rear leg, and a small brown wolf was ripping at the attacking wolf's neck, finally freeing Wesley to help finish it off. Other wolf bodies were strewn about, and she wasn't sure who they were. When Karano turned back to the entrance, she saw Hazel shredding a pair of wolves, and then looking around for more. But there weren't any. Hurrying over to Maria, she quickly checked for her pulse, only to find none. She was gone, and she could only hug Eliza as the little girl sobbed over her mom. Hazel came over as well, comforting Eliza as well as she could.

They'd won, but at a terrible cost.