Note, I'm skipping a lot of flavor text and background info, I figure if you're reading a fan fiction about a book, then chances are you've read the book and know, at least in part, that information.

I own none of the characters, not even the OCs I made as they are part of the PJaO or Mercy Thompson books and anyone is free to duplicate them for their own stories. Writing a story using characters from published books, I certainly can't complain if someone likes my idea enough to run it in a different direction, but please, no slash.

Rick Riordan and Patricia Briggs own all characters.

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A special note on one of my OCs. When I got the names for the people at the clinic, I used names out of an old phone book. I very specifically used different first and last names. When I chose a name, I used the first name of the person two listings below the last name chosen, so there was absolutely no basis for real people. Anyone who shares any of these names, it was not intentional, and they weren't found in my old phone book.

That having been said however, when making the choices for the names of the babies, I used whatever sounded right. So when it came to naming the daughter of Special agent Mark Briggs, the name Patricia just popped into my head and sounded right.

I honestly didn't think about it, and it wasn't until rereading my files while writing this chapter that I noticed the name Patricia Briggs as one of my characters. This wouldn't have been that bad, except I made her a straight half-blood (sort of), meaning that Rick Riordan owns that character completely.

Sorry Mss. Briggs, that was not intentional. So, my question, should I now create a werewolf named Rick Riordan to compensate? Or would that just add more difficulties? Should I, at this point, go back and alter the name? Or just let it stand?

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I finally found everyone's last names except for Felix. Anyone know it?

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Once a month seems to be my new goal for updating, irritating when I used to update every three days. I've been trying to get back into the habit of writing regularly, but that couple of month period where everything was working against me set me back, and now, even when I have the time, I'm having a hard time actually pulling things together in my mind as to where I want the story to go. I'm going to start trying for twice a month on updates, but I've been telling myself that for the past two months. Sorry.

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Household Dreams

Mercy

Adam's eyes are yellow when we walk into the house. We are immediately besieged by people asking what happened, while Percy and Annabeth make a beeline upstairs to change. A few more of the pack has dropped by, they felt the birth of Brandon and to a much lesser extent, Athena. Then about an hour later, they felt Adam's little trip through living hell that the 'returned' put him through. A bit after that, Λύκος went from pack member to pack member assuring everyone that we were alive and well relatively speaking. There was a general convergence of any pack member who could get free from whatever they were doing at the time.

They also heard about Ben's rise in status.

Adam set about organizing the pack to help out in rescue efforts around town, that actually being why there wasn't more pack member present, most had to secure their families safety first. Of course, Annabeth had been right when she told Percy about local construction rules, so the amount of damage wasn't nearly has extensive as it could have been, but our already damaged home was about done for.

At some point, the private eye Adam had hired to watch Christy's home managed to get thru on the phone. Her ex-boyfriend had torched her apartment complex, killing about half a dozen people. It's during this exchange that we find out Christy hadn't even been aware he was a supernatural at first, and that when she figured it out, she thought he might have been a fae or werewolf, being the only two other than a vampire she knew about.

During all of this, I call Bran and give him the scoop on what's going on. I also mention that Adam will need to talk with him later as he saw something when he was connected to the rest of the werewolves. He thanks me and then surprises me by telling me what's going on in Atlanta. Evidently, one of the new female werewolves in the Atlanta pack was, to quote Charles's mate Anna, a psychopathic monster, who was on the verge of being put down by her alpha when she suddenly gained power and killed all of the male werewolves and used magic to enslave the females.

I've been telling werewolves for years that they needed to update their gender biases to something at least nineteenth century, or better yet, twentieth, but this seems a little over the top. The only reason she hadn't already been put down was because she was a female, and even in the case like this, the instinct of male werewolves is to protect females. So she was granted several chances to correct her behavior were a male would simply have been killed out of hand. Not everything in werewolf politics works against females, but this was one of those cases that she really shouldn't have been given the chance. Charles managed to get this from some local fae, who are not pleased by this turn. She also destroyed a vampire who had gone to investigate, so the local seethe was up in arms as well.

As I'm hanging up with Bran, I notice Terry standing nearby looking at me with several folders in her hand. 'Why hello little hungry coyote, to what do I owe the pleasure?" She frowns when I call her coyote; I guess her dislike of her Indian heritage is at war with her desire to be polite. I'm going to need to be more careful when dealing with her.

"May I ask you a question?" She says, and immediately plows on; "When your husband took us in, was he trying to protect us from the dangers of this world that we don't know, or was he trying to protect the world from us?"

"Ummm. I don't think it was either case. Both the pack and you kids were mentioned in a prophecy made by Rachel. My impression was that Adam offered you rooms simply to make any dealings with each other somewhat expedient. Why do you ask?"

"It just seems that he's not too happy with his choice right now, and I wanted to make sure he wasn't going to change his mind. "

How to respond to that? "Well, you kids aren't exactly easy to deal with. Werewolves are control freaks of epic proportions. You kids are magically powered chaos. You guys eat his control like mad, and he's fighting between the instinct to assert his dominance and the instinct to protect those in his care, which tends to include children by default." But, I think to myself, the kids aren't actually weak and helpless, there's something else going on. Almost unbidden comes the thought, 'they're more dominant.' And that's a rather unpleasant thought, Adam is the fourth most dominant Werewolf in North America, and fifth or sixth in the world, assuming he isn't still fourth. Are all of them more dominant, or just Percy and maybe Nico? I'll have to think on this some more, maybe talk to Hestia. I notice Terry watching me; I guess some of my thinking was portrayed on my face. "Sorry, just thing to myself, I know it's not your fault you're like that, but you guys need to ease up a bit if you can. Or if you can't, and I'm thinking that that is the case, than try and come up with some reason for the rest of the pack to believe is the reason Adams putting up with it."

"Well, to that matter, I actually come bearing a gift, sort of." She says while handing me the folder. Inside are blueprints for a house, our house specifically. "Annabeth is actually a MUCH better architect than me, but I'm not bad. I would of course, run these by her first, and I'd need a lot of help in actually completing them of course, but I've included several defensive systems for the house and grounds you currently lack, including several magic components and I'd need to talk with your husband and get the current state of the art in mundane security of course. So, what do you think?"

Oh, wow! I'm looking at the drawings and diagrams, and other than the basic lay-outs of the floors, I'm not understanding too much of what I'm seeing. All of the words and numbers are in ancient Greek, which makes sense since that's the language they can read without their dyslexia kicking in. But most of the diagrams aren't part of the house structure, at least not that I can tell. I guess that the diagram of some joints and braces are actually part of the house, but I couldn't begin to tell you how or where. There are however quite a few other diagrams that look nothing like standard architectural markings so much as gun emplacements or straight out magic. There was one that looked suspiciously like an engine, but not quite, and would seem to be in a bad location for an emergency generator, and the wiring around it didn't look right either, but I'm a mechanic, not an engineer or electrician. Are some of those diagrams chemical formulas?

"This; this is really impressive, and would undoubtedly be more so if I actually knew what even a fraction of this meant. I'm sorry Terry, but I'm just not an Architect, I couldn't even begin to form any sort of idea about this. About the only thing I can get out of it is that it's our house, with some very expensive improvements. Even with Adams rather handsome earnings, I'm not sure we could afford this."

"But you guys wouldn't be paying for it, Beauclaire would be."

Uh; "Oh, umm, let's go see if Adam has a minute."