Paul and I are interrupted from our staring contest with a yell from a familiar voice. Percy.

"Alex! Damn, at least I think that's what your name is," he curses, "Alexandra!" He stumbles out of the forest, mostly unharmed, albeit a twig in his shiny raven unbrushed hair.

"Percy!" I exclaim.

His eyes meet mine and he comes over quickly, fiddling with a ballpoint pen. Paul looks annoyed at his very existence.

I do a double take at Paul's torso. Gods, get it together, I think. you should not be in awe every time he looks like a god.

Sam speaks, "You're that kid. From her picture, " he adds hastily.

None of them makes an effort to hide their surprise. Gee, thanks. I didn't know you had so much faith in me about finding the guy. I'm not that incompetent. Is it my looks or my personality? Do I have some sort of aura that makes people sure I'm just a beautiful loser? Embry's jaw even drops, practically hitting the ground.

"You found him?" Leah says disbelievingly.

I stare at them, "No. This is an imposter. He used plastic surgery to look exactly the same as the other guy and just happens to have the same name, too." My voice oozes sarcasm.

Leah gives me a look, which I kindly return.

Percy goes, "What picture?"

There's a silence before Paul suddenly spits out, "Oh, she didn't tell you? She's been looking for your sorry ass since you decided to go missing."

Percy gets into a defensive pose subconsciously, "Dude, what the hell?" Hmm... so it's all there. Hera just... stole the actual memories, not the knowledge.

Paul storms into the house, stomping on the porch steps noisily and slamming the screen door angrily. I eye his ass appreciatively like a hawk.

Damn.

I shake myself out of it. "Any questions?" I ignore Embry's hand shooting up like a rocket. "I have boatloads for you, Percy. Like, how bad is your amnesia? Can I do your hair? Do you still have steel skin? Would you be mad if I told you I couldn't bring you back to Annabeth?"

His eyes visibly sadden, "What? Why not? I miss her so much. She's the only thing I remember. Um, yeah to the steel skin thing and please don't to the hair question." He slouches emptily and I swear my heart breaks for him.

"Um, I hate to be the weird guy here," Seth says, "but wasn't that the whole point of looking for him? To reunite the lovely couple or something?"

I blush, "Yeah, but in the forest I had a revelation. It'd be far more romantic for Percy to find his own way back to his true love. Sorry, Percy, but the only way I can help is, " I feel the spirit of the queen of the gods enter me, "make a pit stop in California."

"Dude, " Brady and Collin say in unison, but Seth continues, past the call of "jinx!" by Brady, "Did anyone else notice her voice got older?"

Great, just what I need: muffins! Emily baked almost a hundred of them while the rest of had a heartfelt chat outside, and I still haven't given them any answers.

Genius idea, by the way, to make so many of them, because Percy stockpiles them on his plate almost as much as the wolf pack. Not knowing when you'll get your next meal does that to you. Paul sits to my right, Percy to my left, and Jake next to Percy. Seth's directly across with me and Brady and Collin are on either side. Jared's next to Paul and Quil's next to Collin. Sam is snogging Emily next to the open oven.

I inhale a chocolate chip muffin, and I'm still the most polite eater at the table. Percy, Paul, and I took showers while waiting for the last batch to be ready, so I don't resemble a soot-covered clown anymore. I smell like lavender shampoo and hilariously, so does Percy and Paul. I eye Paul's wet hair and compare it to Percy's completely dry-

"Hey, why isn't your hair wet? Use a hairdryer?" Jared asks Percy. Σκατά

"No," says Percy, "I guess... I'm getting more of a draft here."

Most of the guys make a noise that they don't believe him. Collin stuffs two muffins in his face at once.

I run my finger through my moist hair. "So-" I start, but I'm cut off by Percy.

"So you guys are werewolves," he says, and Collin spits out muffin bits on the table in surprise. The rest of the guys eyes widen.

Sam speaks up, "How did you know?"

Percy nods his head in my direction. "Alex introduced Paul as a werewolf. Not the weirdest I've ever met, like not even close to the dragon that just torched your woods-"

I glare at Percy, as the rest of the guys, and Emily, spit out their food as Collin had done. I notice the red sunset light stream into the kitchen through the window across from me. "Percy!" I hiss, "Do you go around telling everyone stuff like that?" At the same time as Jake exclaims, "Dragon?"

I lie through my teeth, "I bet Percy's just tired, right?"

"What are you hiding?" Paul demands, "Because I know dragons don't exist, but for some reason I feel like Percy's telling the truth here." His face morphs into a unrecognizable emotion.

"I don't like explaining things, but Percy knows basically nothing right now. I suppose I can't just say that he's probably on drugs and we'll be on our merry way?" I groan. All dark brown eyes turn to me, as well as the sea green pair of Percy's.

"Well, fine," I say, "but you'll think I'm τρελός, loco crazy." I make a twirling motion next to my ear, and spin a tuft of ebony hair. They all lean closer. "Have you ever heard of the Greek myths, Mt. Olympus, gods and goddesses and stuff?"

A few of them nod.

"So, like, there was Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Athena, Demeter, Ares, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Apollo, Hermes, Dionysus, Hades, Hestia, and Artemis. And there were others but they were, like, minor. So anyway, in the myths, most of what the gods did would be cursing people, falling in love with mortals, and causing wars-"

Embry interrupts me, "Do we seriously need a Greek history lesson? What does this have to do with you and the so called dragon?"

I scowl, "I'm actually telling you the condensed version. I could go into serious detail on the fashions and the white pillars and tell you a great many stories, but I'm not that cruel."

Percy snorts.

"So anyway, basically their favorite pastime was making babies-"

I hear a muffled, "I don't blame them." I don't waste my time trying to figure out who it was.

"Naturally, these kids were special, with a god for a parent. Good looking, for the most part, good in battle situations, their minds were hardwired for Ancient Greek. Ancient monsters chased after them to kill them."

"So you're telling us these gods existed?" Leah says disbelievingly, "You can't be serious." I look up at her attractive, yet bitter and cold, stone hard features. Her eyes meet mine.

"I'm not telling you the Greek gods existed," I tell her, and her face becomes slack, "I'm telling you they still exist. They haven't died, remember. Gods tend to be immortal."

Now all of them look at me like I just casually informed the Secret Service how I'm plotting to kill the president, and going through with it anyway.

"You're crazy," Embry decides, and Paul growls menacingly.

Paul looks at me, "Are we being punked?"

I laugh, "I wish I could've thought this up by myself. Sadly, I have the imagination of a dead goldfish." I shake my head, and my hair soothes my neck.

Emily speaks up, "And you're a child... of a god?" She bites her lip, trying to wrap her mind around it. "From what I know about you, it fits, but..."

"Look," Percy says, "Apparently I'm not new to this stuff, but I lost my memory maybe a month ago, and I met Lupa, the wolf goddess-"

My head turns to him. "You met her? I thought for sure all the gods had gone silent. We haven't had any contact with them for months. They're not all reliable parents, but we can expect a little visit every now and then. Especially since your sixteenth birthday-" I cut myself off. "Whoops."

Percy desperately asks, "What happened on my birthday?"

I bite my lip and swallow. "A lot of people died. You saved us. You got together with Annabeth," I offer. He'd probably want to know that the most. I doubt Annabeth would be pleased if he forgot their anniversary, especially if it's already on such an important day for him.

Paul goes, "Did he cause the deaths?" and I feel his muscled arm snake around my waist loosely, but almost pulling me from Percy.

I shake my head, "Only for the people on the other side of the war."

Collin scoffs, "A war in New York? Are you crazy? Don't you think that would be world headlines?"

"No. The Mist keeps mortals from seeing what's right in front of them, but it wouldn't have mattered on his birthday anyway. Did you here about how everyone just fell asleep in Manhatten one day?"

Brady, Jake, Leah, and Seth nod slowly. "But wasn't that from some power explosion thing?"

I shake my head, "No, that was a god, Morpheus, putting all the humans to sleep."

Jake goes, "Morphine?!"

Sam says, "Are you sure you haven't joined a cult?"

I facepalm, "Dude, we don't sacrifice chickens for them or anything." We're pretty civilized. The most we really do is call them Lord or Lady and burn some food if we happen to be near a magical mood swinging campfire.

Emily's eyes glaze over, like she's trying to deduct something in her head. Her eyebrows furrow, and I find myself looking at the area her scars were. "You're a daughter of Aphrodite?"

I nod, and Paul silently asks me who Aphrodite is. "My mom is Lady Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, lady of doves. That's how I can speak French, because it's the language of love. I have dyslexia, so I can barely read English, but Greek and French come naturally." I wish I had known this in middle school, and I would've chose French as my language class, not Spanish. I suck at Spanish, big time."That's how I stopped the vampire from killing me. My knife wouldn't work, so I made him fall in love with me."

The wolves eye me.

Paul growls, "How long does it last? Damn leech." The rest of the table hisses at the mention of the cuddly vamp.

I frown, "I have no idea how long it lasts. I've never done it before. Well, I have, but only to humans and demigods. For them, it wore off in about a week, but they would do whatever it took to get to me..."

I realize what I just said as he growls from the back of his throat. τρελός, the vampire would do whatever it takes to get to me! Paul's arms tighten significantly, and I'm pulled so close that I'm practically sitting on his lap.

"Great," Leah moans, "We get to protect another annoying girl with a leech loverboy."