"I'm Madame Serenity," the elderly African American woman spoke to Marie, holding Trevor in her arms as the cub slept with a slight smile on his face, "I'm a sort of private investigator. I stumbled on to Trevor after his escape from his attacker and have done my best to see to it that he was safe."
"You couldn't bring him back to us?" Jacob asked.
"Considering what Trevor told me about what his attacker threatened to do to him if he revealed himself to you, I was concerned for his safety and yours," Serenity spoke, knowing that the threats to Trevor came from the curse, but since the one who first cursed him was male, applying that gender to Kurse seemed to fit for the purpose of helping Trevor be fully reunite with his family, "but his attacker has recently been killed in a fight with law enforcement agents after I tracked him down. With him gone, I saw no reason to keep you separated from Trevor."
"Thank you for protecting him," Marie said, "Mary, Moja, Mbili, Tatuli,Nneli, Tano, Sita, Saba, Nane, and their friends up at the Smith estate will be overjoyed to have their friend back."
"The Smith Estate?" Serenity asked.
Jacob and Marie nodded.
"We went to high school with a Jensen Smith and Kaylee Perkins," Jacob explained, "we weren't part of their inner click, but we got along well... strange considering we're lions and they're wolves... but we DID get along well. They even invited us to their wedding, though we were busy on that day, and well their Episcopalian minister rubs me the wrong way... we're Lutheran, and he always tried to convert us."
Serenity slowly nodded. This was likely reality altering to give the Pack and the Pride a history... one that now looked like they had years of peaceful coexistence in Glendale. Serenity chalked that up as a victory for her. The Pack and the Pride would likely continue to expand in the coming days and years, which to her she didn't like, but if they weren't going to threaten anyone and that the transformations would be willing... she couldn't really argue, and for the moment, she was too tired to even consider it.
"Have you been up all night?" Jacob asked when he saw Serenity yawn.
"The case has been a long and hard one," Serenity answered, "It's kept me up many a long night."
"Come in," Marie nearly ordered, "we have a guest bed you can use to rest on. After protecting our son, it's the least we can offer... and it looks like you're too tired to safely drive anywhere."
"Thank you," Serenity sighed.
++++++
"How have they slept?" Kaylee asked Martha a few moments after Fox and Elise's children took the human children back to their families.
"Not well, I'm afraid," Martha whimpered, "Bart, Jenny, Kevin, and Marcy have spent much of their time worrying over you and Master Jensen and Mr. P, and Alice since her return from the island with the last of the wounded wolves has worried a bit about Samantha. Having them read a bit was my only solution to keep them calm."
"How is Samantha?"
"Recovering," Martha answered, "which is all I can say. Mistress Fran stayed with her until the wounded started coming in."
Kaylee then yawned and looked down at her pups and Alice.
"I think it's time everyone got some sleep," Kaylee spoke, "Kurse put us all through the wringer, and I'm sure there are still other problems to fix, or at least deal with. Which will be much easier to do when we're all rested."
"Of course, Mistress Kaylee," Martha bowed her heads to her Alpha Female, of ten years in her memory.
+++++++
The humans on Big Bad Island, along with glass Marie returned to the yacht that had reappeared in perfect condition from where Kurse had sank it. The pain and horror that Kurse had put them through was still there, of course, but having their children reunited with them, even if one was no longer human, and actually seeing a seemingly natural transformation of the island did seem to put them at ease. The growing trees and flowers on the island weren't growing in a way that nature would do, but through Marie's powers... it didn't carry the dark evil that Kurse did. It now actually looked pretty.
"So how long will we stay here?" one man asked the ship's captain.
"For a while," the captain answered, "I need some sleep after everything, and I doubt the other families will be in a hurry to go anywhere. Once do, I think we have enough fuel to make it back to New Zealand... though only just barely."
"What will you say to Ms. Hart and Ms. Moon's families when we arrive?" the first mate wondered, "seeing as how they just joined those wolves..."
"I wouldn't think they'd be there..." the captain sighed, "both of them admitted they "gold-digging" for a rich husband to begin with... if someone shows up looking for them... I suppose we'd have to tell them the truth, if not, I'd say it should be up to THEM what to tell their families."
The first mate only nodded.
+++++
"Your recruitment slogans are weird," Mary spoke to Ulysses as she laid down beside him beneath a tree growing near the beach among a bed of flowers, some tropical, some not, "and what's wrong with unions?"
"I don't know," Ulysses shrugged, "I think Mistress Kaylee came up with it while we were still brainwashed... although, for us, some of it wouldn't matter. Weren't unions created to protect workers from greedy and cruel CEOs?"
"In a way," Mary nodded, "mostly to give them a collective voice that the employers couldn't simply ignore."
"Well..." Ulysses continued, "Master Jensen cares deeply for his Pack... he'd do anything to protect and care for them and by extension its friends. If other employers did the same for their employees, unions wouldn't be necessary... but then, I guess not every employer is that altruistic toward his workers..."
Mary nodded while simultaneously yawning, remembering an incident that took place a few years ago. Her parents had taken her to the zoo, along with Jensen, Darla, Fran, Julie, Alice, Abbey, and Samantha. Outside the lion enclosure, she had heard some of the normal lionesses talking about something in the natural language, and had wandered in to figure out what they were talking about. The male in the enclosure noticed her and attacked, as any male lion would with cubs that weren't his. She remembered seeing both her daddy and Jensen hurdling the safety rail and driving the male lion back, before it and the other females in the enclosure were tranquilized. Both of them came away from that with some claw marks, and Mary remembered being grounded for a week for going into the enclosure.
It was a strange memory, as she knew Jensen hadn't been Jensen long enough for that to have actually happened, and she'd been a lion cub for an even shorter period of time. But the memory did show that Jensen cared for those regarded as friends to his pack to leap into an enclosure that housed animals larger then him to protect a child that wasn't even his own species, let alone his own child.
Mary barely noticed Fox and Elise's four cubs by Gary and her own father arrive to lay beside her while Ulysses rested his own eyes in a guarding position.
++++++
"Will we be going home soon, Mommy?" Abbey asked, "the humans are going home. Marie is going with them."
"We will," Julie told her, "but I think we should let everyone rest a bit. Kurse put everybody through so much, and we're all recovering. Sarah and Ulysses are looking after Mary and Fox and Elise's cubs... and they look they're powering down for the "night". Sunny and Luna are powering down, both from the battle and their most recent transformation into the Pack. Betty said that the gem wolves are going to sleep and rest... and we can not return until everyone is awake. We might as well get some rest ourselves."
Abbey nodded, "The flowers look pretty. Almost like Jenny's back home."
Julie and Darla looked at the flowers growing on the island. It seemed to be alive again with magic... but not the darkness Kurse had... as if Marie had made it living with white magic now.
"They do," Darla nodded, "maybe if no one nukes the place we could turn this island into a resort for the Pack and the Pride and any other animal people still out there. Although we will need to bring the deer back to the estate... but that can wait for a while."
Abbey and Julie nodded when they heard a voice sing somewhere on the island.
"I feel pretty! Oh so pretty! I feel pretty and witty and gay!"
"Amethyst," Julie and Darla sighed.
++++++
It was nearly three PM when Penny rolled over on the large bed that easily supported her muscular weight, along with Kirk's. The two of them had returned with Jeff and Gloria to their home and had a large meal of fish. Which puzzled Penny to some extent. Lions, like most big cats ate red meat. Wildebeest, Zebra, Cape Buffalo, even young Elephants and Rhinos, and occasionally Giraffes if one of them was careless, along with other large animals of Africa. Lions didn't fish. The other thing that puzzled Penny was that each of them downed about four pounds of fish at one sitting, easily. And Penny remembered only being able to a little over one pound when she was Penn... but then, as Penn she had weighed a little over two hundred pounds. Now as Penny, she weighed over three hundred pounds, and much of it was muscle. She guessed her larger size required more food to feed it adequately, and by extension that included the rest of the pride.
She rolled over to see Kirk still asleep. His tail laying over hers, his golden brown tuft of fur tickling her left foot. Looking at him, she wondered what their cubs would look like in the future. It would replace the sense of defeat at failing to save the gallery prisoners from the wolves. Thinking of that, Penny sighed and pulled herself up and moved into her wheelchair, largely using her upper body strength, which was far greater then what she had had as Penn. She would check with the station to see how the raid on the Smith's went.
She rolled her wheelchair quietly to a hall phone, so not to disturb her sleeping mate and soon to be parents-in-law, and dialed the station's number.
"Hello?" came a voice on the other end, not Gill's.
"This is Penny," Penny spoke, "Is Gill there?"
"Gill's taken the day off," the voice answered, "something about being up really late last night."
"Dealing with the Smiths?" Penny asked.
"Is something wrong with them?"
"They're wolves!" Penny gasped, unaware of the battle that went on while she recovered and reunited Kirk with his folks.
"Yes, and one of the Pack is here," the voice answered, "white fur, red markings... like brush strokes, sleeping on a bench. According to the note Gill left, she, Paul, and Trevor went through quite a battle with something during the night. So did the rest of the Pride, though I don't have much in the way of details. Most of them are at the Smith manor right now for some reason. I was just about to get someone to drive the wolf girl home."
"No, keep her there for now," Penny spoke, "I need to talk with her."