Sharkbait Down Under

After our ‘retreat,’ it was back to work. I’d continued the morning calls with Leo, Adrienne, Mom, and Dad because there was so much going on, and my family was involved in the Sharkbait Foundation and other activities. My current frustrations dealt with mating meetups. “There’s no way to make the Scratch 'n Sniff into an international meetup, is there,” I said as I looked at the camera.

“It won’t happen at the North American Alpha Summit,” Leo said. “I tried, but it’s too late.”

Adrienne slowly nodded. “The Council Chairman is dead, the Midwest Chairman is retiring, and the Pacific Northwest chairman’s term is up. No one is willing to change anything until a new Council gets voted in, Vicki. That won’t happen until the Summit.”

“Who is going to replace Chairman Wolfe in your region? Unky?”

He just laughed. “Can you imagine Volkov School of Diplomacy in the Council?” We all laughed; he’d be a bull in a china shop. “No, I’ve been lobbying for Larry Winters.”

“Good choice,” I said. Larry and Donna were former Alphas, turning over the Winona Pack to Doug and Jenny Winters two decades ago. Larry had been Leo’s father-in-law after his first mating, and the Winona Pack remained close allies to the Miesville Pack. “How’d you get him to agree to come out of retirement?” Regional chairs were not allowed to be active Alphas, so the pool of candidates was small.

“Given the alternative, he agreed to be drafted.”

That didn’t sound good. “Who else has a hat in the ring?”

“Carl Owens,” Leo said. I shivered; Alpha Owens tried to get control of me twice when I was five, once at the Mall of America and once at the Alpha Summit. He’d also been the one filing charges against Leo that got him arrested, and me silvered, when we arrived for the Summit. “They have an heir that is of age now, and he’s a power-hungry bastard.”

He never got his mantle, but he did mate an Alpha-blooded widow and adopted her ten-year-old son shortly after he failed with me. “That would be bad. He’d set our kind back a century.”

“Agreed,” Adrienne said. “There is a divide in our people between the traditionalists and the modernists. The reformers are the ones willing to consider working with vampires and recognizing the Australian Council. The Alphas are split, so a lot depends on how the Council shakes out after the new votes.”

“And who the new Council Chairman is.” It was a lot of political maneuvering, a game Leo and I didn’t like, but Adrienne excelled. Luna did well pairing those two as second-chance mates. “How is Dorothy doing?”

“Settling in. Dorothy hasn’t met her mate yet, and since she’s an Omega, she can’t attend the Scratch ’n Sniff,” Mom said. “It will be the four of us since no new Betas have come of age.”

“I don’t understand why the Alphas don’t bring ALL their unmated along. It’s not efficient,” Nicholas said.

“Tradition,” Adrienne answered. “In the old days, it was expensive and hazardous to travel to the Summit, so they focused on the Pack leaders.”

I rolled my eyes. “It didn’t take much money or time to bring the Mermaids together, and it was a big success. They are doing another meetup in Florida over spring break, and a dozen Aussies are flying up for it. You don’t have to look past the number of unmated to figure out how inefficient the current practice is.”

Leo nodded. “There’s a selfish reason, Vicki. In almost all cases, the female goes to the male’s Pack and often a lower rank. Some Packs have fewer males than females, based on wars or other factors. Alphas hate losing members, so some prefer their members stay in-house, so to speak, with choice mates. The best way to get that is to let them go years without finding their true mate.”

“I guess I’ll need to push this on my own then,” I said. “I’ll get the European Council on board and ask them to host. The Australian and European Councils can extend the invitation to the North American Alphas next week at the Summit.”

“The Council may not approve it,” Leo said.

“The Council cannot prevent interested wolves from traveling,” I replied. “Look, I’ve got a population of DOZENS of unmated wolves who have never attended a meetup. Add in those freed by choice matings and we’ll have multiple new second-chance mates available. I can’t afford to send my people on a tour of America. You guys slap some sense into them because our people NEED this.”

“I almost wish you were still in the North American Council. You said it better than I could,” Leo replied.

I wasn’t going to their meeting; I was on the Australian Council, and we declared independence from the North American Council. We finished our call, and I called up Lars Svensson, the European Council Chairman. I explained the issue and asked if he would co-sponsor the meetup there. He readily agreed, and after some discussion, we decided to hold it in Dublin, Ireland. The location worked for Lars because there was a major airport and two Packs nearby, and for me because I wanted Philip Corcoran’s descendants to see where they came from in the Wicklow Mountains. Checking my schedule for the Sea Scout filming, we picked a week in June between filming sessions.

I checked in with Linda; they had closed out her apartment and packed most of her stuff onto the Good Times. She brought her editing equipment along but shipped her other gear to New Orleans and the Sea Scout. They’d be leaving for Australia tomorrow, stopping in Hawaii, French Polynesia, Fiji, New Zealand, and Tasmania.

My next call was to the Sea Scout Captain Lynette Dauntless and Engineer Patty Holmes. We caught up on readiness for the first two scientific cruises the Scout would be taking. Our Foundation needed to keep the Scout busy, but we weren’t planning to start filming until mid-March, so the girls and I wouldn’t be along.

When the Sharkbait Foundation publicized the Sea Scout’s availability for short-term research cruises at minimal cost, we got a lot of interest. The ones featuring female scientists and sharks got scheduled with our film crew, while other expeditions filled in around it. The combination kept the Scout’s staff employed and was in keeping with the Foundation’s research focus. It also would shake down the ship before adding the pressures of reality television. Captain Lynette was on top of everything, and I looked forward to her updates.

Nicholas cooked me breakfast while I was on the phone. When we finished eating, we dressed in work clothes and waited for our guests to arrive. We weren’t waiting long. Three vehicles arrived right on time, pulling into parking spaces at our home in the former resort. “Jennifer,” I said as I smiled at our architect. Another six people got out, one being our General Contractor, Zach Perkins. Mrs. Hawthorne introduced us to the five-member Coastal Zoning Commission.

She’d been working overtime to get drawings ready, and last week we’d presented it and our variance requests to the Commission. Due to the complexity of the plans and the variances requested, the Commission wanted a site visit. “This doesn’t fit in at all,” one Commissioner said as she looked at the former resort and its spaceship-like outbuilding.

“Not at all,” I said. I walked the group to the edge of the cliffs in front of our home. Looking back, they could see the buildings we promised to demolish, restoring the land to its original condition. They could look across to the point on the other side of the cove that was our building site. Zach had laid out the outline of the home and attached pool and cottage using stakes and orange tape; wooden poles and yellow rope showed the height of the walls and roof. “That’s a dominating building,” one of the commissioners complained.

“Only when viewed from either side, both of which are private land,” Jennifer replied. “With the shape of the point, the building is long and thin. From out on the ocean, it isn’t as conspicuous as the building beside us. It also helps that the point is at a lower elevation than this section or the adjacent. You’ll see that the surrounding topography reduces the visual impact, especially with our use of native stones that will blend in with the cliffs.” One design decision had been to use the same type of rock on visible portions of the home that made up the bedrock underneath us.

We walked around the cove and onto the point, spending time looking at the layout. “This is a big home, almost a castle,” another said.

“It will be worthy of the land it is on,” I promised. “The property and land will have significant tax valuation when finished, roughly double what it is now. Building in a manner that is historically correct yet modern inside is not cheap.” The architect and general contractor answered questions about construction methods, water storage, solar panels, utilities, and other concerns. You wouldn’t see them from the water because of their placement behind the building or natural features.

We spent thirty minutes at the site as they took pictures and made notes, then we looked from the other side before I led them down to the inlet. We loaded onto a waiting boat that took us out into the Southern Ocean. As we traveled back and forth parallel to the coast at different distances, Jennifer had them go between their eyes and the computer drawings showing the eventual look. I want to think we convinced them that the building would add to the scenery, but we wouldn’t know for another week.

The Commission granted our variances after we agreed to several conditions. The spaceship removal must happen within three months, and this was fine. They wanted two easements on the north side of our property at different elevations through the reserve, allowing them to put in multiple trails. Since there would be no camping overnight, we agreed. Finally, the Commission rearranged our proposed property lines so the coastline on either side of our home would be part of the Sharkbait Foundation nature preserve. Our road would move further up from the coast, and the change would prevent us from building additional homes on the ocean.

The Commission did approve ten single-home subdivisions for future construction, all on five to ten-acre sites. Half were on the western side along the road and had no special restrictions. The sites reaching up the valley from our home had to be single-story and use the same exterior stone. We also got permission for the airstrip and hangar building on the far west end, along with additional home sites. I was thrilled about this, as it would let us build homes for Pack members who wanted to live on Pack land.

We had our deal, and I’d get my dream home. Excavation would begin next week.