"This is what you left," he said. "And this is what you have here in Australia right now." He drew Nicholas and I over our Pack, Allesandro over his Coven Leaders in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth, and the decentralized mermaid families along the coast. "No lines," he said. "There never have been."

"Why not?"

"Don't look at me. I didn't know about either of these kinds until this week," Nicholas said.

"Because our history in this Colony was different than the Americas, or Europe," Allesandro said. "I grew up and was turned in London in the seventeenth century. My leader sent me here; I arrived in Sydney in 1805....