CHAPTER 5
Blayne skated into the office. Sitting on her desk was an enormous cup from her favorite smoothie place and a cardboard box most likely filled with her favorite nonsugar donuts from the Healthy Eating Bakery two doors down. A place Gwen said she wouldn’t go into with a gun to her head because she hated, “All those damn hippies.” In Gwen’s mind, anyone who didn’t eat meat was a hippie. But Blayne went to the bakery for yummy treats made without sugar.
It hadn’t taken Blayne long to figure out that sugar and/or caffeine in her system was a one-way ticket to a night in jail. For most people it was liquor or hard drugs, but Blayne had additional issues, so she avoided all of them as much as possible, especially on workdays.
Gwen sat at her desk, and Mitch, half awake and probably not happy about having to be at their office so early, sat in the only other guest chair they could fit in the room.
“Hi, Blayne.” Gwen smiled at her. “How’s it going?”
“Fine,” she muttered, keeping her head down. Was Blayne milking the fact her friend felt awful about what she said for all it was worth? Um . . . yeah!
“Look, Blayne.” Gwen stood and walked over to her while Blayne dropped her bag to the floor and began digging through it to get out her work clothes. “I’m really sorry about yesterday. Of course the Babes aren’t trading you or removing you or replacing you or anything. Cherry won’t hear of it.”
Blayne shrugged—pathetically, she thought—and kept pulling out clothes trying to find her cargo pants.
“And Mitch is sorry, too. Right, Mitchell?” Gwen asked through clenched teeth.
“What? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I’m sorry, Blayne. I should have kept my mouth shut.”
“It’s no big deal,” Blayne said, standing.
“It is,” Gwen said. “You know I’m loyal to you, Blayne. And I think if we train together until the championships, outside team trainings, it’ll be fine. It’ll be better than fine. It’ll be great.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Come on, Blayne. You know I don’t mind and it’ll be good for me, too. We can practice before work in the mornings.”
Stealing from Novikov, Blayne said, “I’m not sure I can fit that into my current schedule.”
“Schedule? What schedule? When have you ever had a schedule except the work one I give you every morning?”
“I’m talking about the schedule I now have that allows me to train with Bo Novikov. In the mornings, before work. You know, to help toughen me up so I’m not such a weak link for the team.”
Feeling smug but working really hard not to show it, Blayne stood, her work clothes in her hand. Gwen blinked at her, confused, while Mitch had his mouth open, his eyes wide. “I’ve gotta change. Got that job over at that barbershop on Twenty-eighth. Backed up sinks, I think.” She nodded, looked between the two siblings, and said, “Okay. See ya.”
She skated out of the office and to the first-floor bathrooms. By the time she’d changed into her work clothes, Blayne was grinning ear to ear. She simply couldn’t help it. She hadn’t had that much fun in a while.
Giggling to herself, Blayne walked out of the bathroom, squealing a little when Mitch latched on to her arm and dragged her into one of the first-floor conference rooms. They weren’t alone, though. Now the wild dogs were involved. Of course, it was their building that B&G Plumbing had their offices in but, more important, she loved when the wild dogs were involved. Everything took on a whole new level of crazy when they were!
Mitch dragged her to the front of the room before he released her. “Have you lost your mind?” he demanded.
“You’ll have to be more specific.”
Jess, the only one sitting, her large belly keeping her far back from the conference table, ducked her head and began to rub her nose.
“Mitch—” Gwen said, trying to end this quickly, but Mitch was on a roll and it wasn’t even nine a.m. yet. He held his hand up to cut his sister off.
“Blayne.” And he said her name with all types of concern. “This is Bo Novikov we’re talking about here. The Marauder. He doesn’t train anyone.”
“Except me.”
“Yeah, sweetie.” He placed his hand on her shoulder, and a small part of her—a small part she had control of after lots of anger management classes—wanted to bite his fingers clean off. “But at what price?”
“I’m going to help him.”
“Help him with what? Orgasms?”
Blayne curled her hand into a fist under the sweat clothes she still held. She made sure to dig her fingers into her palm so that she didn’t laugh. When she knew she had control, she asked, “He didn’t say that specifically, but there was some mention of a morning protein drink. I said, ‘I hope you like strawberry!’”
“Blayne!”
She waved away his concern. “Look, he’s actually really nice.”
“See, you already have me worried, Blayne. The Marauder is not nice. He’s what our mom would call a motherfucker. He’s a motherfucker on the ice and, from what I’ve seen and heard, a motherfucker off it.”
“I heard he threw a guy off a building once,” Phil added in for no reason that Blayne could see.
“We’ll be underground at the Sports Center,” she clarified, making Jess and Gwen snort.
“I heard he went after a fan with his hockey stick,” Danny tossed in. “And I mean his hockey stick. Hockey stick isn’t a euphemism for penis.”
Yup! She loved the wild dogs!
“Would you two shut up?” Mitch snapped.
“Watch mouth, cat,” Sabina warned, “or I remove your tongue.”
“Don’t you see, Blaynie.” Mitch put his arm around her shoulders. “You’re like an illegitimate little sister that I never wanted.”
“Thanks?”
“And I want to keep you safe and sound, not sexually abused by sports stars.” He pulled her in close, cutting off her ability to breathe. “Novikov isn’t going to help you, Blayne. He’s going to use you.”
“But Gwenie said I should do whatever I have to when it comes to the team.”
“I’m sure she didn’t mean—”
“If the rest of us,” Gwen cut in, “can put out to get our team to the next level, I don’t see why Blayne can’t.”
Jess had to turn her chair around so she wasn’t facing Mitch, and Mitch looked seconds from his head exploding off his body.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Don’t yell,” Gwen said. “No need to yell. Blayne just understands what she has to do. For the team. Right, Blayne?”
“Right!”
“Now come on. We’ve got to get to work.”
“Wait a minute!” Mitch yelled. “You can’t just walk away! This conversation isn’t done!”
Ulrich Van Holtz rolled out of bed and, scratching his head and yawning, made his way out of his bedroom, down his hallway, and into his living room, grabbing the remote off the coffee table. Morning news and fresh coffee would get his day started, so he could face the lunch rush at the restaurant and hockey practice with the team that night.
About to press the button that would turn on all the different pieces of equipment that made up his home theater, Ric jumped instead, barely keeping his grip on the sleek device in his hand when he heard, “You wanted to see me?”
Ric closed his eyes and waited until his heart rate slowed down. As with all Van Holtz pups, Ric had been trained from birth to be aware of three things: When filet mignon was a perfect medium-rare, when it was the right time to sell stocks, and when a predator was lurking around one’s home. As his restaurant reviews and personal financial portfolio revealed, Ric had mastered the first two. And he’d always felt he’d mastered the third as well.
Until he met Dee-Ann Smith.
He’d met some “lurky types,” as Blayne liked to call them, nearly every day, but none had compared with the thirty-four-year-old She-wolf who didn’t seem to let little things like titanium doors, heavily armed guards, or lethal laser protection get in her way of entering wherever she felt the need to enter. And since his penthouse suite at the top of the Van Holtz towers had lesser versions of that level of security, he guessed he shouldn’t continually be surprised by her sudden appearances in his home.
Feeling calmer, Ric faced Dee-Ann. Like most shifters, he slept naked, but Dee-Ann never seemed to notice, so he didn’t bother scrambling to put on clothes. As far as Ric was concerned, it was the risk she took if she was going to just show up in people’s houses unannounced.
“I did want to see you . . . two days ago.”
“Busy. Watcha want?”
“I wanted to check in about—”
“Teacup?”
“I prefer we call her Blayne, but yes.”
The six-two She-wolf shoved her hands into the front pockets of her jeans. It was cold out, mid-February, which meant that Dee-Ann’s jeans, Coors T-shirts, and cowboy boots had turned into jeans, a Led Zeppelin sweatshirt, and cowboy boots with an oversized leather bomber jacket, EGGIE sewn in on the front, in case the near-freezing temperatures made Dee chilly.
“We’re wastin’ our time on her.”
“Yes. You’ve said this before. Many, many, many times. But as far as the Group and I are concerned, she’s a prime target.”
“No one’s taking that girl.” Dee rolled her eyes. “She wouldn’t even be good for breedin’.”
As much as Ric worshipped the ground Dee-Ann Smith walked on, he still refused to take her shit on this one issue.
A few months back, Dee-Ann had found out that Blayne’s name had been sold to a fighting ring that liked to use shifter hybrids for their events. In the past six months, they’d found more than two dozen bodies all over the tri-state area. Some of them were still in shifted form, some human, all of them chewed up and spit out. A few still wearing their thick leather collars, complete with spikes. A few had died during the fight; others had been put down after. All of them had been male, but females had been taken.
Some assumed they’d been taken for breeding, but Ric didn’t think it was that simple. It wasn’t like breeding pit bulls or rottweilers, where the puppies grew up into fighting dogs within a year or two. The pups of shifters wouldn’t be useful for years, their ability to shift not happening until they hit puberty. The only ones with fighting potential at a young age were the hyenas. They were the only shifters born with their fangs, but the young were kept close to home just for this reason. And no one with two working brain cells was going to try to get into a hyena den to grab up a few of their young. Absolutely no one was that stupid.
No, Ric didn’t think they wanted the female hybrids for breeding. He felt they wanted them for fighting, she-predators in general being more vicious than males. They had to be. Often, they weren’t merely protecting themselves but their young as well.
And a small fortune had been given to the scumbag who’d sold Blayne’s name, so Ric refused to believe anyone was giving up on her now.
“You know when I signed up for this, Niles Van Holtz said I wasn’t going to be hemmed in.”
“I’m not hemming you in, Dee-Ann. I’m telling you to do your job. I’m not telling you how to do it, just to do it. You and Uncle Van decided not to tell Blayne she was a target, but that means you and your team have to work harder to protect her because she doesn’t know to protect herself.”
“That was your uncle’s idea, not mine.”
Actually, Niles Van Holtz, Uncle Van, was his older cousin, but that was neither here nor there at the moment.
“I’ll make this simple for you. I want regular updates on Blayne. Where she is, what she’s doing, and who she’s doing it with. I want you to do your job, Dee-Ann. It’s that simple.”
Perfect full lips briefly pursed, before Dee said, “As you like.” It was her nice Southern way of saying, “I’ll do it, but fuck you,” but if it got Ric what he wanted, he’d overlook the tone.
He faced his home theater again and used the remote to turn it on. “You want breakfast?” he offered, ready to ease her anger with food. But when he looked over his shoulder at where she’d been standing, she was already gone.
“On three. One, two . . . three.”
Gwen and Blayne pulled, yanking the warped door open. The dank smell of mold and damaged plumbing hit them, and the pair turned their heads. “Okay,” Gwen said when she could speak without gagging, “maybe we should have listened to my mother about joining the family business.”
Blayne laughed. “The smell’s not that bad, princess.”
“You are such a canine about scents.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Gwen motioned to the hallway behind them with a tip of her head. “Anyone around?”
Blayne looked, then sniffed. “Nope.”
Without a witnessing audience, Gwen walked into the pitch-black room without using the flashlight she had with her. Why waste the batteries when she could see just fine without it?
Gwen found the water-damaged wall that was right beneath where the barbershop and hair salon had their sinks. “Found it.”
Blayne nodded. “Yep. That looks kind of long term, huh?”
“Pretty much.” Gwen dropped her tool bags onto the floor and reached into one to pull out her sledgehammer. Blayne did the same, the friends standing beside each other. Gwen started, swinging the sledgehammer over her head and into the wall. As she pulled back, Blayne swung. They kept this up until they’d destroyed a good portion of the wall, revealing very old pipes that were dripping from several spots and pouring from others.
“Okay,” Gwen said, studying the damage. “Now torturing Mitch aside, what’s the real deal with Novikov?”
Blayne gave a little laugh. “I kind of railroaded the guy.”
“You, Blayne?” Gwen said with mock shock. “Never!”
“Well he was standing there, being all judgmental about derby—and me!—and I figured why couldn’t he help me out since he’d put me into this situation?”
“And how did he do that?”
“By being everything that I am against when it comes to sports and—”
“Please stop. I can’t hear that speech again.”
“Hey, look!”
“Blayne, wait—”
Too late. Blayne reached into the crevice and pulled out something breathing.
“A possum!”
“It looks like a giant rat.”
“It’s not a rat. It’s a possum. It’s so obvious you’ve never been to the South.”
“What’s down there but chitlins and giant rats they’ve renamed possum?”
Grinning, Blayne scratched the disgusting looking thing under the neck. “Isn’t he cute?”
“Not even a little. And are you really going to be okay with Novikov? I mean, for once, Mitch does have a point. The Marauder’s reputation is for shit.”
Blayne snorted. “I can handle him.”
Gwen had no idea why Blayne felt so confident about that, but Gwen knew there was no point in arguing with her about it, either. Blayne could be unbelievably stubborn when she dug her feet in. And, hell, if the hockey player could give Blayne even a few useful tips, Gwen wouldn’t complain. The wolfdog had tons of potential, but the team could no longer ignore the fact that unless Blayne was pushed into a corner—something that made her homicidal—she was too damn nice.
And of all the things Gwen had heard about Bo Novikov over the years, she’d never heard the word “nice” used.
“Are you going to put that thing down, or am I fixing this by myself?”
Blayne frowned. “He seems awfully small. Maybe we should feed him.”
Feed him? Any other predator would be thinking of eating him. But Gwen knew better than to say that because that way lay tears and mucus and hysterical screams of, “How could you even suggest that?”
Not in the mood for any of that bullshit, Gwen offered, “Maybe it’s just a baby or something.”
“You think?” Blayne leaned into the crevice again.
“Blayne, please be careful. Remember last—”
“Badger!”
“Ow!” Blayne glared at the She-wolf nurse standing behind her, forcing the hypodermic into the skin beside her right shoulder blade. “Painful!” she snapped.
“Then maybe, brilliance, you shouldn’t get into fights with rats. You wouldn’t need this precaution to prevent infections if you just did that.”
“It was a badger,” Blayne ground out, her teeth clenched tight. “Not a rat. And how was I to know that there was a possum and a badger in that hole?”
“How many times is that now anyway?” The She-wolf snapped the needle off the hypodermic before disposal. “That you’ve ended up on the wrong side of a badger fight?”
“It’s not my fault. It’s the badgers’ fault. They’re out to get me. All of them. They hate me.”
The nurse stood in front of her. She hated this woman, when Blayne hated so few.
“Badgers . . . hate you?” she asked with that condescending tone that made Blayne want to rip her throat out.
“Yes.”
“Uh-huh. I see why you’re always current on your rabies vaccines. You’re a walking disaster.”
“How is this good bedside manner? I’m almost positive this is what I’d call bad bedside manner.”
Blayne didn’t understand why every time she had to come into the emergency room of this hospital, she had to deal with Nurse Mengele. Blayne didn’t know if the She-wolf hated dogs so much or just hybrids in general, but their conversations had gotten pretty hostile lately.
“Why are you still in my ER, stray?” Nurse Fun demanded. “Don’t you have to go beg for treats or something?”
Her good nature gone, Blayne snapped back, “Are those the real size of your thighs or do you stuff your pants to distract everyone from your face?”
Fangs burst from gums and the two canines snarled and snapped at each other until a bear walked into the room.
“What the hell is going on?”
Nurse Death stepped back. “Nothing, Doctor. But we have people who need the room and someone isn’t leaving.”
“I’m guessing that someone is you.” The doctor motioned across the hall. “They need you in room six.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
The She-wolf glared and Blayne sneered back.
The doctor raised a brow at Blayne after Nurse McBitchy-son was gone. “I can’t leave you alone for two seconds.”
“She started it!”
Doctor Iona MacRyrie, Lock’s older sister and amazing sow, shook her head and laughed. “You say that every time.” Placing her hands under Blayne’s chin, she lifted her face. “Honestly, Blayne. A rat did this?”
“It was a badger.”
“The badgers have made a return I see. For a while it was . . . what was it again?”
“Squirrels.”
“Ah, yes. Squirrels were out to get you.”
“Just one. But he was crafty . . . and mean.”
“Perhaps, Blayne, and this is just a suggestion, you should leave the small-prey animals alone unless you plan to eat them.”
Iona turned Blayne’s head one way and another. “I’ll give you something to put on these lacerations on your face.”
“Okay.”
Blayne had first met the doctor at a small dinner party thrown by Iona’s parents announcing the engagement of her brother to Gwen. But they didn’t really speak, Iona spending most of her time trying to control her cubs. A week later, though, they’d met again when Blayne had ended up in the ER after a vicious run-in with an alley cat. Not a lioness Blayne was insulting by calling an alley cat . . . an actual alley cat. Iona wasn’t the ER doctor when Blayne came in, but a neurosurgeon at the shifter-run McMillian Presbyterian Hospital that happened to be on her way home for the night when she’d passed a bleeding Blayne trying to remove the psychotic animal still attached to the back of her head.
Twelve visits later, they had become quite chummy.
“What did Nurse Fun give me a shot for?” Blayne asked, the spot where the needle had entered beginning to hurt.
“I have no idea. Tetanus, perhaps?”
“I got that a while ago and it went into my thigh. You know I’m up on all my shots. That should be in my chart.”
“I’m sure it was preventative.” Iona stepped back. “I don’t know what it is about you two, but I doubt she’s trying to poison you.”
Blayne wasn’t so sure. “Can I go?”
“Yes.” Iona pulled out a prescription pad from her doctor’s coat and scribbled something down. “Put this on your face after washing. Keep the area clean. It takes longer for your lacerations to heal, so keep that in mind.”
“Okay.” Blayne took the prescription. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. You need a lift home? I’m off in a few minutes.”
“Gwen can take me.”
Iona folded her arms over her chest and stared down at Blayne, one brow raised.
“She deserted me, didn’t she?”
“She accuses me of being ‘one of those butchers’ and refers to this hospital as a death trap. So what do you think, Blayne?”
“I’d think that when she said ‘Good luck surviving that death trap’ after throwing me out of the truck that she would have stayed around to ensure that I survived the death trap!”
The team left the ice, the sound of their skates marching back to their locker room echoing through the halls.
Ric stopped and looked back at the rink. He shook his head and glanced over at Lock who stood next to him.
“He’s a fucking machine,” Lock muttered. “He never stops.”
Truer words had never been spoken.
Together the friends watched the hybrid continue to run drills. They watched for about five minutes, then they headed to the locker room and left Bo “The Marauder” Novikov alone on the ice—exactly where he seemed to belong.