Beast Behaving Badly (15 page)

Keeping that firmly in mind, Smitty said, “What did you do to her, Shaw?”

As soon as Smitty asked that, Blayne released the death grip she had on Mitch's hair.

The lion, now free, spun around and said, “
Me?
I didn't do anything!”

“You all right, Blayne?”

“I am not having sex with Bo Novikov!”

Not the answer Smitty had been expecting, but . . . all right then.

“I see.” Smitty placed her on the floor. “And you're telling me that because . . .”

“Because he's about to do something really stupid!” Not exactly new for Mitch Shaw.

Massaging his damaged scalp, Mitch moved away from Blayne and hid behind Sissy like a two-year-old. “I was only going over there to talk to him. I was bringing Sissy for protection.”

Sissy's eyes crossed, and Blayne said, “I know you, Mitchell Shaw. First you tell Sissy. Then Ronnie and Bren—then your mother.”

“We only want to protect you.”

“I don't need protection from Bo Novikov. You guys just misunderstand him. He's really sweet!”

“See?” Mitch crowed. “Do you see?”

“Shut up, Mitch! He's been great. Helping me with derby, making sure I eat—he even cleaned my apartment.”

Smitty immediately locked gazes with his sister. They'd always been close and understood what the other was thinking without actually having to say the words.

“Um . . .” Sissy began. “Why now did he clean your apartment?”

“It might have been a little messy . . . and I was passed out on the couch.”

Suddenly getting worried, Smitty asked, “What do you mean you were passed out on the couch?”

“It was after the badger attack—”

Sissy raised her hand, cutting Blayne off. “Badger attack?”

“They're trying to destroy me.”

Sissy's entire body jerked.
“Badgers?”

“Don't judge me!”
Blayne yelled seconds before she burst into tears and ran back into the kitchen, the wild dogs following after her.

Sissy turned on her mate, slapping him in the back of the head. “This is your fault, Mitchell Shaw!”

“My fault? I wasn't the one subtly questioning her wolf prowess by repeating the word badger over and over again!”

“I'm not talking to you anymore!” Sissy yelled, heading off to the kitchen and a sobbing Blayne.

Mitch was right behind her, too. “Yeah, right. How long will that nirvana last?”

Smitty sat down on the third step of the stairs. He sighed and said to the wolfdog pup Dee had left at the house a few days before, “I understand more and more every day why you won't shift to human.”

Abby made a little whining sound and kindly dropped a Milkbone into Smitty's lap. “Aww, thanks, darlin'.”

 

 

Lock was cutting through the practice rink, hoping they could get done with practice early today, when he stopped midstride. Lock focused his gaze on the ground and wondered if he'd seen what he thought he'd seen. Deciding it was best to check before moving into the team's locker room, he looked up at the support beam that went from the very basement of the building and straight up into the full-human portion until it reached the roof. Although, in this instance, Lock didn't really need to see the entire pillar. What he saw was quite enough since that was the portion his best friend and team captain was attached to.

Frowning in confusion, Lock asked, “Are you up there for a reason?”

“I'm up here for a reason,” Ric calmly replied, “but I'm not up here on purpose.”

“If you're not up there on purpose, then why are you up there?”

“Because some hybrids have issues with rage.”

“You made Blayne mad?” That seemed strange. Blayne had an incredibly high tolerance for other people's issues. However, when she did hit a wall, she hit it with all the power she had and usually took the wall down.

“No, no. Not Blayne. Another hybrid.” Ric glanced over at the ice, and Lock followed his gaze to Bo Novikov skating backward around the rink while he worked on his drills. That shifter was on the ice every day whether they had a practice planned or not. If he wasn't on the ice, he was in the gym. He really worked to be as good as he was, making Lock feel a little lazy for not working nearly as hard. Then again, he saw hockey as a fun diversion that helped pay for his studio and woodworking equipment. If he never got on the ice again, Lock wouldn't lose any sleep. Novikov, on the other hand, seemed like the kind of guy who would play hockey on some backwoods frozen lake somewhere until he died of old age.

“What did you say to him?”

“I simply asked about his intentions toward Blayne. He told me it was none of my business; I strongly suggested it was; and it was downhill from there.”

“Downhill or uphill?”

“Lachlan.”

“All right. All right. No need to get hysterical.”

“I'm not hysterical.” He wasn't. Not even a little, but it was fun to act like he was. “I'm just uncomfortable.”

“He has a hell of an aim to get you right on that hook, too.”

“Yes. We're all impressed by Novikov's aim.”

“How long have you been up there?”

“Long enough.”

“I can't believe you let him put you up there.”

“What can I say? I was weak, didn't even put up much of a fight as you can see from the bruises on my face and knuckles. Yeah, I just
let
the seven-one, nearly four-hundred-pound, bear-lion hybrid descended from the very loins of Genghis Khan
toss me onto this goddamn hook
!”

“
Now
you're kind of hysterical.”

“I know!”
Ric took a breath. “Now are you getting me down or not?”

“I would, but I can't climb very well. Maybe if I was still ten—”

“Calm down. Calm down.”

Lock sized up the teammates walking by him and tapped the arm of one. “Hey. Bert. Can you help us out?”

Bert lumbered over to his side. “Sure. Whatcha need?”

“Can you get our mighty team captain down?”

Bert looked up. “Huh. I didn't know wolves could climb that high.”

“They can't. The polar-lion tossed him up there.”

“What's he doing fighting a guy six times bigger than him?”

“Got me.” Lock leaned against the pole. “Hey, Ric. Bert wants to know—”

“The yelling seems unnecessary,” Bert observed.

“That was my thought.” Lock stepped back from the pole. “Can you get him down?”

“Yeah. Sure.” Bert handed Lock his duffel bag and grabbed the beam. He climbed it easily, not even breaking a sweat, but he was a black bear. And an almost typical one, too. He didn't have much height at six feet but he made up for it in width. Lock remembered Gwen softly stating one day that Bert was, “a low wall that skates.”

Bert reached Ric in seconds and gripped the beam with one arm and both legs while using his free hand to lift the annoyed wolf off the hook he'd been tossed onto. “I'm sending him down,” Bert called out.

“Okay.” Lock stepped back a little farther and blinked when Ric hit the ground.

“I thought you were going to catch him,” Bert said.

“You didn't say I needed to catch him. You said you were sending him down. You should have been more specific.”

“You're right. That was a hell of a drop, though, for a little dog.” Still gripping the beam, Bert leaned over. “You all right, little dog? Can you hear me?”

Ric muttered something, but Lock couldn't really understand him with his face smashed into the floor like that, so he lifted him up.

“What did you say?”

“I said, I hate all of you.”

“Why? We didn't toss you up there.”

“Exactly,” Bert agreed as he came down the beam. He took his bag back from Lock. “We were the ones who helped you. We could have left you up there.”

“Yep. You should be grateful.”

Ric limped away, muttering something about “bastard bears.”

“Canines are so moody,” Bert commented as they walked toward the team locker room.

“And totally ungrateful.”

 

 

Practice ended early, most likely because the team captain kept going on and on about how his face hurt from that thirty-foot drop he'd taken.
Whiner.
And with the team gone, Bo once again had the ice to himself.

Using his stick, he kept the puck in front of him and skated a figure-eight pattern, looping around and behind the goals, picking up speed as he went along. To be honest, he never tired of this. He could stay on the ice for days at a time and he'd be happy.

Speeding into the goal crease, seconds from sending the puck down to the opposite end, Bo almost rammed into the net when he saw Blayne skate through the doors. She had on her helmet, elbow and knee pads, and fingerless leather gloves. The kind Bo used when he did weight training.

Forgetting the puck—perhaps for the first time in his life—Bo skated over to her.

“Hi. What happened to your face?” She had a cut open on the side of her head and a line of blood trickling down her jaw.

“Huh?” She touched her face. “Oh. That. It's nothing. I got it during team practice.”

“Not paying attention again?”

“Can we talk about that later?”

“Okay. So what's up?”

“Uh . . . there's a strong possibility lion males may be coming to kill you. Okay . . . bye!” She turned to skate off, and Bo grabbed the back of her sweatshirt. She kept skating for about a minute before she gave up completely, arms falling limply at her sides.

“Are you going to tell me why lion males are trying to kill me?”

“I didn't say are. I said maybe.” She faced him. “For them to rally up enough energy to get off their lazy asses and drive up here . . . I'd be more concerned if it were the females. Then I'd just tell ya to get out of town.”

“Blayne.”

“Yeah?”

“What's going on?”

That's when she exploded with, “I'm sorry!”

“Okay.”

“I am so, so,
so
sorry!”

The workings of the Blayne Thorpe mind. If he wanted a straight answer, he'd have to ask her for one. “Maybe you should tell me what happened first before you apologize any more, otherwise I'm sensing we'll be here all night.”

“It's Mitch's fault,” she began.

“Okay.” He waited a few seconds, then asked, “Who's Mitch again?”

“Gwen's brother.”

“Okay.”

“He's a big fan.”

“Okay.”

“Except that year you were with Dallas. He hated you that year.”

“He wouldn't be the first from Philly to feel that way. And so Mitch . . .” he pushed when she remained silent.

“Oh. Right. See, this is what happened. I was over at Jess's house and she's pregnant and kinda feeling down because you know it's never easy and I think she's just really tired and feels left out and this is her first pup so I'm sure it'll be better when she has a few more, which apparently she and Smitty are planning to do and anyway, I was trying to make her feel better, which is a definite problem of mine, not the making feel better thing but what I do to make people feel better, which is talk . . . a lot . . . and before I knew it I told her and the rest of her Pack about us having breakfast this morning with Bernie and they immediately began to think we were going out and I was telling them that you are not one of my gentleman callers but they didn't believe me and while I was trying to explain that no, you weren't, in comes Mitch and he hears just enough to blow it all out of proportion and I tried to stop him before he came over here and got himself killed, and I had him in my jaws of death hold but he's a male lion and it wasn't as effective on him as it is on his sister and I told him to keep his mouth shut but he didn't and now everyone in Philly thinks you're taking advantage of me and all the O'Neill males are in a rage because I'm like family, and I'm really sorry about all this.”

Nope. He'd never heard anyone talk that fast while creating the longest run-on sentence in human history—and doing it all in one breath. Bo was fascinated.

“You're not saying anything,” she observed.

“After all that, what is there to say—”

“I understand.”

“—other than . . . exactly how many gentlemen callers do you have that I'm not actually
one
of them?”

“Currently, I don't have any gentlemen callers, but I could at any moment. However, it is not a title given out lightly.”

“And what does one have to do to be one of your gentlemen callers?”

“Why are you asking?”

“Just makes sense. If we start going out, I can't actually be taking advantage of you.”

Blayne straightened up. “Going out? You mean like on a date?”

“Whatever you call your time out with gentlemen callers. Date works.”

“You want to go out on a date with me?”

Bo shrugged. “Might as well.”

 

 

Might as well?
Was that the best the man could do? Might as well?

Before Blayne could show him exactly what she thought about his level of enthusiasm—or lack thereof—Bo continued, “I've already got lions coming after me and that idiot Van Holtz getting in my face.”