“We found her sneaking around the back of the building, trying to find a way in.”
Dee-Ann pursed her lips and sneered a bit.
“Is that right?” Smitty said. “I swear, just any ol’ raggedy thing can come wandering in here, huh?”
His cousin glared at him and he laughed. “Give us a minute, Chuck.”
“You sure? She’s mean. And was carrying this.” He held up the leather holder with the bowie knife inside it. Smitty took it and slid the blade out. At least eight inches and probably a gift from her daddy.
“I’ll take this,” Smitty said about the blade. “And I’ll be fine.”
“Okay. Howl if you need us.”
The coyote left and, rolling her eyes, Dee lifted up her foot and placed it on top of the opposite knee. She pulled a thin piece of metal from the heel of her boot and quickly removed the handcuff from her wrist.
“Damn cy-otes. Gettin’ in my way.”
“I can’t believe they caught you.”
She rubbed her newly freed wrist. “I was busy, didn’t notice them sniffin’ around.”
“You know you had an invitation, darlin’. You could have come in the normal way.”
“I did come in the normal way, and then I went back out again.”
“What for?” Dee opened her mouth and Smitty quickly added, “And don’t lie to me, Dee-Ann. I’m married to a woman who could convince Saint Michael himself that hell is heaven and heaven is Detroit if it would protect her Pack, so don’t think I won’t know if you’re lyin’. Now tell me plain why you’re at my mate’s party if it’s not to be social.”
Dee stood and they met eye to eye. She wasn’t the tallest of the Smith family females, but Lord knew she was the most dangerous.
“I’ve been followin’ somebody and they led me here.”
“Why?” When she only stared at him, he tossed in, “Tell me or I’m callin’ your momma and telling her you broke into the party like some common stray.”
“All right, all right.” She let out a breath. “I may have found a new job.”
“Is that right? A new job that has you huntin’ our kind?” And he couldn’t keep the snide tone out of his voice, which was something he should have thought about a little more so he didn’t get that fist to his face.
Smitty briefly closed his eyes and let out a breath as pain tore through his jaw and bells rang in his head. He’d almost forgotten the kind of strength his cousin had.
“Ow,” he snarled.
“Watch what you say to me, Robert Ray Smith. I don’t take shit from your daddy and ain’t gonna take none from you. I protect my kind. Always have, always will. Just like my daddy before me. But sometimes our kind needs to be protected from within as well as without. Sometimes, there are a few who don’t know what loyalty is.”
Realizing that Dee was the last being on the planet—full-human or wolf—who would ever betray their own, Smitty dropped his head and nodded. “You’re right. And I’m real sorry for what I said.”
That’s when Dee smiled a little and he wondered if she was going to kill him now. “You may look like your daddy, but you sure don’t act like him. Never known that man to apologize ’bout a damn thing, no matter how wrong he is.”
She patted Smitty’s arm, sending him stumbling into the table. He had to remember to brace himself better when dealing with Dee.
He turned and watched her head toward the door. “Where you goin’?”
“To find what I came for before your mate’s little party goes to shit.” She glanced back at him and shrugged nonchalantly. “Although…it may already be too late to bother.”
Mitch was trying his best to untangle the wild dog females and one wolfdog who’d wrapped themselves around him like boa constrictors—trying to prevent him from marching right outside and telling his sister that the whole thing with the bear had been a plot hatched by Blayne “I have no boundaries or sense” Thorpe—when his phone rang.
Snatching it off his sword belt, Mitch snapped, “What?”
He stood up straight, blinking, the words his cousin Trish were hurriedly telling him not quite making sense. Something about his mother and McNelly and revenge and Asiatic lions and…and…a hair salon?
“Mitch?” Sissy asked, the headlock she had Brendon in while Ronnie held on to the cat’s waist, loosening as she watched him. “Darlin’, what’s wrong?”
With her chin resting on Lock’s shoulder, she watched the wolf pup desperately searching for something. He kept trying to cast for a scent, but he was too young to even understand how to separate the hundreds of scents that were surrounding him. When he stopped near her, going on his toes to look over the crowd’s collective head, she couldn’t take it anymore.
“Johnny.” She said his name low so she didn’t get anyone else’s attention. He blinked, startled by her, and tried to slip away. “Get over here,” she snapped.
Letting out a sigh, the kid walked over to her and Gwen sat up straight, Lock looking over his shoulder at Jess’s adopted son.
“Hey, Johnny.”
“Hi, Lock.”
“What’s going on?” Gwen asked, although she already kind of knew.
He shrugged and said, “I’m looking for Kristan.”
Of course he was.
“You two have a fight?”
“Sort of.”
Gwen couldn’t help but smile. “Let me guess…you scared off the full-human she was supposed to meet outside.”
Growling, the kid arrogantly put his hands on narrow hips. “I don’t know what she was thinking!” She’s thinking how can she torture you, but Gwen wouldn’t say that out loud. “I know that kid,” he went on. “He’s a complete scumbag.”
“So she ran off mad.”
“Not quite. She started talking to some wolf. I didn’t know the guy and I told her that and—”
“She completely ignored you. Right. Go on.”
Lock looked away but she could feel his chest move as he quietly chuckled.
“Then they were gone. And we all know the Pack’s going to blame me. It’ll be my fault if something happens to her.” Gwen knew Johnny was more worried about what little Kristan may be up to with another wolf than he was about his mom’s Pack, but why argue that with him now? In another few years, he’d learn that all on his own.
“I’ll help you find her.” Gwen patted Lock’s chest. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Why don’t you just get her mother?”
Shocked he’d even suggested it, Gwen said, “I’m not rattin’ the girl out to her mother. I’ll take care of it.”
Lock caught her arm before she could walk off. “Because she’s your responsibility? I thought you had the night off with your mother still in Philly?”
Gwen leaned in and said, “You have your wild dog loyalties, and I have mine.” And Gwen wasn’t about to let Kristan do something she’d regret in the morning just to get even with Johnny. If she could stop even one girl going down that road, she would. “Now stay here and I better not find any more swarms of females around you when I get back.”
“I’m still not sure how that would be my fault.”
She snorted in reply, took Johnny’s hand, and went off into the crowd of partiers.
Ric watched Gwen disappear into the crowd before he turned back to his friend. “So are you going to be like your uncles and move your woman into your house to live in sin, or like you father and marry her in a proper wedding?”
Lock smiled like Ric hadn’t seen him smile in years. “I’m thinking a combination.”
“Always smart.”
“Just one problem.”
“Which is?”
Hands slammed down on the table in front of Lock. “Where’s my sister?”
Lock sighed. “Them.”
Ric stared up at the lion siblings. How Lock hadn’t killed them already, he didn’t know. If nothing else, Ric would have had them…managed by now. They’d be alive, but in Siberia.
??
?Where is she?” Mitch Shaw snapped again.
Lock shrugged.
“Aren’t you keeping an eye on her?”
“Because she suddenly can’t take care of herself?” the grizzly asked.
“No. Because my mother shaved McNelly’s head!”
The two friends stared at each other across the table and then both burst out laughing at the same time.
Ric wished his family was half this interesting.
“This isn’t funny,” Brendon Shaw said, shaking his big lion head. “Not funny.”
“It’s a little funny,” Lock argued.
“No. Not funny,” Mitch snapped. “Because Dee-Ann just told us she followed Donna McNelly and her Pack to this club, then lost ’em.”
Lock’s laughter cut off instantly and he peered up at Mitch. “When was that?”
“I don’t know. Sissy and Dee are trying to find out if they got in and I’m trying to find Gwen, because she doesn’t know that our insane mother shaved a woman’s head out of retaliation for Labor Day weekend!”
Ric stood up. “Everyone calm down. We’ll figure this out. Let’s just find Gwen and then…”
His words trailed off as he watched his friend slowly stand up, his head moving as he cast for a scent. Lock had always amazed Ric; he was able to pick up scents nearly twenty miles away.
Lock’s large body faced the direction Gwen had gone off, his head lowering, his breathing becoming heavy, and the air around him filling with a tension Ric had never been able to name but understood all too well.
Lock started moving and Mitch went to grab him, but Ric caught his arm. “Don’t get in front of him, don’t cut him off, and do not touch him. Follow and keep your mouth shut.”
When the brothers started to argue, Ric said, “Gentlemen, you need to trust me on this.”
Johnny stopped midway on the stairs that led to the basement and picked up the skate he found lying there.
“She probably fell down the stairs,” Gwen said behind him. “It takes a certain skill to learn to go down stairs in skates.”
She took the skate out of his hand and kept moving, Johnny following.
He couldn’t believe he’d been reduced to this. Most days Kristan Putowski made him crazy, but lately she’d been really getting on his nerves. To be honest, he couldn’t wait until he graduated in June and headed off to college. He needed to get away from her, her constant chatter, her annoying personality, and her goddamn scent! It was beginning to drive him insane, and it was getting harder and harder to resist her.
Nope. Distance was good. In fact, he might be able to manage distance a little sooner if he could get into the summer music program in Ohio. Three months of practice, classes, private concerts, and lectures. But most importantly…no Kristan.
“Don’t worry, kid,” Gwen said. “We’ll find her.”
Once they were in the basement, Gwen sniffed the air and headed to a door a short way down the hall. She had her hand on the doorknob but stopped. She leaned in, sniffed again, and that’s when she reached back.
She slammed her hand against Johnny’s chest and shoved him away. “Go get—”
From the other side, the door was torn open and a frighteningly large female reached out and grabbed Gwen by the hair, yanking her inside the room. A male came out and reached for Johnny, but he scrambled back and took off down the hallway, grateful he’d gone with one of the Roman soldier costumes rather than the more complicated and heavier medieval armor costume. The male was closing in behind him as Johnny made it up the stairs. He slammed his hands against the unlocked door, shoving it open. Hands grabbed his shoulders, pulling him back. An arm went around his chest and Johnny’s mouth was covered.
Desperate, he reached for the switchblade he’d had since he was twelve and living with a foster family that had made him extremely nervous. But before his hand could reach it, he looked up at a massive body wearing only a kilt…and rage. Forgetting his blade, he watched as the bear reached down and grabbed hold of the arm wrapped around Johnny. Lock took it and twisted until the arm snapped.
The wolf released Johnny and howled in pain as Lock dragged the unknown canine away, flinging him across the club.
When the bear looked back at him, Johnny pointed down the stairs and said, “They’ve got Gwen.”
She hit the ground, the wind briefly knocked out of her, poor Kristan’s skate flipping out of her hand and disappearing under one of the tables.
McNelly reached down and caught hold of her neck, lifting Gwen up. “Always the do-gooder, rushing down here to help the kid,” she said.
One of the males had hold of Kristan, his hand over her mouth, his arm around her waist. She was struggling, tears pooling at her feet. Poor kid. She was one of those protected pups, not used to this kind of attack. But Gwen and McNelly? They were more than used to it.
Gwen shoved McNelly off her. “Let the kid go. This is between you and me.”
“‘This is between you and me,’ “McNelly imitated back to her in a high-pitched voice. “You’re fucking pathetic. Just like the girl. She might as well get used to it now. Might as well realize she’ll always be a mixed-breed loser.” McNelly stepped in closer. “Alone and helpless…and a freak.”
And that’s when Gwen popped her in the mouth, the She-wolf stumbling to the side as her Pack came at Gwen.
Gwen unleashed her claws and lashed out, swiping at anything that got close to her, trying to work her way over to Kristan.
Someone grabbed her from behind, and Gwen lifted up her legs and kicked out at one of the wolves in front of her, sending him flying back. Then she brought her legs back down, keeping her knees tight. Her feet slammed into the femurs of whoever held her and she heard a scream of pain as bones in both legs broke and the wolf released her. More wolves came at her, so she dashed up onto the tables and shelves, knocking things off them as the wolves tried to get hold of her. She kept going until she landed in front of Kristan. That’s when she pulled out her razor and flicked it open.
She cut the face of the wolf holding Kristan and yanked the girl away.
She saw the open window that the wolves must have come in through and she pushed Kristan up on the table beneath it. “Go! Now!” Gwen yelled, spinning back around and lashing out with the razor, slicing someone’s hand and someone else’s jaw.
McNelly came at her again, catching the hand that held Gwen’s razor. She twisted Gwen’s arm, all that brute strength nearly tearing Gwen’s arm from the socket. And while she held her, Gwen desperately reaching out for something, anything, she could use as a weapon, another male came at her. He took the razor from her hand and held it in front of her face.
“Wanna know how this feels, bitch?” Gwen already knew. She’d gotten the damn thing from the person who’d used it on her during a street fight.
He raised the blade over her and Gwen felt something under her hand. A pair of scissors.
Gripping them tight, she swung them out as the razor came down toward her face. But she was falling, the grip on her other arm suddenly gone. She landed flat on her back and saw the big arms of Lock reaching out. But the razor was already in motion and the blade cut across his forearm.
Uh-oh was the last thing Gwen could think before Lock’s boar-rage snapped and unleashed on every wolf in that room.
Blayne pushed past the crowd standing at the doorway and flew down the steps, Sissy, Ronnie, and Sissy’s cousin right behind her. As she neared the last door down the hallway, she heard a roar that she now knew. Lock’s roar. She pushed past Mitch and Bren, yanking her arm out of Mitch’s grip when he tried to pull her back. But she ended up stopping at the doorway anyway as a human body spiraled across the room.
Lock lumbered after it, still in his human form, but for the first time since she’d met him she could see the hump between his shoulders. It had grown and was now a mass of muscle that only intensified his already incredible strength. And all that strength was slamming into the wolf trying to pick himself up off th
e floor.
Four-inch claws dragged across the wolf, tearing off flesh and hair and clothes. Then hands rammed into the wolf’s back, with an untold amount of pressure pushing against his ribs. The wolf screamed and sobbed, unable to fight off the boar-rage raining down on him, but he’d gone after the wrong girl, hadn’t he? He’d gone after Gwen.
Gwen flipped onto her hands and knees. The scissors she’d been about to use and had dropped had been picked up by McNelly. She was charging toward Lock’s back, hoping to protect the male Lock had pinned to the floor.
Fangs unleashing, Gwen charged McNelly, but Blayne rammed into McNelly first, shoving her into the opposite wall. The scissors skittered away and Gwen picked them up, letting out a breath. Another She-wolf stood next to her, but she knew this one.
“I hear sirens,” Dee-Ann said. “Someone must have panicked and called the cops.”
Gwen nodded.
“Sissy’s gonna grab her friend Dez. She’s a cop and here somewhere. She’ll control things as long as she can, but we need to—”
“I know.”
Dee-Ann leaned down a bit to get a better look at her. “You want me to handle Lock for ya, darlin’?”
Gwen didn’t even know why the She-wolf was asking that. “No.” She handed over the scissors. “But you deal with the wolves.”
Gwen moved up behind Lock. He was crouching on the wolf’s back, one claw dug into what was left of the back of the wolf’s skull, the other pawing his exposed and torn flesh. He was breathing hard, the air pounding out of him as he fought not to shift and finish the job. She could see his muscles rippling as he fought the change, fought that last step that would turn this into a moment of regret for him. He had too many of those, she knew. She wouldn’t let these McNelly fuckers hang him up with any more.
She pressed against his back, let him feel her weight on him before she pressed her mouth to his ear. “Let him go, Lock.”