“You’ll so never catch me!” she screamed at him over her shoulder.

This wouldn’t be so bad if she were drunk like Dr. Luntz. But Blayne was stone-cold sober and on a caffeine-sugar rush like the world had never known before.

“Damn you, sugar,” Bo yelled at the heavens. “Damn you!”

He’d be better off trying to control a six-year-old after straight sugar had been poured into his mouth, rather than a crazed wolfdog running around Ursus County territory in the snow . . . with no pants on.

“Blayne Thorpe, get back here!”

She laughed and kept going, forcing him to run after her twice in one day.

And if Blayne was fast simply from her combined bloodlines, adding sugar and caffeine to that mix made her a jet, shooting through the woods and other bear’s territory until she reached his uncle’s house. That’s when she stopped, waiting for him to catch up.

“Don’t move,” Bo said as he carefully approached.

He almost had her, too, until she yelled, “Catch me!”

“I don’t want to catch you.”

“Then I guess you never will!”

She took off again, laughing, and Bo took several steps back, then charged forward. He planted one foot on the stoop and propelled himself to the roof. He charged up and over it, leaping from the base of it and straight down at Blayne who’d turned to head off into the woods behind Grigori’s house.

Bo tackled her from behind, his arms going around her and pulling her into his body. She squealed as they sped toward the ground, but he turned and took the brunt of the contact on his shoulder and back.

They landed hard, Bo knowing from experience that his shoulder had probably taken the worst of it. They lay there for a long moment, both panting, Bo flat on his back and Blayne on top of him, facing up at the dark sky.

But they didn’t lie there long before Blayne said, “I still wanna run.” She tried to pull out of his arms, but Bo held her tight. “I wanna run,” she insisted.

“I don’t care, Blayne.”

“You can’t hold me here, you Visigoth!”

“I can. I will.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ll run and run and run . . . with no flippin’ idea of how to get back here. You’ll get lost in the snow and then me and the rest of the town will have to track your ass down. It’s not happening.”

She let out a breath, her body going lax. But Bo wasn’t fooled. After less than a minute, she desperately tried to wiggle out of his arms again, snarling and snapping at him. He let her do it. He let her snarl and snap and growl and fight and struggle and anything else she could think of. He let her keep it up for what felt like a good thirty to forty minutes while he held her. Then, panting harder than she had before, she sort of dropped against him.Figuring she’d worked her energy off, he got to his feet, still keeping his arms tight around her waist, and carried her into his uncle’s house.

Once inside, and while still holding her, Bo decided she needed some warm milk. That had always helped him sleep when he was a kid. At the very least, it couldn’t hurt. While Bo put some milk in a saucepan to warm up and threw some logs into the fireplace along with some newspaper before getting the flames good and roaring, he still carried Blayne around. He simply couldn’t risk putting her down yet. Couldn’t risk she’d bolt on him. Especially when he heard the wind pick up outside, another storm hitting them.

He poured the milk into a mug and carried it and Blayne back into the living room. Once he had her settled on the couch, he handed the mug to her and she took it. That’s when he realized Blayne was shaking, her teeth chattering together. He quickly grabbed one of the blankets off the couch and wrapped it around her legs.

“Better?”

She nodded. “It’s so cold.”

“Your adrenaline rush wore off. And you’re not wearing any pants.”

“They were too big. You must have been a freakishly sized child.”

“Which is why Fabi still calls me ‘Speck’?”

She sipped the milk, scrunched up her face. “Can’t I have some chocolate in—”

“Not in this lifetime.” Or at the very least not tonight. “No sugar, no caffeine. Chocolate has both. You just drink that as it is and relax.”

She pouted and Bo warned, “And don’t throw it, either. Just drink it, Blayne. Now.”

“I don’t like plain milk.”

“I don’t care. Now drink.”

She did, but if he didn’t know better he’d swear he was force-feeding her arsenic. When she was done, he took the mug and returned it to the kitchen. He thought about washing it now, and normally he would. But for some reason . . .

By the time Bo made it into the hallway, Blayne had already sprinted out the front door. He didn’t go after her this time, though. He simply watched.

Blayne sprinted outside, ready to go for a nice long run. She was soooo bored! She hated being bored. She hated being trapped in one place for too long. She hated being unable to do what she wanted, when she wanted. And she knew, once she got her stride, that Bo “I’m God’s gift to the universe and hockey” wouldn’t get close to her. She was that fast. The combo wild dog and wolf speed made her nearly as fast as the cheetahs. The only downside was she didn’t have the cheetah lung capacity, so sometimes when she ran fast for very long stretches, it felt like her chest was going to explode and she sometimes passed out, not waking up for days—but she’d worry about that tomorrow!