“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.