Fabi stepped back and the older polar watched her close.

“I don’t know,” Fabi said. “Seems to me she has enough wolf in her that we should put her down now.”

Blayne didn’t have a chance at a good bout of panic over that particular statement before Bo dropped her, shifted, and leaped at the polar. He took him down, Fabi shifting in the process, but his twelve hundred pounds and average, mundane fangs were nothing compared to Bo’s bear-cat sexiness—and yes, that’s how she thought of his shifted form.

Bo landed on top of Fabi, keeping the polar pinned to the ground with his weight alone, leaned in, and roared. The sound echoed and the rest of the bears began to move nervously, their jaws popping, their fangs coming out. All except for the older polar. He rolled his eyes and said, “Let him go, Bo. He ain’t worth the trouble, and he’s your cousin.” Yet Bo didn’t move; he didn’t back down. Finally the older polar added, “You’ve got my word, I won’t let anything happen to the wolfdog. Promise.”

That seemed to be enough for Bo. He nodded and stepped off his cousin—His cousin calls him Speck? Not okay—moving back and back until he had Blayne pinned against the tree with his big bear butt. She swiped at him, yelped, and she felt his body shake. Laughing at her! He was laughing at her! What a bastard! She caught hold of his long cat tail with her teeth, tugging at it. With a snort, Bo walked off, dragging a tugging, growling, completely ineffectual Blayne behind him.

Oh, but she’d show him. She never gave up. Even when it made complete sense to give up and run away, she wouldn’t.

They made it back to the hospital with Blayne attached to Bo’s tail the entire way. It amazed him those were the same teeth that had torn into a deer the night before with such gusto. Maybe she was going easy on him, because he didn’t feel a thing. He climbed back into the window he’d gone out of, Blayne right behind him since she still held on to his tail. He lifted his tail and placed her on the bed, whipping his tail around until she released him. She rolled off, shifting from wolfdog to naked hottie in seconds, laughing as she rolled across the bed.

Bo shifted and quickly shut the window, knowing how cold it was to everyone else not born and raised in Ursus County, Maine.

“I can’t believe you bit his face,” he laughed.

“I can’t believe that asshole is your cousin. And Speck?”

“The town nickname because I was so small.”

“Small? In whose world are you small? And your shifted form?” She rolled to her stomach and rested her chin on her fists. “Wow,” she said. “Just . . . wow.”

“You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?”

“No way.” Blayne scrambled to her knees. If she remembered she was naked, she didn’t seem to care. “Bo, I think you’re amazing.”

“I havetusks, Blayne.”

“Those aren’t tusks. Those are fangs. Like the mighty saber-toothed cats of prehistoric times. If I had those, I’d never be human. I’d run around with my cool, über-long fangs, daring anyone to fuck with the mighty Blayne of the Thorpe Dynasty.”

“You have a dynasty?”

“I would if I had those cool fangs!”

Bo grinned, surprising himself. He’d never discussed his fangs before without getting in a fight or walking away hurt, swearing never to shift again. He grew out of that stage, though, and simply stopped shifting unless he was by himself. But he couldn’t ignore Blayne’s enthusiasm. She really should represent all hybrids. She loved each of them, with all their quirks and foibles and unholy-size body parts, individually. He had to admire that.

“We better get dressed,” he said, noticing the pile of clothes someone had put out for them.

“You don’t think my father’s coming to get me, do you?” And she winced when she asked, making him a little worried.

“I don’t know. My uncle is the king of the unclear.”

Still kneeling on the bed, Blayne sat back on her haunches. “Wait . . . that was your uncle? The big polar?”

“Yep.” The clothes put out for Bo were also his uncle’s. He recognized the scent. He nearly smiled again. For the first time, he’d be able to wear his uncle’s clothes and not swim in them.

A pillow hit him in the back of the head, and, startled, Bo faced Blayne. “What was that for?”

“Your uncle? Who you haven’t seen in ten years? And you don’t hug him or kiss him or show him any affection? Because unlike Flabby”—and that totally made Bo laugh—“he was nice to you. And seemed concerned.”

“The Novikovs don’t hug, Blayne.”

“Neither do the Thorpes, but that never stopped me before, much to my father’s annoyance. No wonder your uncle looked so hurt,” she said.

“Hurt? About what?”

“An ungrateful nephew!”

“I didn’t see him trying to kiss me or hug me or anything else.”

“So?”

“What do you mean, so?”

“Sometimes, you idiot, you have to show affection to get it. Sometimes, you have to suck it up, be a man, and show the people you care about that you actually do care!”

Marci lingered outside the hospital door, listening with avid interest to the argument going on inside. Normally, she’d never be this nosey, but that wolfdog was saying all the things she’d never been able to say before to either idiot, er, Novikov. For years she’d watched them play the “Novikovs don’t show emotion” game and for years she’d watched them never get as close as she knew they not only could but should.