“He’s your father.”

“He hates me.”

“That’s not true.”

“Mom.” Ric laughed. “Come on. You sent me to Uncle Van’s every summer rather than risk me spending days home alone with just him and Wendell while you were out. Probably because you were afraid of what he’d do while you were gone.”

She snatched her hands back from his and stood, stepping away from her son. “Ulrich Van Holtz!

That is a horrible thing to say about your own father.”

Ric stood, shrugged. “But not exactly inaccurate.”

Dee walked into the Group offices cafeteria and immediately noticed how quickly all conversation stopped.

“What now?” she asked the room.

One of the coyote weapons technicians, with his legs up on one of the tables, grinned at her and asked, “You’re working with KZS?”

“Yeah. And?”

“You? You?”

“What’s that supposed to mean? I work with the worthless, lazy evil felines around here all the time. It don’t make me no nevermind.”

“Perhaps,” one of the cheetahs sweetly suggested, “referring to felines as lazy and evil—”

“Don’t forget worthless,” Dee reminded her with a smile.

“Right. Perhaps . . . that might suggest that you, of all beings on this planet, shouldn’t be working with the pro-feline, noncanine-fan Katzenhaft members.”

“But why? When I’m willing to overlook y’all’s flaws and annoying feline habits?”

“This isn’t just some feline,” a sloth bear pointed out over canine laughter. “This is Bare Knuckles Malone. She used to play with the Nevada Slammers before she came out here. She ranks third in all-time penalty minutes behind The Marauder and that polar bear who tore off a hyena’s jaw with his teeth.”

Dee sweetly crossed her hands over her upper chest. “Are y’all worried about me?”

“No,” the entire room kicked back, making Dee laugh until that hand slammed down on her shoulder, nearly ripping it out of her socket.

“Smith,” Malone said, smiling.

“Malone.” Dee glanced at the hand gripping her shoulder. “You wanna keep those fingers, feline?”

“You wanna take your best shot, backwoods?”

“Wait, wait,” a male wolf injected. “Don’t do this . . .” He stood. “Until we pull the tables back.” Blayne Thorpe wiggled her cute little butt out from under the restaurant’s kitchen sink. “All done!”

Ric finished up the eggs, bacon, and toast, and placed it on the counter where Blayne would have her late breakfast.

“Thanks for getting here so quick,” he said, before wiping down his pans.“We’re completely booked for lunch and dinner, so a backed-up sink would have killed us.”

“No problem.” Blayne scrubbed her hands clean before hopping up on a stool and enjoying her food while watching Ric’s crew get ready for their lunch service. She managed to light up the room without being intrusive. It was definitely a gift, especially in a busy restaurant kitchen.

“So,” she asked, “are you going to give your dad the money?” Ric rested his elbows on the counter and his chin on his raised fists. “No, which is going to irritate him.”

“But don’t you have to give him what he wants when he asks for it? Isn’t that Pack rules or something?”

“Not unless you no longer want to have a Pack.” Although Blayne was half wolf, her father hadn’t been part of the Pack since she’d been born. The Magnus Pack Alphas—like most wolf Packs at the time and some still today—refused to let him stay if he insisted on keeping Blayne. So she had little experience with Pack law. She did, however, have a great father. Moody, a tad terse, but he loved his daughter. Ric briefly wondered what that was like—to know your father loved you. “Due to the opposable-thumb flaw all shifters have, you take a huge risk that they might leave the Pack if you attempt to abscond with their money.”

“Aaaah. I forgot about the opposable-thumb flaw.” She held up her hands, wiggled her thumbs.

“Damn these thumbs. Damn them!”

Ric laughed, so glad now that he’d had sink problems. Blayne always had a way of getting his mind off . . . well, pretty much everything.

“So here’s my plan,” she said, pouring herself more orange juice. “July Fourth is coming up and I’m thinking about getting Bo to throw a party for all my friends. Doesn’t that sound great?”

“Why would you do that to us, Blayne?” Ric asked honestly. “You know we love you and you abuse that by trying to force us to spend time with that cretin.”

“He is not a cretin. He’s misunderstood!”

“I’m surprised his knuckles aren’t dragging on the ground and that he can create whole sentences with subject-verb agreement.”

She shook her finger in his face. “I will make you and Lock and Bo get along. Nothing will stop me from making you three the best of friends!”

“You mean besides my and Lock’s moral outrage on Novikov’s existence on this very planet?

Allowed to breathe our precious air?”

Blayne’s lips twisted briefly before she asked, “Can’t you just say you find him annoying?”

“I find Lock’s insistence I don’t put enough honey in my honey glaze annoying. I find Novikov offensive and barbaric.”