There is no second place except for loser grizzlies!”

Lock roared, his grizzly hump growing under his practice uniform.

“Cut it out!” Ric ordered, expecting them to actually obey. Not only because as team owner he could fire them both—something he’d most likely never do—but because he was also team captain.

That meant something!

“Novikov, run drills.” As it was something that the man did obsessively anyway, Ric knew it would be done without question. And, with a little snarl, the Marauder skated off to run his precious drills.

“Why do you put up with him?” Lock demanded once Novikov was at the other end of the ice.

“Because he’s one of the best players of all time, because we win, because—”

“Blayne would hysterically sob if you traded his ass?”

Ric couldn’t lie to his best friend of twenty years. “Yes.”

“Your weakness sickens me.”

“I know. But if Blayne Thorpe was miserable, she’d cry about it to Gwenie, who’d complain about it to you, and then you’d make me hire Novikov back anyway.” Lock’s grizzly hump quickly deflated. “You’re right.”

“I know. But we can be weak together. Besides, even that Neanderthal can’t ignore the pitiful tears of a wolfdog.”

“True.”

Ric patted Lock’s shoulder. “Do me a favor. Go run some drills with him until the team gets here.

Keep him busy and out of my hair.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

Lock put on his helmet and gazed down the length of the ice as if Ric had just asked him to face an entire army of samurais completely alone.

While his friend skated into battle, Ric left the rink and went into the team’s locker room.

“Hey, Bert,” he said to the black bear tying up his skates, and the only other player there.

“Hey.”

Ric walked past him and to Novikov’s locker. He played with the new lock the hybrid had just purchased, opening this one as easily as he’d opened the others. Once inside his locker, Ric proceeded to move around all his meticulously laid out items, including shampoo, soap, razor, bandages. He took his time, enjoying what he was doing as much as he enjoyed making a really good crème brûlée. Once he felt he’d done enough, he closed up and engaged the lock.

Bert watched him until he was finished, then remarked, “You’ve got kind of a mean streak, Van Holtz.”

“Only a little one.”

“True.” Bert got to his feet. “You could have pissed in his locker instead and we both know he would have spent hours cleaning it up.”

“Don’t tempt, Bert. Don’t tempt.”

Van buried his face in his hands and sighed—loudly.

He’d come to loathe these meetings with the Board, the representatives of every major Pack, Pride, and Clan, as well as some reps for the non-social breeds. The meetings were long and tedious but he wasn’t ready to step down from his position for no other reason than he didn’t trust any of these people to do what had to be done. The grizzly and black bears with their philosophical debates. The polars with theirinability to take anything seriously. The lions with their blatant boredom. The tigers and leopards with their constant plotting. The foxes with their sticky fingers and the wild dogs with their patience-rendering goofiness. And then there were the wolves. His own kind. Even the damn boardroom table was merely another area for them to fight over territory. He’d become so fed up with the constant snarling and snapping that he’d actually outlawed it during meetings. It was the only way to get through these things in a somewhat timely manner.

“Is there anything else?” he asked over the current argument. And what were they all arguing about? Where to hold the next Board meeting. The Magnus Pack was down for Arizona so they could attend a thousand-mile ride with a bunch of other lowlife bikers. The Löwes wanted to meet in Germany, probably for the multi-band rock concert that happened every year. The Llewellyns wanted to go to the French Riviera, and several of the grizzlies, polars, and a couple of tigers wanted to go to Siberia—because that would be fun.

“Yeah,” Anne Hutton, a middle-aged tigress from Boston who made most of her money by laundering gangster cash, said. “What’s going on with all that half-breed shit in New York? And why are we giving so much money to the Group? Your Group?”

“It’s hybrid, you fucking idiot,” said the always delicate Alpha Female of the Magnus Pack, Sara Morrighan. She reminded Van of a dog that had been kept in a cage twenty-four-seven for the first half of its life until someone had let it out in the backyard to go completely wild. “Half-breed is rude.”

“Shut up, Fido, no one’s talking to you,” Hutton shot back.

“Don’t you have a hairball to cough up?”

“All right,” Van cut in. “That’s enough.” He held his hand out and his assistant placed the file he’d brought with him. “And why we’re putting so much money toward this situation is simple.” He pulled out the stack of photos and tossed them across the glossy table. Some glanced, but quickly looked away. Others leaned forward to take a longer look. Some didn’t look at all.

“There are so many,” Morrighan whispered.

“Too many.” Van gestured to the photos. “And we can’t let this go on.” Slinging her arm over the back of her chair, Hutton said what Ric was sure many of the others were thinking. “They’re mutts. Are we really going to go through all this effort for mutts?” Van saw Morrighan’s left eye twitch the tiniest bit. The only sign she’d show just before she went completely postal and attempted to kill everyone in the room. Holding his hand up to stop her, he said, “They start with them, but they’ll end with us. We protect all of us. You. Them. All of us.” He grabbed one of the pictures: a lovely shot of a young female dog-tiger hybrid torn in half with her insides spread out across the dirt floor she’d died on. “This is Trisha Barnes. She worked full-time as a waitress in a diner and went to nursing school in the evening. One night she was snatched off the street and used as a bait dog for the screaming entertainment of a myriad of scumbags.” He picked up another photo.