The Mane Squeeze

CHAPTER 27

Blayne would admit she hadn’t had this much fun since she worked the Renaissance Faire one summer. True, the circumstances surrounding this event were despicable, but the aftermath was way entertaining!

Of course, it didn’t turn into a free-for-all until Roxy O’Neill snatched that wig off Sharyn McNelly’s head, revealing what Blayne could only call a monk-cut. A look that was not good on a man, much less a woman. And once that wig came off, all bets were off. It probably would have lasted a lot longer if they weren’t in a hospital waiting room. A hospital run by shifters with orderlies who were bears. One bear roar and everyone backed up into their own corners, the O’Neills, Shaws, Kuznetsovs, and Smiths on one side and the McNellys on the other.

Funny thing was, the only ones who needed to be at the hospital were the McNellys. Several of their Pack were down, but two males had suffered the most. One with an arm the doctors didn’t think would ever work right again since it had been completely pulled from its socket and broken in sixteen places. And the other who’d been mauled.

And while the McNellys waited at the hospital to see if Donna McNelly’s boyfriend would even survive that mauling, Roxy O’Neill had found out what happened, gotten to New York in record time with her sisters and brothers in tow, and headed right over to confront Sharyn McNelly. The Shaws, Kuznetsovs, and Smiths showed up soon after.

Normally, Blayne would be trying to calm everyone down, but for once she could sit back and watch. Why? Because of the Van Holtzes! Well…two of them anyway. Ric and his cousin Niles Van Holtz. At the moment, it was down to them and the bear orderlies that kept this whole thing from spiraling out of control. But Blayne was more worried about tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. She couldn’t help herself; it was in her nature to think about the “what ifs.” Like what if Donna McNelly just kept coming for Gwenie and her? What if McNelly never stopped? What if Blayne had to make her stop? And Blayne could make the She-wolf stop—she could make her stop for good.

“There has to be a way we can all resolve this,” Niles Van Holtz said in his low, dreamy voice. Blayne had never been one for older men but yowza! Was the entire Van Holtz Pack this good looking? It was possible if Niles and Ric were only cousins.

“Yeah, there’s a way,” Roxy said simply from her side of the waiting room. “The bitch dies. Right here, right now.”

“Bring it, ya Philly whore!” Sharyn snarled back.

“This isn’t helping,” Niles said over the lion roars of the Shaw brothers.

Munching on Doritos and sipping from her Diet Coke can that she’d purchased from the gift shop, Blayne watched the drama until Ric nudged her with his elbow. She offered him some Doritos and then a sip of her soda. As he handed the can back to her, Roxy held up McNelly’s wig, which she still had a good grip on, and began to shimmy in a circle. Blayne cringed, eternally grateful that Gwen wasn’t here for any of this. She was home safe with her homicidal bear…wait. She glanced up, trying to figure out if that was a good thing, when Ric sighed and shook his head. She gave him a little smile and looked away just as Kristan rolled past them, still wearing her Babes uniform. Blayne and Ric watched her roll over to Johnny and hand him his own soda and chips, then Blayne and Ric looked back at each other.

When they both smiled at the same time, Blayne knew things were about to get seriously out of control.

Gwen woke up before her alarm went off. That wasn’t unusual for her, though. What was unusual was to find her mother on the other side of her bed, lifting the bedsheet so she could check out her bear’s naked ass!

“Ma!” she roared and Roxy instantly dropped the sheet.

“Morning, baby-girl,” she said while trying to pretend she wasn’t doing what Gwen caught her doing.

Lock’s head lifted from the pillow, his voice urgent. “What? What’s wrong?”

Roxy grinned. “Morning, handsome.”

Lock looked over at Roxy. “Uh…morning.”

Roxy pressed her hand to her chest. “I’m Gwendolyn’s mother, Roxy O’Neill. But you can call me Roxy.”

“Morning, Roxy.”

“And you’re Lachlan MacRyrie. I know your uncles.”

“Ma!”

“I said I know his uncles, baby-girl. I didn’t say I did his uncles.”

“Ma,” Gwen said on a breath “why are you here?”

“I need to talk to you.”

Gwen dropped back on the bed, her arm over her eyes. “Oh, please, Ma. Not this morning. Last night was—”

“I know what happened last night. And I need to talk to you. It’s important, baby-girl.” She smiled at Lock. “It was really nice meeting you.”

“You, too.”

Her mother walked out and Gwen grabbed one of Lock’s T-shirts off the floor and followed after her.

“What’s up?” Gwen asked as she went into Lock’s kitchen. She needed some coffee and she needed it now.

“That young man has a fine ass, baby-girl.”

“Ma,” Gwen ground out between clenched teeth. “Why are you here?”

“Well, about last night…”

Gwen snorted. “I guess Mitch the rat told you.”

“Don’t call him that, and he wasn’t the one who told me. I actually heard because—” She stopped speaking and Gwen turned to face her mother. Gwen could never remember a time when her mother couldn’t find the words to express herself. Which is a real nice way of saying she never shut the fuck up. Until today. And there was only one reason Roxy O’Neill would suddenly be speechless.

“What did you do?”

Her mother chewed her lip before vaguely admitting, “I may have taken things up a notch.”

“You may have…” Then Gwen understood. “Ma!”

“I know! I know! I’m so sorry, baby-girl! I just couldn’t believe that bitch was taking out our old grudge on my baby-girl!”

“What did you do?”

“Why does that matter?”

“What did you do?”

She shrugged. “I…uh…shaved parts of McNelly’s head.”

“Parts?”

“You know…so she looked like a monk.”

“Ma!” What had she been thinking?

“Don’t be such a drama queen. It’ll grow back.”

“Oh, my God! What is wrong with you? Seriously? Is it a genetic defect that can be passed to me? To my children?”

“Baby-girl—”

“Don’t baby-girl me! You start this shit and you never think about the consequences. Do you know they grabbed one of the wild dog pups to get me away from the party? Do you even care you put a kid in danger?”

“Of course I—”

Gwen held her hands up. “I don’t want to hear it. I just want you to go.”

“You’re throwing me out?”

“I’m throwing you out. I need space right now. Space from you.” She waved her mother out of Lock’s kitchen and toward his front door. “Go.”

“Well if you’re going to be this way—”

“I’m going to be this way. Now get out!”

“Fine!” Roxy bellowed before she stormed out.

Gwen heard the front door close, and all she could think about was getting back into her warm bed with Lock and letting him soothe all her troubles away with his four-inch bear claws. But as she headed to the room, she heard the front doorbell.

“If she’s back…” Gwen went back to the front door and snatched it open. She blinked in surprise. “Oh. Hi, Jess. Uh…”

Gwen stood in Lock’s doorway with a wild dog now hanging off her neck and she had no idea why. Although she was grateful to see Blayne behind her.

“What is she doing?”

“Thanking you.”

“For?”

Jess answered before Blayne could. “For what you did for Kristan and Johnny.”

Oh, that. She’d completely forgotten about that, but she sensed it wouldn’t be a good idea to say that out loud.

“No problem. It was—” She let out a breath and focused back on Blayne. “Okay, she’s still hugging.”

“You’re part of our Pack now, Gwen,” Jess said fiercely. “You’re one of us.” Jess stepped away from her and she had tears in her eyes. “You ever need us, you ever need anything. You or Lock…because he protected Johnny, too. My Johnny. My son. You two will always be one of us.”

“Thanks.”

Then she was being hugged again. Gwen stood there, waiting for the wild dog to release her. Blayne finally helped by gently taking Jess’s shoulders and pulling her away. “Why don’t you head on home and let me talk to Gwen? She’s not good with her raw emotions and she needs some time to experience the love you’re giving her.”

Gwen rolled her eyes, but Jess had her back to her and didn’t see.

“No problem.” Jess walked to the door, stopped right outside, and looked straight at Gwen. “I love you, Gwenie.”

Gwen blinked. “Okay.”

Blayne walked to the door and waved at Jess until the elevator doors closed. Once the wild dog was gone, Blayne stepped back into the apartment and closed the door. Then she was on her knees, laughing so hysterically that Gwen walked away, snarling over her shoulder, “I can’t believe you brought that shit here!”

Blayne rolled to her back, kicked her legs. That’s when Gwen went and made coffee. By the time she walked out with two mugs, a grizzly with a sheet around his waist was stumbling out of the bedroom.

She pointed. “Coffee. Kitchen.”

“Love you more and more.”

Blayne was standing now and she dug into her backpack, pulling out a bakery bag. “Honey buns! I brought them for Lock.”

“Smart move.”

Gwen put the mugs down on the coffee table and sat on the couch. “So why are you here? Because it’s not even nine yet, and unlike me, you’re not a morning person.”

“You’re a morning person?”

“Why are you here?”

“Okay, okay.” Blayne dropped on the couch. “As you can tell, there’s been much drama since you and your honey bun left last night.”

Gwen chuckled. “Honey bun.”

“The McNellys are up in arms, mostly about what Lock did to their two—” Gwen shook her head, cutting her off. She didn’t want that shit hanging over Lock’s head and, thankfully, Blayne understood her immediately. “Your mother also arrived.”

“She was just here.”

“Yeah. She got here last night, along with your uncles and aunts.”

Gwen put her coffee down on the table. “Oh, no.”

“They were at the hospital, along with the Smiths, Mitch and Brendon, and the Kuznetsov Pack.”

“Okay,” Gwen said, wanting to cut to it as quickly as possible. “How bad is this?”

“The Smiths are calling for war.”

Gwen held up a hand. “Wait. What?”

“The Smiths are calling for war, and Ric had to put in emergency calls to the Board—which, to be honest, I didn’t know we had a Board—who sent over his cousin Niles, who happened to be in town for some reason, don’t know why. And can I just say…hottie?”

“Ric?”

“Niles.”

“Mated.”

“I can look.”

Gwen gestured with her hand. “Just get to it. Why are the Smiths calling for anything, much less war?” Packs always seemed to be getting into wars with someone. She didn’t understand it. They were either fighting each other or some Pride or Clan. The wars could get really ugly, too, lasting for decades.

“Who’s threatening war?” Lock asked as he walked out of the kitchen with a mug of coffee in one hand and the sheet still held around his waist with the other.

“The Smiths,” Blayne answered.

He sat down hard on the couch, his eyes wide. “Why? Because of last night?”

“Yeah. But not because of you two. It seems they don’t care about you two at all. Kristan and Johnny, however…”

“What about Kristan and Johnny?” Gwen demanded. “When I called Mitch last night he said they were fine.”

“They’re completely fine. But they were threatened, and they’re still pups.”

“And part of Jess’s wild dog Pack,” Lock answered, understanding the dynamics of the wild dogs better than Gwen.

Blayne grinned, obviously loving this. “But Jess is with Smitty now, which means she’s family. If she’s family, her Pack is family.”

“Okay…and?”

Lock put down his coffee and buried his face in his hands. “I see where this is going.”

“I know you do.”

“I don’t,” Gwen snapped. “Neither pup was hurt.”

“True,” Blayne explained. “But they were traumatized.”

“Traumatized, my ass. They’re just overprotected and spoiled.”

“And,” the wolfdog happily went on, “the Smiths consider it a hate crime.”

“Oh, stop it!”

Laughing, Blayne nodded. “I am so serious. Word is it’s so bad that someone they call Uncle Eggie is, and I’m quoting Smitty here, ‘Fixin’ to come on up here and wipe the land clean as if the Lord himself had decided Staten Island was Sodom and Gomorrah.’”

“Nice accent imitation,” Gwen sneered.

“I try.”

“This isn’t good,” Lock said. “Uncle…” His chin lifted and his nostrils flared. “Honey buns?”

Gwen handed the bag to him. “Honey buns for my honey bun.”

He stared at her. “You’re going to start calling me that now, aren’t you?”

“You going to keep calling me Mr. Mittens?”

Pulling a bun out of the bag, the bear shrugged. “I can live with being your honey bun.”

“All I know,” Blayne said, “is that Uncle Eggie must be some major badass, because everyone’s in this rather hysterical tizzy, even Mr. Smooth Move Niles.”

“Niles Van Holtz is here?” Lock demanded around his bun.

“Yes. And hot.”

“Stop saying that!” Gwen snapped.

“Why is he here?”

“According to Ric, he was in town.”

“For what?”

Not caring about Niles Van Holtz, Gwen cut in and asked, “This is all because my mother shaved McNelly’s head?”

Lock choked on his bun. “I forgot about that.”

“McNelly won’t.”

“Well,” Blayne said, “this all goes deeper and further back than that. And it looked pretty much like war was coming.”

Gwen studied Blayne. “It looked like war was coming?”

“I do believe I’ve come up with a satisfactory solution to resolve all this once and for all—and have managed to get everyone to agree. Now you just have to agree, Gwen.”

Gwen stared at her best friend. “I have to agree? Why me? I thought I didn’t matter and it was all Kuznetsovs and Smiths and pups.”

“Right. And the Kuznetsovs, Smiths, O’Neills, and McNellys have all agreed to let all bad blood end here…if you’re in.”

Confused, Gwen shook her head. “If I’m in to…” Blayne gave Gwen her biggest grin and Gwen’s confusion quickly turned into righteous anger. “Oh, come on!”

Laughing around Gwen’s bellow of rage, Blayne said, “You and only you, Gwen O’Neill, can prevent this war.”

Gwen rubbed her forehead. “And of course this is your shitty idea, Blayne Thorpe.”

“Wait.” Lock looked back and forth between the two friends. “I don’t get it. What’s Gwen going to have to do?”