A bottle of Gatorade was held up in front of his face and Crush took it, smiled. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

He cringed, unable to stop himself. “Malone, your face.”

“Yeah, but you should see what I did to Callahan.”

“I’m standing right here,” the She-lion complained, handing Novikov a separate bottle of the sports drink. “I can hear you.”

“What’s going on?”

“The wild dogs were running out of steam, so your brothers and cousins offered to play.”

“Uh-huh. Except you guys”—Cella motioned to Crush, Novikov, and the other hockey players who’d been playing with Mitch O’Neill—“are all standing here, with the ball. And those guys”—she motioned to the field where a battle between lion and tiger males was taking place—“are in their cat form and mauling each other.”

“I must admit, the game seemed to go off the track right after that first play.”

“Especially when the rest of the O’Neill males showed up.”

“Gwenie invited her uncles,” Blayne chirped in, her entire body bouncing around in kind of a mix of 90s-style dancing and just a hyperactive fit. “Apparently, the O’Neills hate the Malones. I had no idea!”

Cella studied Blayne. “Have you been drinking Shirley Temples again?”

“I don’t have to tell you anything!” Blayne yelled before she backflipped away from them.

“Should you go after her?” Crush asked Novikov.

“No. She’s heading right for that tree over there and—bam! Down she goes. She’ll be out for a bit.” He shrugged, focusing back on the fight. “I’ll scrape her up later.”

“You having a good time?” Malone asked him.

“Yeah. I’m having a great time.”

“Good.”

He cringed. “But I can’t ignore this anymore.” He took the towel he had hanging around his neck and wiped the blood off Cella’s face, moving carefully so as not to hurt her any more than she had been.

Of course, he had to grip her chin a little tighter to keep her from starting another fight when the wild dog females all sighed out, “Awwwwww” behind them.

MacRyrie tapped his shoulder. “Uh ... Crushek?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you have brothers?”

Crush looked at Malone, then released her and faced the grizzly. “Why do you ask?”

MacRyrie pointed behind them and they all turned. Chazz and Gray stood there in T-shirts and loose dolphin shorts that no men their size should ever wear. In the distance, Crush could see his brothers’ wives and cubs at a picnic table, but if they knew what his brothers were up to, they didn’t seem to notice or care.

Thethree of them scowled at each other, none of them speaking. Then Gray and Chazz looked at Cella and back at him, Gray raising his arms in what Crush felt was a clear challenge and ... well ... what did anyone expect?

Clothes went flying, Crush’s jeans hitting Cella in the face, and then three polar bears were in the middle of a brawl right there. Since cats fought all the time, the Malone-O’Neill battle going on behind them was quickly forgotten as everyone focused on the vicious bear scrimmage.

“So, he’s not close to his family then?” one of the wild dog females guessed.

“There’s only the three of them and no, they’re not close.”

Marly rested her elbow on Cella’s shoulder. “Anyone a little bothered that it’s those two against poor Crushek?”

Cella was more than a little bothered, but who would get between three polar bears during a fight? But just as she had the thought, Novikov and MacRyrie ran past her, both in their shifted form. A few seconds after that, the rest of the first-string players followed.

“Does Novikov have tusks?” Marly asked.

“They’re not tusks,” Blayne yelled while slowly dragging herself to her feet. “They’re fangs. Like the mighty saber-toothed cat of yore.”

Marly scratched her head. “Yore?”

CHAPTER TWENTY

“He’s doing it wrong,” Van Holtz noted.

The entire table looked over at the polar bear working the in-tent barbeque.

“He’s going to make everything dry.”

Novikov sighed. “Guess you’re going over there to show him how it’s done.”

Crush, still feeling where Chazz had slammed his head into a tree, quietly stated, “I wouldn’t.”

Now they were all looking at him. Crush still couldn’t believe these guys had backed him up in his fight against Chazz and Gray. And, man, had those idiots been jealous because he’d had the goddamn Carnivores on his side. It had been great !

“You know him?” MacRyrie asked about the polar working the barbeque.

“He was DEA before he retired. Now he lives in Staten Island and is a butcher. His name is Billows, but they call him Wishbone.”

“Why?”

“The story I heard from other shifters in NYPD is that there was a case involving some crack house in Staten Island. There was a little firefight and one of the guys made a run for it. Wishbone caught him and during the struggle, the guy stabbed Wishbone in the leg, which just pissed him off because he has a real short temper. So they say he had the guy by his legs, told his partner to ‘make a wish.’ Then he ...”

Unable to find the right words, Crush illustrated by yanking his hands apart and all the men exclaimed simultaneously, “Ohhhh!”