“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?”

CHAPTER 28

Gwen rolled around and around that little hallway about a hundred feet away from the locker rooms. She should stop, take a breath, but the fact she couldn’t breathe was making at least one of those impossible.

With her hands clasped tightly together, Gwen kept focusing on trying to force herself to breathe and not vomit.

Vomit, bad. Breathing, good.

She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t. And she’d been a fool to agree to this. But now Gwen was in and couldn’t get out.

Why? a sane person may ask.

Because, in the end, Gwen had been unable to pass up the chance to take the trophy out of McNelly’s mannish grip. And that’s exactly what Blayne had used to get Gwen to agree to this stupidity knowing that Gwen didn’t give a fuck about Pack wars or Smiths or men named “Eggie.” No, it was Gwen’s ego that had gotten her here. And either this would go down in history as the bout that stopped a war or it would go down as the time an O’Neill vomited on the track.