“Oh. Wow.” The bear lumbered out from her laundry room, holding a piece of broken pipe in his hand.

“This kind of snapped off.” She’d lost track of how many things had “kind of snapped off” in the ten minutes the grizzly had been on her territory. From the second he’d walked into her house, he’d been “exploring” and the level of damage was killing her. “I was just trying to see how sturdy it was…not very, I’d have to say.”

“I’m sure it was an accident, Lock,” the Van Holtz wolf said casually while watching Sharyn. That bastard had unleashed that beast on her home, proving what she’d always known—the Van Holtzes were assholes.

“It was. Definitely.” The bear gave a small shrug. “I’m really sorry about that. I’ll be happy to replace it.”

Shaking her head, Sharyn focused back on the wolf. “So we were on your territory? So what? Who gives a fuck?”

The bear stood in front of Sharyn’s prized curio cabinet. She’d spent years getting that together. Hitting yard sales all over Staten Island, Long Island, and Jersey. She swallowed as the bear leaned around to examine the back of the case.

“The Van Holtzes give a fuck, Miss McNelly. Even more troublesome, your Pack attacked guests on my territory.”

She didn’t bother to hide her sneer. “Mixed breeds? That’s what you’re protecting?”

The wolf smiled. “Mixed breeds…and guests. That’s the important part, don’t you think?”

Fed up, Sharyn pointed a finger at the wolf. “You show up at my fucking house in your fancy limo and you think I’m just going to roll over and give you what you want? Over some crossbreeds? Is that what you think?”

“No. I think you’ll do what I want because it’s the right thing to do and because…”

He let the sentence dangle out there as the bear tugged on her cabinet and her hands turned into fists, her eyes cutting back to the wolf. He smiled at her.

“Don’t mind him. He’s naturally curious.” His head dipped down a bit. “You know how bears are.”

Yeah, she knew. That’s why she wasn’t surprised when she heard something tear and turned back to see the bear easily holding her six-foot-tall cabinet in one hand and feeling around the now-tattered wall it had once been attached to with the other.

“I didn’t know this was attached to the wall until it came out.” The bear winced. “Sorry.”

He pushed the cabinet back into place, but with such force the curios inside were slammed together. “I’m sure I can fix it.”

“No!” She stood up and the wolf rose with her. “Just leave it.” The bear stepped away from the cabinet, but his attention wasquickly snagged by her television. Since that television was worth nearly seven grand and she’d only paid one grand for it in a back alley, she wasn’t about to lose it to a frickin’ bear. “Spit it out already, Van Holtz. What do you want?”

“What the Board says anyone with a first-offense territory breach is owed. Twenty-five hundred for me and twenty-five for Brendon Shaw.”

“You want me to pay that cat?”

“The Board represents all of us. It protects all of us.”

“Fine. Whatever. Just get out.”

“Of course. And thank you for your assistance. You can send the money directly to the Board secretary.

He’ll be expecting it and it will be split up appropriately.”

He headed toward the door. “Lock? You—”

A snap of thick plastic cut off the wolf’s words and they both looked over. The bear held the sixty-five-inch flat screen in one hand like it weighed nothing and half of the TV’s base in the other. “Um…do you have another stand for this TV?”

“Just put it down,” Sharyn growled out between clenched teeth.

“I can get you a new stand or—”

“Down.”

The bear did as she asked and she walked the two interlopers to her front porch.

As the limo pulled off, Sharyn’s daughter and her idiot boyfriend walked up to her.

“Everything okay?”

Staring after the limo as it drove off her Pack’s Staten Island territory, Sharyn calmly asked, “You went off neutral territory to nail that mixed cat on Labor Day weekend?”

Donna Noreen Maire McNelly blinked a few times, which meant she was debating whether to lie or not.

“Well…you said to get her. So we got her.”

“Got her where?”

Donna licked her lips. “We tracked them to lion territory. Found the mutt first, went after her, and O’Neill showed up.”

“Then you chased them into Van Holtz territory?” And brought that rich asshole wolf right to her door.

“Well…yeah.”

Sharyn backhanded her daughter, sending her flying across the porch.

“What the fuck was that for?” Donna screamed, blood dripping from her cut lip, while her useless boyfriend, Jay Ross, leaned against the porch railings and kept busy by texting his “clients.”

“First you didn’t even kill the bitch like I told you to. Then you opened that fat yap of yours and led a goddamn Van Holtz to my fuckin’ door!”

“It wasn’t me!”

“Then who?”

Sharyn looked over at the boyfriend and without even looking away from his phone, he said, “Don’t even.”