“Is that all you have to say to me?” Blayne demanded.

“Well, I could remind you to stay out of trouble—but that always seems to fall on deaf ears!” Ezra Thorpe raised a brow, immediately calm after his bellow. “Anything else?”

“No,” Blayne said with a very resigned sigh. “That was it.”

“Good.” He leaned in and kissed his daughter on the forehead. “Sunday,” he reminded her, walking toward the parking lot. “Bring the freak with you.”

“Daddy!”

Funny thing was, Gwen knew old man Thorpe liked Novikov. He’d invited him to his and Blayne’s monthly Sunday dinners. If Ezra Thorpe didn’t like a man, he wasn’t inviting him anywhere. Especially if he didn’t like the man for his daughter.

But just because Blayne’s father seemed to have accepted Novikov—or at the very least was willing to give him a shot—didn’t mean Blayne’s collective brother system was about to accept him.

“Why don’t I give you a lift home?” Ric asked Blayne.

“Well—”

“I’ve got it,” Novikov cut in, standing behind Blayne.

“I’d like to hear Blayne say it.” Ric stepped closer. Now Blayne was trapped between two predators, and she didn’t look happy about it. But Gwen knew Blayne well enough to know it wasn’t fear or anger that had Blayne like this. It was something else. Something she was desperately trying to hide. “Unless you’re trying to keep her quiet,” Ric went on.

“We both know that’s not even possible.”

Lips pursed and eyes rolling, Blayne let out another sigh.

“You really wanna do this here, tiny little wolf boy?” Novikov asked. “Do I need to prove my point again with you?”

“You can try. If you’ve got the guts.”

“Or,” Lock said, grabbing Blayne’s hand and pulling her out from between the two males. “We can go to the hospital.”

“What?” Gwen knew what Lock had been heading into when he left, and knew it was dangerous. “Are you hurt?”

“It’s a girl.”

“Maybe he hit his head,” Blayne whispered.

Lock held his cell phone between the friends. “Just got a text from Phil. It’s a girl.”

Blayne squealed, bouncing up and down on her toes. “Jess had the baby! Jess had the baby!” She grabbed Lock’s arm and pulled before running off. “Come on! Jess had the baby!”

She cartwheeled toward the exit. “It’s a girl!” she cheered, ran out the door, and ran back in. “Let’s go!”

Laughing, probably as relieved as she was that Blayne was a-okay, Lock followed after her.

Gwen turned to Novikov, raising her head to try to see his face. Poor guy. He had no idea Blayne had just run out onhim—again.

“Thank you,” Gwen said to him, and she meant it. Without even talking to Blayne yet, she knew that Novikov had protected her best friend—and that he loved her.

“Not a problem.”

She winked at him and followed after her friend, stopping long enough to say, “Come on, Ric. You can keep Lock and Blayne calm while I explain why I’m not going into that death trap.” When the wolf kept staring at Novikov, she whistled, catching his immediate attention and making Novikov laugh.

“Don’t make me get the choke chain, Ulrich.”

Bo stood in the middle of the private airport, alone. Blayne had left to check on her friend. Did she forget he was in the room? Very possible. This was Blayne after all. Or was she panicking and running on him again? No. No way. She’d call him soon. In the hour, he bet. Gushing over the baby and whatever. He’d hear from her. He was sure of it.

CHAPTER 30

Bo now understood that he couldn’t assume anything when it came to Blayne Thorpe. He couldn’t take for granted that she’d do what he expected her to do.

He expected her to go see her friend in the hospital and come back to his apartment later that night. When she didn’t, he figured she’d gone back to her apartment, but she hadn’t picked up any calls or answered her door when he knocked. A good sniff told him the apartment was empty—and that she hadn’t taken out her trash. Blayne didn’t have her cell because the Brooklyn bears had brought by all the personal stuff they’d left behind in his truck. The bears had also taken care of his truck, bringing it to a bear-run service station to be repaired, and had returned that as well. Bo would get a bill for all that great bear service, but who cared?

Besides, his biggest concern at the moment was Blayne.

Finally, he’d headed to the hospital, tracking down which shifter-run medical center the pregnant wild dog would have gone to. And the female wild dogs there with their Alpha were really nice but Blayne had already split . . . leaving him alone with really nice female wild dogs who thought he was just “adorable”!

And three hours later, when he was still at the hospital and holding the tiniest newborn in the world, a bunch of She-dogs grinning at him, and a bunch of She-wolves watching him like he was Satan—he knew he’d blame Blayne for this. He was blaming Blayne! But first he had to find her so he could blame her to her face!

The problem was, no one seemed to know where his wolfdog was.

“She was here for hours,” Jess Ward-Smith told him. She’d been the one to put the newborn in his arms, the kin of her mate looking downright horrified when she had. But one look at the newest hybrid to make it into the world and Bo knew he’d never let anything happen to her. “Then she said she had to go and that she’d talk to me later today.”