The Mane Squeeze. Shelly Laurenston

just covered up the ones on my arms with makeup, for the wedding. With my mother, I’d be noticed enough. Didn’t want to add to that.” She gestured at him with her hand. “Now we know I’m Gwen and I have tattoos…so do you have a name?”

      “Yeah, sure. I’m…” He glanced off, racking his brain.

      “You don’t remember your name?” she asked, her eyes wide.

      “I know it has something to do with security.” He stared at her thoughtfully, then snapped his fingers. “Lock.”

      “Lock? Your name is Lock?”

      “I think. Lock. Lock…Lachlan! MacRyrie!” He glanced off again. “I think.”

      “Christ.”

      “No need to get snippy. It’s my name I can’t remember.” He nodded. “I’m pretty positive it’s Lock…something.”

      “MacRyrie.”

      “Okay.”

      She gave a small, frustrated growl and placed the palms of her hands against her eyes. He stared at her painted nails. “Are those the team colors of the Philadelphia Flyers?”

      “Don’t start,” she snapped.

      “Again with the snippy? I was only asking.”

      Lock slowly pushed himself up a bit, noticing for the first time that they’d traveled to a much more shallow part of the river. The water barely came to his waist. She started to say something, but shook her head and looked away. He didn’t mind. He didn’t need conversation at the moment, he needed to figure out where he was.

      A river, that’s where he was. Unfortunately, not his dream river. The one with the honey-covered salmon that willingly leaped into his mouth. A disappointing realization—it always felt so real until he woke up—but he was still happy that he’d survived the fall.

      Lock used his arms to push himself up all the way so he could sit.

      “Be careful,” she finally said. “We fell from up there.”

      He looked at where she pointed, ignoring how much pain the slight movement caused, and flinched when he saw how far down they were.

      “Although we were farther upriver, I think.”

      “Damn,” he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck.

      “How bad is it?”

      “It’ll be fine.” Closing his eyes, Lock bent his head to one side, then the other. The sound of cracking bones echoed and when he opened his eyes, he saw that pretty face cringing.

      “See?” he said. “Better already.”

      “If you say so.”

      She took several awkward steps back so she could sit down on a large boulder.

      “You’re hurt,” he informed her.

      “Yeah. I am.” She extended her leg, resting it on a smaller boulder in front of her and letting out a breath, her eyes shutting. “I know it’s healing, but, fuck, it hurts.”

      “Let me see.” Lock got to his feet, ignoring the aches and pains he felt throughout his body. By the time he made it over to her, she opened her eyes and blinked wide, leaning back.

      “Hey, hey! Get that thing out of my face!”

      His cock was right there, now wasn’t it? He knelt down on one knee in front of her and said, “This is the best I can manage at the moment. I don’t exactly have the time to run off and kill an animal for its hide.”

      “Fine,” she muttered. “Just watch where you’re swinging that thing. You’re liable to break my nose.”

      Focusing on her leg to keep from appearing way too proud at that statement, he grasped her foot and lifted, keeping his movements slow and his fingers gentle. He didn’t allow himself to wince when he saw the damage. It was bad, and she was losing blood. Probably more blood than she realized. “I didn’t do this, did I?”

      “No. I got this from that She-bitch.” She leaned over, trying to get a better look. “Do I have any calf muscle left?”

      He wasn’t going to answer that. At least not honestly. Instead he gave her his best “reassuring” expression and calmly said, “Let’s get you to a hospital.”

      Her body jerked straight and those pretty eyes blinked rapidly. “No.”

      That wasn’t the response he expected. Panic, perhaps. Or, “My God. Is it that bad?” But instead she said “no.” And she said it with some serious finality. In the same way he’d imagine she would respond to the suggestion of cutting off her leg with a steak knife.

      “It’s not a big deal. But you don’t want an infection. I’ll take you up the embankment, get us some clothes—” if she didn’t pass out from blood loss first “—and then get you to the Macon River Health Center. It’s equipped for us.”

      “No.”

      “I’ve had to go there a couple of times. It’s really clean, the staff is great, and the doctors are always the best.”

      “No.”

      She wasn’t being difficult to simply be difficult, was she?

      Resting his forearm on his knee, Lock stared at her. “You’re not kidding, are you?”

      “No.”

      “Is there a reason you don’t want to go to the hospital?” And he really hoped it wasn’t something ridiculous like she used to date one of the doctors and didn’t want to see him, or something equally as lame.

      “Of course there is. People go there to die.”

      Oh, boy. Ridiculous but hardly lame. “Or…people go there to get better.”

      “No.”

      “Look, Mr. Mittens—”

      “Don’t call me that.”

      “—I’m trying to help you here. So you can do this the easy way, or you can do this the hard way. Your choice.”

      She shrugged and brought her good foot down right on his nuts.

      Gwen took off, shifting in midhop, which amped up her wounded speed another twenty miles per hour or so. She could see the path leading out of the riverbed and planned to get there and then to the trees. Grizzlies couldn’t climb trees, and Macon had some really high ones. Yet, she didn’t realize how fast grizzlies could move until the big, shifted bastard grabbed her from behind. He wrapped those furry arms around her waist, the four-inch claws a little too close to her tender underbelly, and lifted her up. Intent, it seemed, on carrying her cat ass to some horrible hellhole where human beings went to die so their organs could be harvested!

      Well, Gwen O’Neill wasn’t going out like that.

      She started twisting and swiping at him with her claws. She could feel fur-covered flesh being ripped off, and although he never once lashed back at her, he didn’t let her go, either—until he got slammed into by the full force of a six-hundred-pound male lion.

      Gwen went down with them, but the bear had to turn his attention to the lion trying to kill him and removed his arms from around her waist. Relieved, Gwen scrambled away as the two beasts fought. It was brutal, bloody, and ugly—she enjoyed every second of it, too, until that multicolored long-furred wolfdog came running up to her, barking and barking until she shifted into a black woman who had a tendency to blame Gwen for everything. So, in a way, she was still barking, when she said, “What the hell are you doing? Stop them!”

      “I shouldn’t interfere,” Gwen said blandly, as two apex predators fought to the death behind her.

      “Gwen,” Blayne chastised, her caring dog side out there on display, “he saved your life.