In a Badger Way

by Shelly Laurenston

  “Speaking of assholes, how are your sisters?”

  Shen winced behind his glasses. Going after Stevie’s sisters. . . ? Probably not a good idea.

  Stevie’s spine straightened a bit and even without seeing her face, he could tell that a dangerous coldness had spread over her like a blanket.

  “My sisters are great, thanks,” she replied.

  “Are they still following you around? Making sure their baby sister is safe? Making sure that no one else comes into your life who might get between you and them? Someone who might offer you a future.”

  “Like the future of living with a momma’s boy who doesn’t take a shit unless his mother tells him he can? Which, by the way, my sisters didn’t point out to me. I pointed that fact out to them.” Stevie folded her hands on the table. “Aren’t you supposed to leave a pride at some point? So you don’t end up having sex with your cousin? Unless that’s your thing.”

  “Perhaps you should watch what you’re saying to me.”

  “Or what?” Stevie pushed. “You’ll call your mom and tell her that girls are being mean to you again?”

  Wells slammed his hand down on the table, making the full-humans around them jump. But before the lion could say a word, Shen leaned around Stevie, placed one finger on the table, and calmly said to the male, “No, no. We won’t be doing any of that.”

  Eyes that had suddenly turned bright gold looked at Shen, and Shen didn’t like what he was seeing. Stevie had him so crazy the man didn’t even have control of himself in the middle of a full-human restaurant. If he wanted to pull this bullshit with an ex, there was a Van Holtz Steakhouse a few doors down.

  No longer feeling that Stevie was safe, he grabbed the back of her chair.

  “I think it’s time to go,” he kindly but strongly suggested.

  Stevie didn’t argue with him, just let him pull her seat out. But before Stevie walked away, she stopped and turned back to Wells.

  “How’s your brother?” she asked.

  Wells glared up at her, but he managed to force a smile. “He’s doing great.”

  “Still a perpetual student?”

  “He has his own lab now, thanks. His own lab, his own backers.”

  “Really?”

  “Like I said . . . he’s doing great.”

  “And I’m sure he did all that on his own without any help from you or your mother.”

  Shen gently pressed his hand against Stevie’s back, trying to prompt her toward the door. And she did go, but not before mouthing at Wells, Momma’s boy.

  * * *

  Well, that had gone poorly!

  As Stevie and Shen waited for the valet to get the car, she couldn’t help but silently beat herself up. She’d let Wells’s idiocy get to her yet again. They used to have the same kind of vicious fights when they were dating. So bad that Max was the one who eventually took her aside and asked, “Is this really what you want?” She’d said it with no judgment, with no directive. She hadn’t pushed Stevie to make a decision one way or another, but Stevie knew what her sister had been concerned about. Because what was going on between Stevie and Wells had seemed like the kind of relationship their dad always had. With dramatic fights and hateful statements and just being general dicks to each other.

  Realizing that, Stevie had made the decision that the relationship had to end. Wells hadn’t handled it well, though. Despite his need to constantly put Stevie down as a scientist, he loved bragging about her to other scientists. Because she was a prodigy, she was worthy of being with him. So her walking away had really pissed him off, and he clearly wasn’t over it. Just as she wasn’t over his cheap shots.

  “Stevie, wait,” Wells said, coming out of the restaurant.

  As Wells moved in close, Shen automatically stepped in front of Stevie. He was just doing his job. Protection was what he did for a living. But the simple move set Wells off.

  “Move,” the lion male ordered Shen, towering over the panda.

  “Sorry, no,” Shen said. And Stevie loved how calm he was. He hadn’t raised his voice once. Hadn’t flexed his muscles. Hadn’t flashed his fangs. He just kept his tone calm and even. As if they were in a concert hall.

  “I said move!”

  Shame Stevie didn’t get that same calm behavior from Wells.

  Instead, he moved in even closer, glowering down at poor Shen.

  “I need you to step back, sir.”

  Wells brought his head down so that their faces almost touched. “Make me.”

  And in that same calm, cool manner, Shen opened his mouth . . . and bit down on Well’s nose.

  It looked like a little nip, but Stevie heard the hard “crunch,” saw the quick snap of his powerful jaw. Stevie covered her mouth with her hands when Wells stumbled back, blood pouring down his face and into his mouth.

  “You insolent bastard!” Wells bellowed.

  Shen, still wearing those sunglasses, smiled, blood staining his teeth. “You did get a warning, sir. The rest is on you.”

  He walked to the SUV and opened the door for Stevie. “Ma’am?”

  “Okay,” Stevie said hurriedly. “Nice seeing you again, Matt. Tell your mom I said ‘hi.’”

  Stevie scrambled into the vehicle, letting Shen close the door behind her.

  “Sir, are you all right?” one of the valets asked Wells, but Stevie wasn’t too worried. No self-respecting lion male would ever have full-humans intervene in a common shifter fight. At the same time she wouldn’t put it past him to unleash his fangs and claws and come after Shen.

  Shen, however, didn’t seem too concerned, taking his time to tip the valet, then standing by the open door of the driver’s side so he could remove his sunglasses, put them on the dashboard; take off his jacket, fold it, place it in the backseat; slide into the SUV . . . adjust the rearview mirror and the seat; carefully check the side mirrors, and then, slowly, pull away from the restaurant.

  Stevie had seen people deceased for several days move faster.

  She looked out the back to see if Wells had attached himself to the SUV like a baboon attempting to flee one of those drive-through zoos, but after a few miles, she felt certain he’d decided not to make the situation worse.

  Stevie turned around and got comfortable in her seat.

  “You bit his nose,” she finally said.

  “If I had a rolled up magazine, I would have used that instead. I went with what was handy.”

  Stevie started to shake her head sternly, but the laughter spilled out first. And then it wouldn’t stop.

  “The look on his face!” she managed to get out, her arm around her stomach. “I’ve never seen him look like that before, and I’ve thrown things at his giant lion head.”

  “That particular expression you can only find on a startled lion male.”

  She wiped her eyes. “Conridge is going to be pissed. That did not go well. And I am not talking about your love bite.”

  “You don’t just hate the man . . . you hate the man. It was an active thing.”

  “Why do you think I used to throw things at his giant head? Because he’s an asshole. Personally, I think I was quite restrained.”

  “So now what?” Shen asked as he stopped at a red light.

  “We follow the money. You don’t get a fancy lab like that without some serious backers or the government involved.”

  The light changed but the SUV didn’t move. Stevie leaned forward to see his face.

  “Shen?” she asked softly.

  “You don’t think the government is—”

  “No.” She gave a little laugh. “No. If someone was testing shifters, just shifters, then maybe. Full-humans that know about our kind see us all as freaks. Maybe a challenge if they’re hunters, but otherwise, we’re just freaks to be destroyed. But to focus on hybrids—that’s a specific sort of hatred. Like when full-blood wolves kill one in their pack because they’re sick or something is wrong with them that we may not see but that they sense. I think that’s what it’s lik
e for whoever is doing this.”

  “And I think you’re giving animals that do that sort of thing way too much credit by assuming it’s some kind of instinct. Even animals can be assholes.”

  Someone beeped their horn behind them and Shen pressed the gas.

  “The question is,” he went on, “whether Wells is doing all this stuff.”

  “I don’t know. But I want to look into it. And I want to look into his brother too. The man has, like, four thousand degrees but he would never leave college. He seemed happy there. Now he’s got a lab and backers.”

  “How are you going to check out either of them when you—”

  “And you!”

  “—have pissed Wells the fuck off?”

  “I don’t know yet, but I’ll come up with something.”

  “Something that’s actually logical . . . or at least your idea of something that’s logical?

  Stevie looked out the window, folded her arms over her chest, and muttered, “So not appreciating that sarcasm.”

  * * *

  Charlie finished drying her baking pans and utensils and put them away in the cabinet near the stove. She folded up the towel and placed it on the sink rim. All the baked goods she’d created throughout the day were long gone. The bears had come in and wiped the table and counters clean of the last crumb.

  She could hear Berg and his siblings talking in the living room while they watched TV. Based on the scorn in Britta’s voice, it sounded like a reality show. For someone who always said how much she “detested” reality TV, she sure did watch a lot of it. She called it “hate watching,” but Charlie didn’t have enough time in the day to watch shit she hated just to mock it.

  Unless it was a bad horror movie. Nothing entertained her more than watching a bad horror movie with her sisters. Actually, any horror movie. The MacKilligan sisters loved horror movies. Anything but torture porn, as Max called it. Two hours of watching people being hacked to pieces or pierced with things was too much for Charlie or her sisters. They preferred movies with demons or ghosts or witches. Anything supernatural.

  Horror movies had always allowed them to get lost in fantasy rather than dealing with the reality of their daily lives. True, her mother would have preferred that her “pup-pups” spend their free time watching something with unicorns or girlfriends with traveling pants, but even she knew that sort of thing just bored her daughters.

  Charlie pulled a cold beer out of the fridge, thinking that maybe it was time for an Exorcist marathon for her and her sisters. The first and the third were their favorites and the most terrifying. But the second and fourth ones—and there were two fourth ones—were the worst and most fun to mock.

  Positive it was always a good time for The Exorcist, Charlie started toward the living room, but stopped when she heard something behind her. She turned, studied the kitchen. Didn’t see anything out of place.

  She sniffed the air, but Charlie was still learning how to sift out different scents and locate them. It was something that hadn’t been taught to her when she was a kid. Her mother hadn’t lived long enough, and when she moved in with her grandfather’s Pack, she had more things to worry about with her two sisters than sniffing out the raccoon who kept destroying the shed behind the Pack house.

  Frustrated, Charlie started walking and sniffing, trying to track something . . .

  “Gotcha!” a voice barked behind her, hands grabbing her waist.

  Charlie brought her elbow back, breaking the nose of whoever was behind her. She switched her beer to her other hand and with her free hand reached over her shoulder, grabbed a handful of hair, yanked the male body around in front of her. Then she kicked that body in the chest, sending it careening down the stairs toward the backdoor that led into the yard.

  The door was snatched open and Max appeared, naked and covered in dead bees that had stung her when she’d attacked their hive.

  Their gazes caught and Max frowned, looking down at the body at her feet.

  “Dutch! What are you doing here?” Max asked.

  Max’s best friend glared at her, his hands covering his now bleeding nose. “Your sister attacked me!”

  “You startled me!”

  Max smirked at Charlie. “Right. That’s why you broke his nose. But once you got him in front of you . . .”

  Now Charlie smirked. “Then I was just beating the shit out of him.”

  Max laughed but Dutch didn’t.

  Tossing her beer to her sister—which Max easily caught—Charlie asked, “When Stevie gets back . . . Exorcist marathon?”

  “Exorcist marathon!” Max cheered back. “I’m so in!”

  “Excuse me!” Dutch complained. “What about me? Your sister attacked me!”

  “But,” Max said, pointing a finger at him, “she didn’t kill you. And that makes you special and a little blessed.”

  Charlie nodded. “That’s true.”

  * * *

  Once Max put Dutch’s nose back into place and put an ice pack on it, she asked, “So really . . . why are you here? I thought you were working.”

  “Still am.”

  Max sat down at the kitchen table across from her wolverine friend. The lights were still off but Dutch didn’t seem to mind.

  “What do you mean, you still are?” Max asked.

  “Your Uncle Will. He’s on his way to the States. Private charter.”

  “He’s coming for the funeral.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So?”

  “The Group wants to keep an eye on him.”

  “What does that have to do with you and me?”

  “I’m here to make sure you and your sisters aren’t secretly in contact with him. I’m spying on you.”

  “Oh.” Max nodded. “Well then . . . good job!”

  “You know, old friend, you’re saying the right words, but that follow-up eye roll gives a vastly different message.”

  * * *

  “You met with her?” Matt’s brother demanded, stepping away from his desk. They shared the same home with their mother’s Pride. Still. But it had been for the best. James didn’t do well on his own. And local Prides didn’t really have any interest in him. For a lion male he was too quiet, too obsessive, too . . . irritating to be tolerated by lion females who were not related to him. Of course, Matt could easily get into another Pride, but their mother had always said her two sons were “together forever.” Then she’d remind Matt that he had to take care of James. “It’s all on you. Never forget that.”

  And he didn’t. How could he when he faced that weight on his shoulders every day he came home?

  Matt poured himself a scotch. “Yes. I met with her.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought we could work some things out. After all these years.”

  “And how did that go?”

  Matt didn’t answer, just drank his scotch.

  “That woman can’t be trusted and you know it.”

  Matt poured another scotch. “What does trust have to do with anything? I was just—”

  “Bragging. You wanted to brag. To a woman who could probably not care less about you or what we’ve achieved.”

  We?

  “Then why do you care we met?” he had to ask.

  “She wants something from you. Don’t you see that?”

  “She doesn’t want anything from me.” And that’s what had always bothered Matt about Stevie Stasiuk. Considering what a loser life she’d had growing up, it amazed him that she refused to ever ask him for anything. And when he gave her things, like jewelry or nice clothes, she never seemed interested. Maybe even bored. As if she were above all that.

  And then her sisters. Good God, her sisters! He’d tried to be nice to them, but they’d made it clear they didn’t like him. Thought he was too old for her. And they obviously didn’t have thoughts that were higher than “flowers pretty. Day hot.” They were cretins.

  Stevie, though, he’d overlooked her genetic defects because her brain was so pow
erful, and he respected her for that. It wasn’t enough, though. It was never enough.

  He’d gone through most of their relationship never knowing what she’d wanted from him, but he did know that it had all blown up that morning when he’d been talking to her—he couldn’t remember exactly what he was talking to her about, though—and one second she’d been sitting there, glaring at him, and the next he had a fork sticking out of his face.

  Because that’s where she’d shoved it!

  He’d called the cops, of course. He was a shifter but he didn’t really believe that logic many other shifters had of handling that sort of thing on their own. What else were cops for besides dealing with crazy women who suddenly attacked their boyfriends? But the cops didn’t seem too interested and she didn’t even get a night in jail. The whole thing appeared to be forgotten by everyone except Matt and his family.

  Then he’d woken up one morning a few months after the breakup to find Max MacKilligan standing beside his bed.

  “Drop these charges against Stevie, or I’ll come back and cut your throat while you’re sleeping.” Then, for visual effect, she’d dragged her forefinger from one side of her neck to the other. While smiling.

  Not needing a fight with the MacKilligans, he’d dropped the charges. Not because he was frightened, of course, but because it just made sense.

  But his brother had never really let the whole thing go and was still angry Matt hadn’t made sure she’d been charged and punished to the fullest extent of the law. James had always felt that Stevie was beneath his brother and didn’t deserve any of the attention she’d always gotten.

  “She’s a freak,” James had insisted then . . . and now. “And you continue to suck up to her.”

  “Let it go, James. It’s over.”

  “Is it?” he asked. “Is it really?”

  chapter FIFTEEN

  Shen pulled the car into the attached garage at his sister’s house and turned off the motor. All he could think about was getting on that great couch, watching some late-night TV, and eating some bamboo.