Breaking Badger

by Shelly Laurenston

  Solveig’s words had never left her after all these years. The words her great-grandmother had said to her that day when Mads was still in kindergarten and she’d gotten her ass kicked by a couple of shifter boys because she’d made their sister cry. After her great-grandmother had told her to stop crying like some “Weak full-human,” she’d proceeded to tell her, “You’ll always be weaker because you’re nothing but a badger. You’re always gonna be smaller than the big cats and the bears, whether they’re male or female. You’ll be fast, but never faster. You’ll be strong, but never stronger. So you’ll need to be mean. Meaner than anything they’ve ever seen before.”

  Then Solveig had wrapped her hand around her great-granddaughter’s throat and lifted her up, feet dangling.

  “Because if you’re not,” she’d warned Mads, “then it’ll be me you’ll have to deal with. Not some bear or some cat. But me. I’ll rip the flesh from your hide and blood-eagle your ass if it’ll teach you a lesson.”

  Years later Mads took a psychology class in community college and discovered that Solveig’s idea of “parenting” was actually considered abuse among most specialists, but being a honey badger was not for the faint of heart. To apex predators, badgers were nothing more than an add-on to their value meal. To honey badgers, however . . . their kind were apex predators—and damn proud of it. Sadly, though, Mads’s mother would never teach her that. So Solveig had decided she would be the one to do it. She just did it in the most hyena-slash-Viking way possible.

  Mads ducked under that big fist and swung the bat, hitting the tiger across the gut. He grunted and bent over. She went around him and swung again, smashing the back of his skull. He fell forward, but before she could hit him once more, his friend was coming at her again.

  She dropped her body to the ground and rolled away. When she sprang back to her feet, she swung the bat, but he caught it and threw her into the wall. Mads went through the sheetrock and into the next room, landing flat on her back.

  Wood posts exploded out as the cat followed behind her through the same wall, big claws swinging down at her. She used the bat to block his claws and kicked her legs out to nail him in the face and chest and, eventually, the groin. When he grunted in pain and had to stop to grit his teeth, Mads rolled backward and came to her feet. She swung the bat, but he caught it and yanked her close. She went with the momentum and ended up climbing onto his shoulders. She wrapped her legs tight around his neck and, still unable to wrest the bat from his hands, simply slammed the end against his face repeatedly.

  She was enjoying the moment until hands wrapped around her waist and yanked her off. She flipped across the room and into some old wood furniture, destroying it on impact. She quickly scrambled up, swinging the bat as she did to keep the cats away. She shook the dust and dirt and wood pulp off her face so she could see the two wounded tigers staring at her from a short distance away. Their claws and fangs were unleashed, gold eyes glinting in the weakly lit room. Both males were badly hurt. She ran her gaze over them, examining them for the weakest spots where she could hit them and—hopefully—take them down fast. It wouldn’t be easy with both coming at her at the same time but she’d faced worse odds and—

  Oh, shit.

  An even bigger cat stood in the doorway watching them. Mads had no idea how long he’d been standing there, staring. But she didn’t have time to really think about it because the two males were charging her and the big cat was coming, too.

  Lifting the bat over her shoulder, Mads stood her ground as the cats charged her. When the Bengal tiger was only inches from her, she spun out of the way and swung the bat hard at his lower back. The spine cracked from the contact, and he was laid flat out.

  She pulled the bat back again to take a swing at the South China tiger but the bigger cat was slamming into him from the side, big jaws wrapping around his neck. The South China tiger shifted to cat as the pair fell to the floor in a desperate fight.

  Mads allowed herself a blink of surprise before she turned back to the other cat, who was still in his human form, incapacitated on the floor now that his spine was shattered. If she were in a better mood, a less Viking mood, she would have left him that way. Instead, she brought the bat down on his head over and over again until he stopped screaming and moving.

  Raising the bat over her shoulder once more, she spun around and found the bigger cat holding the body of the South China tiger in his mouth like a trophy. After they stared at each other for a few seconds, he spit the corpse at her feet.

  She looked at it . . . then back at him.

  Then Mads sneezed.

  The big tiger shifted back to his human form and Finn Malone stood naked in front of her with all those amazing muscles, covered in the blood of her enemy. And for a Viking female absolutely nothing could be sexier.

  Until he snapped, “Seriously?” when she sneezed again.

  “It’s not my fault,” she mumbled through her broken jaw. “It’s your dander! Hold this.” She handed him her bloodied baseball bat, lifted up the right side of her leggings and carefully peeled off the athletic tape that she used for Kinesio taping of her muscles after her workout. After grabbing both sides of her jaw and jamming the pieces back together, she placed the tape carefully around her jaw so that she could move it without so much pain. She wasn’t sure how long the tape would hold since it wasn’t fresh from a roll, but she could replace it later.

  Finn pointed at her chest and she looked down, expecting to see even more blood and damage from her earlier wound. Instead, the blade was being forced out by the healing muscles, and the weapon clattered harmlessly to the ground.

  “Is that normal?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “How should I know?” She felt around the wound. There was no blood pouring from it. No pain. No lumpiness as if a clot had developed under the skin and muscle.

  “Seems good,” she said . . . before sneezing again. “Maybe it’s your shampoo.”

  Finn shifted back to cat. That’s when she noticed the color of his coat. It’s utter blackness with the white streaks throughout. There was no orange. No red. She should have known it was one of the Black Malones as soon as she’d seen him.

  The annoyed cat turned away from her, his big, long tail hitting her full in the face. That led to a series of sneezes that forced her to take another length of tape from her leg and re-do her jaw.

  “Not cool!” she told the cat stalking back through the doorway. “Not cool at all!”

  chapter TEN

  Finn made his way down to the gambling hall, which was underground. Mads had gone into the walls, which he found weird but was grateful she could do. He could never hide her scent from an entire population of hungry tigers.

  And tigers were always hungry.

  This whole establishment was owned and run by tigers. He’d heard about places like this but had never been because Finn didn’t gamble. He didn’t like to lose. He was a poor loser when he played football. Yelling at the defense if they didn’t protect the quarterback. Threatening the offense if they didn’t take down the other team’s running back. His asshole-ness was beaten out by only one other: Keane. So he couldn’t even imagine how shitty he’d be if he lost fifty grand at a stupid card game.

  Staying in his tiger form, he would probably be ignored if they didn’t pay too much attention to his black coat or his size. Even by Siberian tiger standards, he and his brothers were on the enormous side in their cat form. Although compared to the rest of the tigers on the premises, he and his brothers were definitely on the big side. Even by Siberian tiger standards. That was because of their tribe. The Zaya-Sarnai wanted to make sure they could take down bears when they had to. So they found the biggest males to breed with, made more offerings to their gods, added a few spells before copulation and boom! You had giant cats roaming the steppes.

  The Malone blood decreased their size a bit but still . . . the Malone brothers towered over the others standing in the room. The gamblers had formed a big circle
around an empty space in the center. So Finn and Keane stayed near the back walls and kept their heads down, hoping to find the rest of the badgers alive.

  Finn thought the prayers to his ancestors had been answered when a well-dressed She-tiger dragged in the badger they called Nelle. She must have been their scout. She was dressed in designer everything, it seemed, and had her hair done up. She looked stunning except for the bruise on the right side of her face where someone had punched her. Her hands were cuffed behind her back but she was disturbingly calm. To the point of having no reaction at all. She didn’t appear psychotically angry as most honey badgers would be in this situation. Yet she didn’t seem weirdly entertained like Max MacKilligan either.

  Maybe she was simply waiting for her friends to rescue her. Although that was not how honey badgers usually handled . . . well . . . anything. Ever. In the entirety of their existence on the planet.

  Another She-tiger entered and stalked across the room. Finn knew this one. Or, at least, knew of her. Vicky Yun. Her family had been running gambling parlors in New York, Las Vegas, and San Francisco for decades. Full-human law enforcement thought of them as an organized crime family that they’d unsuccessfully been trying to bring down with RICO laws for years. But shifters knew them as an “ambush” of tigers that didn’t simply break your legs if you lost money at their gambling tables and didn’t pay up. Instead they’d peel off your pelt. It was said the patriarch of the family had hats and coats made for his favorite children and girlfriends from the fur of his enemies. It was also rumored that his eldest daughter had a Louis Vuitton bag made of actual tiger skin! Something most shifters would never, ever do, much less fellow cats.

  So seeing an actual Yun here had Finn looking across the room to seek out his big brother’s gaze. Their eyes locked and they knew that when they moved, they’d have to move very fast. They’d already figured out all the exits and come up with a hasty escape plan but still . . .

  Still.

  Yun was on the phone as she stomped her way across the room in ridiculously high heels she didn’t need considering her height, loudly speaking to someone in a Bronx accent that set Finn’s teeth on edge. He knew that his Long Island accent wasn’t a pleasure for a lot of people—as he’d been informed by a slow-drawling Texan teammate once—but wow. This female.

  “I got your girl, Zhao. Ya hear me? I got her and if you don’t give me what I want, I’m gonna start sending pieces of her back to you in small boxes. Would ya like that? Because I’ll do it.” She huffed over to Nelle and her guard and held the phone to Nelle’s face. “Say hello to your daddy, princess.”

  “Hi, Daddy,” Nelle said to her father in Cantonese. “Everything’s fine.”

  “You sure?” Finn heard Nelle’s father calmly reply through the phone’s speaker.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Yun lowered the phone and stared at Nelle. “You told him everything’s fine?” she asked in English. “Seriously? What? You think your little badger friends are going to save you? Because they’re not. I helped drag their corpses to the incinerator myself.” She stepped closer to Nelle. “As we speak they are nothing but ashes. Not even worth skinning for their pelts. So beg your father to do what I tell him”—she held the phone up—“or we start finding out what it takes to make a little badger scream.”

  * * *

  Shay diligently searched the lower levels of the building while his two brothers went to the main gambling hall to see what the rest of these tigers were up to. He was hoping to find some of the badgers. He knew Finn had tracked down Mads. She was currently in the walls somewhere. But the rest . . . ? He and his brothers didn’t have a clue.

  Luckily, he didn’t have to skulk in the shadows to do what he had to do like his brothers. Although a black-furred tiger like Keane and Finn, Shay was also a chameleon. With a little effort and a good, all-over shake, he could bring out some orange stripes when necessary. He couldn’t change his fur completely, but he could change his look enough to temporarily blend in.

  At the very least, he wasn’t worried anyone was going to immediately point at him and scream, “A Black Malone! Get him!” So that was somewhat comforting.

  So far, all he’d gotten was everyone simply nodding at him in greeting, ordering him to do something in Mandarin or English, or ignoring him completely. It was great. Usually, when he had to skulk around full-human buildings, he had a much harder time. It was hard to skulk when six-seven, nearly four hundred pounds, and half-Asian. Just calmly walking through an open door made people react as if he’d busted through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man.

  Shay was about to go left down a corridor when he heard several men talking about baseball and their girlfriends. But it was the smell of fire that caught his attention. He turned right and followed the chatter until he reached another hallway. The males had a medium-sized door open to a chute and were shoving the lifeless body of Tock into it. They gave her a good push, made sure she fell, then slammed the door closed. The smell of fire was coming from that area. It was an incinerator. It was designed like an apartment building’s garbage chute but in this instance, the tigers had made it into a not-at-all legal incinerator!

  He charged down the hall, coming to a stop when one of the cats pushed a red button and he could now hear flames from below roaring up, decimating whatever was in the incinerator below.

  The tigers didn’t flinch when Shay ran at them. They simply glanced his way and one of them said in English, “Sorry, dude. We’re done. Maybe next time, though.”

  Maybe next time? Maybe next time he could burn female bodies like they were trash? What was happening? And what was he going to tell his brothers? And Nat? What was he going to tell Nat about her half-sister? The Malones might not believe the MacKilligan sisters were in any way associated with their beautiful baby sister but she sure did. She liked Max, for some unknown reason. This would devastate her!

  Shay sat back on his haunches, unable to think of what to do next.

  “You need something, bud?” another tiger asked. “Forget all this. Let’s go get a drink. You look like you had a hard day.”

  A hard day? A hard day? Shay narrowed his eyes on the males. He had just decided he was going to bite their heads off when one of them suddenly stepped closer to the incinerator door.

  “Did you guys hear that?” he asked.

  “Hear what?” another responded.

  The incinerator was shut off and the cat stepped closer, his ear next to it.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I hear scratching.”

  “It’s probably rats. We have rats all over this building.”

  “I’m telling you . . . I hear—”

  The fist punched out of the wall next to Shay, forcing him to scramble back while the other cats began to roar in panic and surprise.

  “What the fuck?” one demanded as Max MacKilligan shoved her half-burned head out of the wall and hissed, baring all those tiny but deadly sharp fangs.

  Feet smashed through the wall next to Shay’s new spot, so he skittered away from there and down the hall. Tock landed on the ground, her entire back burned. She unleashed fangs and claws, caging in the tigers who’d shoved her down the incinerator chute.

  Streep barreled her way through the wall above the chute, screaming, “Look at my hair!” before she flung herself at the first male she saw. In a full-blown rage, she wrapped her legs around his chest and buried her claws deep into his throat, ripping his jugular out before he could even think to shift into his bigger, stronger form.

  “My hairrrrrrrrr!” she hysterically screamed as the cat crumpled to the ground with Streep still on top of him.

  Tock buried her claws into the spine of the cat attempting to run from her. His legs just seemed to give up on him as she severed the nerves that traveled through his body.

  The third male had a chance to shift to his tiger form as Max pulled herself from the wall. By the time she had her feet on the ground, he was facing her and had reared up
on his hind legs, ready to swat her with one of his giant paws. He was a Siberian. Shay knew just one of his paw swipes could crush her head or chest. That alone could put down even a honey badger. Shay was rearing back so he could leap between the two when Max unleashed her claws and tore them across the other tiger’s gut.

  Oh . . . wait.

  No.

  It wasn’t his gut.

  The stunned look on the cat’s face. The way he blinked and staggered back, blood pouring across the floor with no signs of stopping.

  The way Max held up her hand in gory triumph . . .

  No. It wasn’t his gut she’d torn her claw across. It was his groin. Well, his inside thighs and groin.

  She’d not only opened up his main arteries, but she’d ripped off his cock. Just out of spite.

  Even worse . . . she’d done all that with a smile on her half-burned face.

  The tiger continued to stagger back until he hit the opposite wall. Then he slid down to the floor and died.

  Max shook the blood—and whatever else—off her hand and, as if on cue, the three badgers abruptly turned to look at Shay. In that moment, he forgot that he was a shifter. That he could turn back into human and tell them he was Shay Malone and was there to help. He even forgot that he could easily shake any orange out of his fur! All he could do was sit there, on his haunches, gawking at them. His mind had literally gone blank except for the one thing he knew . . . he was going to die.

  Because Max and Streep were coming toward him.

  Until Tock stopped them with two words: “Not him.”

  “Why not him?” Max asked calmly.

  “Yeah. Why not him?” Streep also asked, not remotely calm. She was still hysterical. “They should all die!”

  Tock put her hand over Streep’s face and pushed her away, speaking directly to Max.

  “This is one of the Malones.”

  Max studied him.

  “Are you sure? I see orange. I thought Black Malones didn’t have orange.”