“Upstairs.”
Livy patted Jai on the shoulder. “Nice work, doctor. Thank you.”
They watched the honey badger confidently step over and around her relatives as she walked through the basement in only a T-shirt. Cella would admit she was no surgeon, but the predator in her knew when another animal was strong and would be too much trouble to attempt to kill unless you were starving—which was what Cella saw when she watched Livy.
“Cella?” Jai asked.
“Huh?”
“I gave that woman enough pain medication to take out an elephant with a strong constitution. I pretty much put her in a short-term coma so her body could heal.”
“Okay.”
“So, it was a really great idea,” Jai softly pointed out, “bringing a dangerous, unstable species to our home where our daughters live. A species that is apparently impossible to kill. Next time you should just bring in a serial killer. Or an atomic bomb!”
“Drink this.”
Vic looked at the cup Novikov held out to him. “What is it?”
“Tea.”
“What kind of tea?”
“Earl Grey.”
“Just Earl Grey?”
“As opposed to . . . ?”
“Some magic tea for hybrids that will calm me down?”
Novikov looked deep into the cup. “I didn’t know there was a magic tea. That’s kind of cool.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Vic said, deciding he was done with the tea conversation. “What if she—”
“Don’t. Don’t do that to yourself. I almost killed my annoying, asshole cousin because I started what-if-ing about Blayne when she was hurt bad once. But Dr. Davis is really good. Let’s just wait and see what she says.”
“Okay.” Vic lifted his tea. “Thanks for this.”
“No problem. Blayne always says hybrids have to stick together. Maybe she’s right.”
They both looked up at the same time, nodded at Livy, and went back to their conversation.
“My parents are coming tomorrow,” Vic said.
“To visit? Or about this?”
“About this before anyone went after Livy.”
“Have you arranged to have them picked up from the airport?”
“I was going to do it—”
“You can’t go now. Give me their information and I’ll arrange a car to pick them up.”
“Thanks, man, that’s really—”
Vic abruptly stopped talking and jerked around. “Olivia?”
She grinned. “Were you really the one who fucked up Smith’s car?” Livy asked. “Because she’s still in the house snarling about—”
Vic shot off the bench, picked Livy up in his arms, and held her against his chest. He needed to feel her. He needed to feel her skin against his, know that she was warm and safe in his arms.
“Now that we’re dealing with awkward emotions,” Novikov muttered, “I’m going . . . away.”
The back door of the house opened and closed, leaving Vic alone with Livy.
Vic, unable to help himself, held her tighter.
“I’m okay,” she whispered, her legs wrapping around his waist, her arms clinging to his neck. “I really am.”
“I thought I lost you,” he admitted against her neck.
“You know my kind is too mean to go out that easy. We make a man work for it.”
“Olivia—”
“Hey.” She pulled back, and urged his head up with her hands, forcing him to look her in those dark eyes. “They failed. They tried to kill me, and they failed. So I’m not going to sit around and think about what was supposed to happen or what could have happened or anything else. I don’t care about any of that.”
“The problem is, I do care. I care about you, Livy. So, pretending this didn’t happen and just—”
“We can’t pretend this didn’t happen, Vic. We won’t.”
“We?”
Livy glanced over, and Vic saw that the once-empty yard was now filled with Livy’s family. They silently stood there, in the brutal cold, watching and waiting. Waiting for Livy.
“So,” she said, her lips grazing his cheek, “this isn’t about what might have happened. This is about what’s going to happen. What we’re going to make happen.”
“Which is?”
“We knew,” Balt said, stepping away from his relatives, “that a shifter might be involved in luring my brother to his death. But we were willing to settle for this Whitlan. No use starting war when all we wanted was him. But now? Now we want war.”
Vic understood that on many, many levels. And he also knew the shifter code that even the honey badgers abided by . . . you never betray your own for a full-human. The ones who’d shot Livy had done just that. Not just the gunmen, but the one who’d sent them into a shifter-protected space and had them shoot down a fellow shifter. Not over a territorial clash. Or lusting after someone’s mate. Or even just annoyance with their presence on this planet. No. She’d been gunned down merely for the continued protection of Whitlan and because the man behind those gunmen wanted to prove he was not to be fucked with by anyone.
Bad move, though, when dealing with this particular species. Shooting Livy hadn’t made the rest of her family afraid. These were not people who backed off or backed down. These were not people who understood normal, everyday fear.
Instead of making a point, the attack would bring nothing but blood and death and pain.
“We will not stay here,” Balt said, his suspicious gaze studying the entire yard. “But I think our safe houses may not be so safe anymore.”
Vic silently agreed. Livy’s attackers had known exactly where to find her. So it was a safe bet that the Kowalski and Yang safe houses were compromised, as well.
“I can get us a safe place.”
“Vic”—Livy’s hand pressed against his jaw, turning his face toward her—“you don’t have to get into the middle of this.”
That was where Livy was wrong. Vic was already in the middle of this. Deep in the middle. There was no way he would walk away now. He couldn’t even if he wanted to. Because where Livy went, he would always follow.
Of course, this wasn’t the time to tell her all that. She might be up and walking around, but she was still recovering, and he could see the exhaustion on her face. So any talk about what their future together might hold would have to wait.
Unable to say what he really felt, Vic just kissed Livy on the nose and said to Balt, “Let’s get out of here.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Smith!” Cella snapped. “My brother said he’d take your car to his body shop and fix it. And one of those badgers already handed over an ungodly-sized wad of cash to pay for everything Barinov’s roar destroyed, including your car. So enough with the dog whining like you got your paw stuck in a gopher hole.”
“I can fix my own car, Malone. It’s just, you don’t mess with a woman’s automobile. Do you have any idea how much work I put into that thing after I won it from Sissy Mae?”
“I don’t care.”
“Well, thank you very much.”
The pair sat on the stone wall that partially surrounded the house Cella had grown up in. The rest of the fence and the gate were chain-link and could hardly handle the combined weight of Cella and Dee-Ann’s collective asses.
“What’s really going on with you?” Cella finally asked the female who’d somehow managed to become a very good friend. Although that still surprised her. Because Dee-Ann was such a canine sometimes.
“What?”
“It’s not just your car that’s bothering you. Is it what happened to Livy?”
“Not really.”
“As always, such a caring person.”
“Look, the whole thing don’t sit right with me. I mean, to outright shoot that girl.”
“You expected more from Whitlan?”
“Darlin’, this is no longer about Whitlan. Those bears tracked Kowalski down at the Sports Center. And they were out-of-tow
n bears, not even from this country, but they found her anyway.” Smith turned a bit so she could look right at Cella, and leaned in a bit. “And don’t it bother you a little bit that our bosses pulled us off the Whitlan case?”
“They didn’t pull us off . . . they just gave us other jobs and lowered the priority of the Whitlan case.” Cella winced. Even she couldn’t make that sound positive. But still. “Dee-Ann, you can’t possibly think that KZS, The Group, and BPC—”
“Are busy protecting Frank Whitlan?” She shook her head. “Nah. That don’t sit right with me, either. But something about all this seems . . . expected somehow. By everyone but us and that poor little honey badger.”
“Poor little honey badger, my hefty Irish ass. She walked out of the surgery without even a limp. Jai said she took sixteen bullets out of her. Sixteen! Who gets up from that?”
“Well, we better start talkin’ to her and Barinov, if we want to know what the hell is goin’ on.”
“Cella?”
Cella looked over her shoulder to see her mother standing on the porch. “What’s up, Ma?”
“I was about to order food for all those badgers . . . but they’re gone.”
Cella twisted around. “What do you mean, gone?”
“I mean, they’re gone. We searched the house.”
“I just saw them no more than thirty minutes ago, Malone,” Smith said. “No way they would have gotten past either of us without our knowing.”
“Did you check the yard?” Cella asked her mother.
“We haven’t searched it, but I’m sure I’d spot that many people standing in our backyard from the dining room window.”
Cella looked at Dee-Ann, and they both jumped from the stone wall and ran around the house to the backyard.
Her parents’ house was surrounded by Malone family homes on both sides and in the back. So Cella assumed that the badgers must have just snuck out that way rather than going through the front. She decided to ask the uncle who lived behind her parents first, since she could see him in his backyard taking out the trash. But as Cella ran across the yard, she felt the earth go out from underneath her and used the power of her legs to launch her body across the yard. She landed a good ten feet away and spun around to see that Smith had not been so lucky.
Cella ran back, stopping at the edge of what she realized now was a pit in her parents’ backyard. A pit Dee-Ann Smith had fallen into face-first.
Crouching, Cella looked down at the poor She-wolf just getting back to her feet. “Are you okay?”
“Why is there a pit in your backyard, Malone?”
“There wasn’t.” She gestured with an arm wave. “Look behind you.”
Smith did. Then, with her arms thrown up, she exclaimed, “They burrowed out of here?” Dee-Ann looked at Cella. “Burrowed?”
“Clearly this whole thing doesn’t sit right with the honey badgers, either.”
“Or Vic. He and that giant panda went through here, too.”
“Any suggestions where we go from here?”
Smith held up her finger, and still facing Cella, she jumped up and back. A skill only the She-wolf shifters seemed to have.
Landing on the side of the pit, Smith stood and lifted her nose to the air. She sniffed a few times, then headed over to Jai’s house, on the right side of Cella’s. Jai and her family were the only people unrelated by blood or marriage to the Malones allowed to live on this street.
When they reached Jai’s backyard, they found her, Blayne, Bo, Gwen, and Lock sitting at the patio table drinking big mugs of hot chocolate.
Smith stopped in front of the table. “Where are they?”
“Where’s who?” Blayne asked, looking particularly sweet. Something that Cella was certain was only going to piss Dee-Ann off.
Smith took an aggressive step. “Now listen to me, poodle—”
Bo slammed his fist on the table, which was thankfully made of stone rather than wood. “Tone,” he snarled at Dee-Ann.
The She-wolf’s eyes narrowed, and Cella quickly stepped in front of her while Jai softly excused herself, picked up her mug of hot chocolate, and went back into her house. She stood by the open sliding-glass doors so she could watch the entertainment, but she was a mountain lion. She wasn’t about to get into the middle of a predator fight unless she absolutely had to.
“We’re all friends here,” Cella reminded everyone. “So let’s calm the hell down.” Cella took a breath. “We just want to know where we can find Livy and Vic. We really need to talk to them.” The small group, three of which were hybrids, stared at Cella but didn’t say anything. “Are you really not going to tell us?” Cella demanded. “I’m your coach,” she reminded Bo and Lock.
“But you’re not asking as our coach,” Bo said. “Our coach doesn’t care because Vic and Livy don’t play for her team.”
“You guys, we just want to help.”
“Then leave them alone,” Lock suggested, his shoulders hunched. “I’m sure if at some point the honey badgers need you, we’ll all know.”
Yeah, but that was kind of what worried Cella. Because by the time they knew anything, it would probably already be too late.
CHAPTER 31
Livy woke up in a strange bed and she knew she’d been placed there, because she would have put herself either under the bed or in one of the kitchen cabinets.
The last thing Livy remembered was sitting next to Vic in his SUV. Her body had been exhausted and she’d felt safe, so she’d gone to sleep. And based on the sunlight peeking through the blinds, she must have slept through the night.
Naked, Livy slipped out of bed. When she stood, she immediately felt how tight her muscles had become. Especially in her right shoulder, where she’d been hit many times as the gunmen had attempted to reach her head. That was the only thing that had saved her life. No clear head shot, which was the surest and quickest way to kill a honey badger.
Starting with her neck and shoulders, Livy proceeded to stretch out all those muscles. Moving down her body until she could easily bend over at the waist and touch her toes.
Livy let out a relieved sigh. It felt good to move. Hell, it felt good to breathe. She was even looking forward to shooting Blayne’s wedding. Then again, how could she ever think to complain now? It had been MacRyrie and Novikov who’d saved her life. Their timing had prevented the head shot she’d known was coming; Novikov’s fame among the Eastern Europeans had distracted the gunman while Livy got to her feet.
Of course, her behavior after she got to her feet might be considered an overreaction by most people, but by honey badger standards, Livy was just being true to herself. She felt a little strange about it, but she didn’t feel guilty. She would never feel guilty. She was just grateful she hadn’t had to deal with the cleanup. She hated cleaning up.
Still bent over at the waist, Livy wiggled her fingers and attempted to stretch a little farther down.
“Now I understand,” a woman’s heavily accented voice said from behind Livy, “what my son sees in you.”
Livy slowly rolled back up and turned to face the woman standing in the bedroom doorway. The tigress smiled at her, and Livy saw Vic in that smile. “You do not startle easily, I see. That is good.”
The She-tiger walked into the room, all the while sizing Livy up. “We were just listening to tales of your troubles. I was sorry to hear what happened to your father. I knew him, you know. We were not friends, and I am not surprised he died so young, but still . . . none of us should die like that.”
Vic’s mother was impeccably dressed in a designer suit, designer shoes, and with a designer handbag under her arm. Her long black hair with streaks of red, white, and gray was twisted into a perfect chignon. Her makeup was subtle but enhanced her brilliant gold eyes. Although she was in her early sixties, the woman dripped poise and elegance and sex. Raw, feline sex.
But Livy wasn’t fooled. This Siberian tigress was a hardened predator.
Now beside Livy, the She-tiger touched her shoul
ders and gently turned Livy around.
“Tsk-tsk. So many bullets. And yet you still live. But your kind has never been easy to kill.”
“Tried a few times, have you?” Livy asked, turning back around since she knew tigers always attacked from behind.
“We all have done things in our past we’d like to forget. I’m sure one day you will try not to remember shooting all those bears in the head and leaving their cooling corpses on the floor of your Sports Center.”
“They shot first.”
“Yes. Of course they did.”
“Is there something you want . . . um . . .”
“I am Semenova Gribkova-Barinov.”
“Please tell me you have a nickname.”
“My American friends called me Nova. Although I did not think my name would be a challenge for you.”
“Only if I have to say it every time I talk to you. So . . . is there something you want, Nova?”
“Just get dressed and come downstairs. We have much to discuss with you and your family.”
“I’ll be right down.”
The She-tiger walked out, and Livy started to grab clothes from a duffel bag one of her cousins had brought from Livy’s apartment. God, it felt like forever since she’d been back to that apartment. Was it even still standing, or had Melly returned and destroyed it?
Livy began to put her clothes on, but she hadn’t had a shower since the day before and she felt a little . . . icky. So she found the bathroom attached to the bedroom she was in, but froze in the doorway. She’d never seen a bathroom like this before. The floor was marble. The sink marble and stainless steel. There was an enormous built-in tub and a separate shower with glass doors and more showerheads than seemed necessary with temperatures that were managed digitally.
It was a really nice bathroom, if a little extravagant. For her taste anyway.
So Livy ended up taking a longer shower than she planned. Hard not to once she realized she could adjust the temperature of each showerhead individually.
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