Badger to the Bone (Honey Badger Chronicles, #3)

by Shelly Laurenston

So he had no idea how these men had gotten on the bad side of his granddaughter Max and her teammates, but he also knew that Max Yang didn’t attack without reason. Honey badgers never did. But God help you if you attacked them, because they never stopped. They never would stop. No matter how much bigger their enemy, how much stronger, how much faster. Badgers never stopped.

It was a Saturday but the boys’ basketball team had been given a parade for their championship win. The girls, however, who’d rocked the state championship as only a group of badgers could, had not been rewarded with such spirit.

Hyenas. They’d moved into the farm next door to Charles’s Pack a few years back. Thankfully, neither side gave the other much trouble, but a fight this close to territorial lines could cause all sorts of problems if not handled correctly. Especially since one of these basketball players was the half-sister of some of the hyena adults. Although her badger genes overrode anything else inside her, giving her full-on honey badger traits, the Clan still believed her to be their “property.” The way they believed all the male hyenas were their property. At least, she would be until she turned eighteen. Unless she was at basketball practice, the hyenas didn’t take kindly to her hanging out with her honey badger teammates outside of school.

But Betsey suspected otherwise and was then certain when she’d found out that their ex-Alpha and his small Pack of wolves had suddenly disappeared. No one had any idea where they were or when they’d be back, but Betsey knew they’d never “be back.” Whatever Charlie and Max had done, they’d made sure that their ex-Alpha would never return again to bother their grandfather. The disappearance didn’t disturb Betsey as much as the girls’ lack of concern about it. Shouldn’t they be showing signs of PTSD or remorse for what they’d been forced to do? But nope. They’d instead focused on their adorable, disturbingly named puppy and went on with their lives as if nothing had happened. Thereby proving what Betsey had known since the girls first arrived at the Pack house: they were killers. Not simply predators. All shifters were predators. But at least the first two were hard-core killers. Shifters who could do what needed to be done without losing sleep or needing recovery time.

Half wolf and half black bear, Betsey entertained herself with soccer balls and tough rubber toys that were used for pit bulls; she made sure that all her meat-and-vegetable meals were smothered in quality honey; and, if she wasn’t paying attention, she tended to howl along with ambulance sirens. Normally not a big problem . . . except she’d just started medical school and would eventually be doing her residency at a hospital. With ambulances. That had sirens. Awkward.

I am fucking DEAD

She stepped closer to the Alpha female and, based on the expression the wolf shifter now wore, she finally understood what she was truly facing. Not some poor girls with no one to care for them. No, she was dealing with something else. Something brutal and untamed, with no feeling for anyone they didn’t consider “family.” “So let me be clear that when I say I’ll kill you . . . I mean it.” Her grin widened. “I’ll kill you and have you buried before the sun rises. It’ll be like you never existed,” she added with a laugh. “So, yeahhhhh. You’re going to let us stay here. You’re not going to bother Charlie. You’re definitely not going to say anything to Stevie. And if you even hint to my baby sister that she’s in any way unstable or mentally unwell . . . I’ll dismember you while you’re still breathing. And, in case you’re concerned, because it seems like you’d be concerned—you’re clearly very caring—I won’t miss a lick of sleep or have any PTSD over it. Your screams will mean nothing to me, because I won’t give a fuck. Why? Because I’m a cunt. I’m a raving, raging cunt.

Of course, this beating of one cousin by another was pretty meaningless. Because Mairi and Max were honey badgers. Gunshots to the chest and stomach . . . ? That didn’t kill their kind. Crowbars to the head? Nope. That wouldn’t kill their kind either. It took much more than any of that to actually do serious damage to a MacKilligan.

“Your blown-up uncles live with you?” Zé asked. “Of course they do. They don’t want to go back to Scotland until they figure out what’s going on, but . . . a bomb on a plane? Whose bright idea was it to do that? Everyone knows you can’t kill honey badgers just by blowing up the plane they’re on,” she scoffed.

How did she know? He had that look. Her mother called it, “The good-guy look. You have to watch out for them, honey. For those good guys,” she used to tell eight-year-old Max. “Your gut will tell you what they are; then just look in their eyes. You’ll see it in their eyes, and you’ll be able to spot them a mile away. They’re the ones who’ll get in the way of your taking what you want. Don’t let them.”

The rest of Max’s teammates now stood around her: Streep, Tock, Mads, and Nelle. The most loyal bunch of outstanding ladies Max had ever known. They’d played basketball together since junior high. But their relationship had always been more than mere teammates. All five were honey badgers in a land of wolves, bears, and cats; most of them had family issues beyond “Daddy works too much and Mom is always in a yoga class”; just in general, they simply didn’t fit in with anyone. Not with other badgers. Not with other shifters. Not with other people. But they fit each other for some strange reason and that made all the difference.

The purple-haired woman stopped and spun to face the blonde. The pair stared hard at each other. Then, abruptly, they bent a little at the knees and . . . hissed? Did they really? Did two grown women just hiss at each other nowadays? Was this due to the damage of social media?

And this was why Max hated cats! Tricky, evil, fur-licking cats! Now here she was, in the kitchen, her sisters grilling her like a steak about something she’d already forgotten. Life was too short to get all wound up about who kidnapped whom and who had shot whom and why a woman might willingly dive headfirst into the van of her kidnappers! Her sisters were so goddamn obsessive! Max didn’t obsess about anything but good honey and liquor flavored with snake venom. Those were the important things in life. Everything else was a waste of her energy. But there was no way out of it now, and all because of that damn cat!

She’d discovered that men who wanted to find out everything about you in the first five seconds were the same ones you had to eventually get restraining orders against.

Then, without another word, she easily hefted the more than two-hundred-pound cat onto the back of her neck like she was putting on a stole, and returned to the streets run by bears. They all watched her go. In silence. She wasn’t running. She wasn’t fearful. She was just . . . a honey badger with a live but unconscious cat around her neck.

Not only that, but Renny was a true honey badger. She knew how to start shit. She knew how to cause problems. She knew how to blow up a person’s life and not feel a bit of remorse about it. And he was afraid that would go for Renny’s daughter’s life as well.

Shen motioned behind him. “Wanna climb a tree with me? ” At that point, Zé couldn’t do anything but look as confused as he felt. “Why the hell, as an actual adult, would I want to climb a tree with another man?” Shen simply looked at the tree and so did Zé. It was a good-sized tree with a wide trunk. The branches were extremely thick and covered in lush leaves. “Oh, my God,” Zé gasped out. “I want to climb that tree.”