trick Mads’s Clan had learned when Max and her team were in junior high together. They didn’t try to fight Max and the others. They knew how dangerous that was because honey badgers didn’t back down. Even young ones. And each of them had a family or, at the very least, a Pack that wouldn’t let the hyenas get away with killing them outright. So they used a different, crueler tactic: They made Mads suffer for what her friends did. So, if the team tried to pull Mads away from her cousins to get her out of a bad situation, it was Mads who got the wounds. Who got the scars.
It was shitty but very hyena.
Of course, they were no longer in high school and Mads didn’t have to go anywhere with anyone if she didn’t want to.
When Max and her teammates made it outside, one of Mads’s male cousins was already pushing her into the back of a truck. It wasn’t that Mads couldn’t fight them, it was that she wouldn’t. To this day, she still felt like she owed these assholes.
Max, however, was about to show Mads that she didn’t owe them anything.
The teammates had almost reached the truck but the hyenas decided to meet them, their claws already unleashed as they came face-to-face . . . well . . . it was more like face-to-chest since most of them were several inches taller than the badgers. But that was okay. Her team knew how to take on bigger players.
Max reached under her shirt to get one of her blades but before it even cleared the holster, one of the hyenas went down. Then another. Both screaming from the pain in their legs. More of Mads’s hyena cousins jumped off the back of the truck but as they advanced, they went down one by one. Looking over her shoulder, Max saw her sister standing on the porch. She had a .9mm with a suppressor attached so the neighbors wouldn’t complain about the noise.
Charlie jumped over the railing with her hands wrapped around the gun, finger still on the trigger. As she moved closer, two more hyenas attacked . . . two more leg shots. Actually . . . knee shots. She shot them in the knees, ensuring they went down and stayed down at least for a couple of days. Knee damage wasn’t as easy to get over as a regular leg break.
Max’s teammates scrambled back, away from Charlie as she strode across the yard, then jumped over the fence to land next to the truck. She aimed her weapon at the skull of the last hyena standing. She walked him back until he couldn’t go any farther because of his vehicle, and pressed the weapon against his head.
“I know you,” Charlie said after staring at him for a few seconds. “We went to high school together. You used to call me ‘fat thighs’ behind my back.”
Max and her teammates cringed. That was not something a man wanted to be remembered for saying to a woman when that woman now had a gun pressed to his forehead.
“Listen,” Charlie went on, “I’m going to explain something to you: You don’t come to my territory and fuck with my sister’s friends. Because if they’re my sister’s friends, they’re under my protection.”
One of the hyenas on the ground attempted to stand up, so Charlie shot him once in the shoulder blade.
Max knew her sister’s precision with a gun was not in question. Charlie would make sure she didn’t hit any major arteries or organs. But what she did do, what Max was sure her sister did do . . . was cause as much pain as she possibly could.
The hyena’s intensified screams proved that.
“So, if I were you, I’d leave now. Mads, out of the truck, please.”
Mads slipped out of the vehicle and went to stand behind Max with their teammates.
“All right,” Charlie said, stepping back and motioning with the gun. “All hyenas in the truck. Time to go. Come along, fellas, let’s hop-hop-hop along. Thank you!”
Not once did Charlie raise her voice. Not once did she lose her temper. Because she didn’t have to do any of that.
The hyenas fled and, after lowering the weapon, Charlie faced them.
“You all right, Mads?”
“I’m . . .” Mads cleared her throat. “I’m fine. Thank you.”
“Any more problems with them . . . you let me or Max know. Okay?”
“Sure.”
Charlie headed back to the house, then stopped, looked at them. “I’ve got muffins if