Badger to the Bone (Honey Badger Chronicles #3) - Shelly Laurenston Page 0,30
forgets that you ever existed.”
“Except I’m unforgettable.”
“I see,” Dutch said, shaking his head.
“You see what?”
“You’re trying to make me insane. You’re trying to make my life harder than it already is.”
“Why do you always accuse me of that?”
“Because you always are!”
“Dude, it’s okay. He’s fine. He got hit on the head pretty bad, but he’s one of us. So he’s recovered quite nicely. I don’t see what you’re freaking out about.”
“What am I freaking out about? How about your sister?”
Max lined up her ball and made the shot. It went in and bounced back over to her like a well-trained dog.
“What does Charlie have to do with anything?” She assumed he’d meant Charlie since Dutch and Stevie had always gotten along like a house on fire. Whereas, Charlie always seemed to want to set Dutch on fire.
“Max, they know it was you. You and Nelle and the others.”
“Who knows?”
“Who do you think?”
“So, the Group.” The shifter-only protection organization that Dutch had worked for since graduating college.
“Right. And Katzenhaus. And BPC.”
“BPC?”
“The Bear Preservation Council.”
“Oh, yeah. Them.” She shrugged her shoulders. “So what if they know?”
“You and your girlfriends left a trail of bodies in one of the countries that we are close friends with. To those organizations, that just means you’re off your chain.”
“I’m off my what?”
“That you’re out of control. And if you’re out of control, they’re going to want one of two things: either to make you join the Group, so they can put your out-of-control-ness to good use; or to put you down because you can’t be trusted.”
“Well, that seems unfair!”
“I repeat: You left a trail of bodies in the Netherlands!”
“Stop yelling at me. And my plan wasn’t to leave a trail of bodies anywhere. They shot first. I just reacted.” She continued to dribble the ball. “So what now?”
“Has your rescue cat called anyone? Maybe tried to make contact with his team? Which, I feel I should point out, is his full-human team.”
Max rolled her eyes at the wolverine dramatics. “I don’t think so. But he’s only been up for a few hours.”
“You mean, he’s just sitting in the house? Alone?”
“I had to convince him first that he wasn’t all that human and then . . .”
Dutch cringed, clearly already concerned with what she was about to say. “And then what?”
“And then he saw the bears . . . as bears.”
“What bears? Oh, God!” He quickly caught on. “Not the Dunns!”
“Well . . .”
“You can’t show a first-time adult shifter the grizzlies! It would freak anyone out! The Dunns are huge!”
“How was I to know that they’d come wandering through the house in their bear forms first thing in the morning? When the sun comes up, they’re usually human again.”
“Did he run? Because I would run.”
“No. He just wandered upstairs. Charlie was up there, so I figured she could deal with him.”
“Charlie knows he’s here? And she’s not freaking out?”
“Actually, she likes him,” Max replied.
“Seriously?” Frustrated, Dutch threw his hands into the air. “She likes a stranger-cat but just the sight of me makes her a psychotic—”
“Why are you here?” Charlie suddenly demanded, walking over to them from the back of the house.
“How you wound me,” Dutch muttered, turning away.
Charlie snatched the basketball from Max’s hands. “And you need to get inside and help that cat.”
“I did what I was supposed to do: I told him what he is. He just didn’t want to listen.”
“He’s finally listening and now I believe he’s having a mini-breakdown.”
“How am I supposed to help him with that?”
“By doing anything? You brought him here, Max. You told him the truth. Now you have to deal with the repercussions of those actions.”
Max rolled her eyes, blew out a breath, and leaned far back in a general show of frustration.
“What did you think was going to happen?” Charlie asked. “That you were just going to tell him he could shift into a giant cat and he would be, ‘Oh. Okay. Thanks for the info. I’ll go out and live my life now’? Did you really think that would happen?”
“Yes! I did! I didn’t think I’d actually have to—”
“Care?”
Max shrugged.
“Get your ass in there,” Charlie ordered, “and deal with this. Now.”
With a whining sigh that Max knew she wouldn’t tolerate from anyone else, she started toward the house. Only stopping to glance back so she could watch her sister react to Dutch’s presence by throwing the basketball at him with as much strength as she could muster—which was a lot.
“Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!” the wolverine howled, grabbing his