Badger to the Bone (Honey Badger Chronicles #3) - Shelly Laurenston Page 0,4
Max let out a long sigh before her smile returned. “She has the weight of the world on her shoulders. All she cares about is keeping Stevie from being captured and used by the government or drug lords or whoever else my father has tried to sell her to. She has had so much stress in her young life that it shocks me she has not gotten an ulcer. Yet. So we trained, Charlie and me. To protect our sister—our family. Because the three of us and our grandfather are all we’ve got. Which is why, of course, we couldn’t join the military. Great training but a little too limited and restrictive for our needs. And me getting up at five a.m. every day with some dude yelling at me? Yeah. That wouldn’t last long. So our neighbor . . . a few farms over . . . former Marine, former Navy SEAL, former Black Ops. He taught us everything he knows. All we had to do was take care of his cats when he did mercenary jobs. And I fucking hate cats. But I did it.” 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. At least that’s how my last boyfriend described me as the EMT guys were shoving him into that ambulance.” She clapped her hands together. “So we understand each other, right? We never have to have this conversation again?”
Without meeting Max’s eyes, the Alpha shook her head. “No. We won’t have to discuss this again.”
Max let out a relieved sigh. “That’s great. Really. But don’t worry. I promise you, we’re going to be out of here in another month or two. As soon as we hear from one of the many universities trying to woo Stevie to their campus but definitely after I graduate since Charlie’s made it a personal goal for herself that I get my high school diploma. The things she worries about, I swear!”
Betsey scrambled back to her spot against the wall. She couldn’t hear Max moving, but her scent became stronger as she neared the stairs that led to the hallway.
Max came up the stairs, entered the hallway, and headed down toward the kitchen. But when she was right in front of Betsey, she stopped. Slowly Max turned her head toward Betsey, then raised her forefinger to her lips. “Shhhhh,” she said, as she had the first time Betsey had met her.
“Max!” Charlie barked, coming down the hallway toward them. “If you want to eat, you better get to the kitchen. That ravening horde of yours is devouring everything I made.”
“Do you mean my basketball team?”
“Whatever,” Charlie tossed over her shoulder as she headed up the main stairs toward the second floor.
Smiling, Max walked off, leaving Betsey to slide down to the floor, resting her chin on her raised knees and staring blindly ahead at the wall in front of her.
After a few minutes, her mother stepped in front of her. “Honey? Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she lied. “I’m fine.” She licked her lips and added, “But your next birthday . . . you’re coming to Chicago to visit me.”
chapter ONE
Nine years later . . .
Max MacKilligan didn’t see it coming. For once. But how could she when she’d been so focused on the white kid nap van and her ice cream cone? It wasn’t until her psychotic cousin grabbed her