In a Badger Way (Honey Badger Chronicles #2) - Shelly Laurenston Page 0,120

but I’m a musical genius. And although I’ve been out of the field for a long while, I still have my reputation. I don’t want to ruin it in order to win a karaoke contest. You get that, right?”

“I do.”

“That being said . . . I don’t want to risk the Jean-Louis Parkers losing their rental house and—”

“No, no.” Ward shook her head. “All I said you had to do was come here with your sisters. You did that.” She slapped one hand against the other. “That whole thing is over as far as I’m concerned.”

“It is?”

“Dogs do not blackmail. Cats do. We just look at you like this . . .”

Big brown eyes gazed at Stevie. Giant brown eyes. She immediately thought of poor Benny, still at the vet, recovering from that gunshot wound. He would look at her like that when he wanted her bacon.

“Okay, okay!” Stevie said, quickly glancing away. “Let me think about it.”

* * *

Shen made his way to the bar, ordering another beer from the She-wolf server.

“Do you have any bamboo?” he asked now that he saw the place was run by shifters.

The server handed him his bottled beer. “Roasted, steamed, raw, or fried?”

“Fried, please.”

As Shen waited for his food, he looked out over the dance floor. He didn’t know if he was amused or disgusted by what wild dogs referred to as “dancing.”

“You!”

Shen turned toward the voice barking at him.

“Oh. Hi, Blayne.”

“Don’t ‘hi, Blayne’ me. You lied to Gwenie. And she’s here . . .” She glanced around. “. . . somewhere. And you’re going to tell her the truth.”

“I did lie. But I had to.”

“You had to?”

“Yeah. Your running around telling the world that you were attacked by a two-ton badger does nothing but put our friend in danger. In danger from us.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ll put it to you in the form of a question: How welcoming have most shifters been to you and Gwenie? To Bo? I mean, if you take out his winning hockey ways. Have they loved you as you are, ready to accept you as one of their own? Or do they treat you like a freak?”

“I understand what you’re saying—”

“Good.”

“—but I wasn’t telling everybody. I was telling Gwen. And both of us are hybrids.”

“I know you guys are. Look, the way you and Gwenie have always protected each other? Dose that with steroids and some backwoods form of military training and you’ve got Stevie’s sisters. And they would see you as a threat. And they extinguish any threat to their baby sister. Understand what I’m saying to you?”

“No.”

“Seriously?”

Blayne began to giggle, her shoulders hunching over.

“Blayne.”

“I’m sorry,” she replied, still laughing. “I just wanted to see your face. Totally worth it.”

* * *

Standing on the edge of the dance floor, Stevie stared at the stage and listened to more caterwauling.

“How ya holding up?”

Surprised, she glanced at the woman standing next to her. “What are you doing here?”

Oriana shrugged. “Kyle told me the wild dogs had asked you to come here. I had a feeling they were up to something like this.”

“Are you a regular at Wild Dog Nights?”

“No. Not a regular, but, more than once, our mother has insisted her older children attend these”—she sighed dramatically—“events. To suck up to her protégé’s mother.”

“It’s good your mom wants to teach others. I don’t.”

Oriana laughed. “My mom would say you’re still too young to care about passing on your skills to the next generation.”

“Good. Then I don’t feel so guilty.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Stevie admitted. “I’m thinking I’m going to . . .”

Stevie, sensing she was being watched, stopped talking and began looking around the room to find all the exits and anything she could use as a weapon.

“Hi!”

The voice surprised Stevie and she jumped back into Oriana, who managed to keep both of them from falling on the floor.

When she was no longer leaning on a shockingly strong and steady Oriana, Stevie nodded at the five She-cats standing way too close to her.

“Hello.”

“I’m Mary Marie Brunetti and these are my sisters.”

Stevie wanted to say, “So?” but instead she just said, “Nice to meet you all.”

“Are you the ringer?” Mary Marie asked.

“Pardon?”

“The wild dogs brought you in, right? To go up against us?”

“Well, I don’t know about—”

“We are just so excited to hear you sing. Aren’t we, girls?” Brunetti’s sisters all clapped. “I looked up your name online—”

“How do you know my name?”

“—and you have quite the background. You’re into that classical music,