In a Badger Way (Honey Badger Chronicles #2) - Shelly Laurenston Page 0,20

and then faced Charlie again. That’s when the woman’s shoulder suddenly jerked forward, a loud snap! ricocheted throughout the room.

“What, exactly, is going on with your bones?” Charlie had to ask.

“Really?” the woman barked, moving toward Charlie, finger out and pointing. “You are going to stand there and judge me?”

“Well, you have to admit it is strange.”

“Strange?”

The male put his arm around the woman’s waist and pulled her back, which Charlie appreciated for many reasons, but mostly because he used the woman’s body to block any further sight of his dick. Something Charlie didn’t really need to see at the moment.

“All I’m saying,” Charlie attempted to reason, “is that as hybrids. . . we’re all a little strange. So there’s no reason to point fingers. Or say anything to anyone about this little incident.”

“Incident?”

“Well—”

“Your sister is a menace!”

“You hugged her,” Max reminded the woman when she again stood beside Charlie. “Which is the same thing you did to me at the Sports Center.”

“Shut up!”

“I’m just suggesting,” Charlie went on, “that we keep this among ourselves. No reason to bring in anyone else. Not when we’re all a little . . . different.”

“Different?”

The male suddenly sighed and told the woman, “You really need to stop screaming-slash-repeating everything she says, Blayne. It’s getting annoying.”

The woman spun on the male, now pointing a finger at him. “Annoying? ”

* * *

Stevie pulled on the T-shirt that the giant panda handed her before continuing with her rant. “That woman is such a bitch!”

“Dr. Conridge isn’t that—”

“Do you know,” she cut in, not in the mood to hear him speak, “she actually wrote an article for Science America, in which she disputed not only my theories but my actual belief system?”

Shen frowned. “Your belief system in God?”

Stevie stared at the bear. “What God?”

“Okay,” he said. “So it wasn’t about that. Good to know.”

* * *

Max watched the couple bicker over who was more annoying. She didn’t understand people. They argued over the weirdest shit. Wasn’t life hard enough without making yourself miserable over bullshit?

Kyle and his brother stepped behind Max and Charlie.

“Are you two okay?” Coop asked.

Max shrugged. “We’re fine.” Of course, they were used to all this. They’d been there when Stevie began shifting around the age of eleven, when she hit an early puberty. Back then, she’d shift into a honey badger the size of a full-grown tiger with, of course, those stripes.

Charlie had immediately been freaked out by Stevie’s size. Afraid that the other breeds wouldn’t accept her as she was. Charlie always felt the need to protect Stevie, and for good reason. But after the first time they saw their baby sister shift while she was studying for the SATs at their grandfather’s dining table, Charlie’s concern grew exponentially. Because Stevie clearly didn’t have control over her issues. She panicked easy. She cried easy. She exploded into rage real easy. And when she did all three at the same time . . .

Max, however, was less worried because the one thing that Stevie had over both her and Charlie was her ability to self-analyze. She understood how dangerous she could be. How unstable. She was the first to insist on seeing a therapist, on retiring from music because of the pressure it put on her, on learning calming techniques, on getting medications to manage her depression and panic. Anything to help her deal with her issues.

Max respected that more than anything else her sister did. It wasn’t easy to be that self-aware, but Stevie was. And she was good at it. What she didn’t understand, she learned. She read books. She talked to specialists. She didn’t shy away from her problems. She embraced them and learned how to deal with them, taking care not to lose what made Stevie the prodigy, the genius, but also ensuring that she wouldn’t harm anyone.

So what had just happened, Max knew, would eat away at her baby sister. Would torture her in a way it would never torture others.

Unless . . . of course . . . she found something else to distract her first.

And while Max was trying to come up with something that would be a worthy distraction, Stevie stormed into the ruined ballroom—thankfully in her human form and in a long T-shirt—and stomped her barefooted way over to a smirking Irene Conridge.

“And let me tell you something else!” Stevie snarled at Conridge. “If you think that I—”

Shen ran into the room, placed his hands on either side of Stevie’s hips, lifted her up,