In a Badger Way (Honey Badger Chronicles #2) - Shelly Laurenston Page 0,29
faced Shen and he motioned to the pile of burgers he had on the coffee table, again offering what he had.
Stevie came over and picked one up. “Thank you,” she said with a sigh and moved back to the other side of the room, heading toward one of the wing-backed chairs across from Shen. She was turning to sit down when big hands slapped against the window, causing Stevie to scream and drop the burger as one of the MacKilligans’ grizzly neighbors put his face close to the glass and yelled, “Is your sister baking? I thought I heard baking noises!”
Shen shook his head, annoyed with his fellow bear. He would think the locals would have stopped doing that sort of thing by now. The MacKilligan sisters were not the kind of women a bear, cat, wolf, or man would want to startle. They made the horror of grizzly-boar rage seem like a toddler’s temper tantrum. Not only because Stevie shifted into . . . whatever the hell it was she shifted into, but also because her sisters didn’t really bother with shifting when they were startled or confronted. Charlie had a way with firearms that he hadn’t seen even from trained military professionals, while Max did love her edge weapons. She could slice and dice like an old-school butcher, but she moved like a dancer or gymnast. And she really enjoyed it. She enjoyed hurting those who hurt or attempted to hurt those she loved.
That made her more than a predator. It made her a killing machine. A shark in a honey badger body.
Shen picked up the SUV keys, his wallet, and sunglasses, and walked over to a panting Stevie, who was trying desperately not to panic. He slung her backpack over his shoulder and took hold of her arm.
“Come on,” he said, pulling her along behind him.
“Where are we going?”
“To get you some food and a break from . . . everything.” He glanced back at her. “I think after the day you’ve had, we can both agree that you deserve it.”
* * *
Coop placed a plate of cookies in front of his twin sisters, Zia and Zoe. He then sat down across from them while his sister Cherise poured milk into two tall glasses.
“We need to discuss this,” Coop said. Twin sets of brown eyes stared at him. “You do understand that what you did was wrong, don’t you?”
They chewed Oreos, their mouths moving in unison, while they continued to stare and not answer. It was something they did to unnerve people. Even blinking at the same time. And all that did unnerve Coop. But he refused to let nine-year-old brats terrorize him by pretending they were live-action dolls from The Shining.
“Are you listening to me?” he demanded.
The expressions on those cold, blank, adolescent faces suggested that no they weren’t listening to him. But those expressions changed when an arm came around Coop’s shoulder and a hand slammed onto the table, making the twins jump and their eyes go wide.
Toni, Coop’s eldest sister, who’d been called home after what they were now calling “the incident,” leaned down so she could look right into the twins’ faces.
“Do you two know what you did?”
Instead of attempting to intimidate Toni—something that would never work on the She-jackal who ruled this family with an iron paw—they began making excuses . . . and lying. Lots of lying.
“Quiet!” Toni barked after a minute or two of said lying. She threw her messenger bag behind her, uncaring there was a laptop inside. Luckily, her wolf mate, Ricky Lee Reed, was standing behind her and caught the bag before it hit the floor. “I don’t want to hear another lie from either one of you.”
Zia began to lie in . . . Russian? Coop wasn’t positive. And Zoe chose to lie in French. As language prodigies—to the point where they’d created several of their own—that was their go-to move when they knew they were caught. But Toni knew the twins’ moves better than she knew her own.
“That is enough!” Toni bellowed.
The twins immediately stopped speaking, looking down at the kitchen table.
“I can’t believe that you two would do something so stupid and mean as poisoning Lame. And she’s always been so nice to you two!”
Zia frowned. “It’s Blayne.”
“And we gave her soda, not cyanide,” Zoe stated.
“Knowing what that would do to her! Have you seen the living room? The living room we do not own!”