to live in fear of it. They were close. But it took an awful kiss at a homecoming game to prove what Max and Dutch had already known, deep down. They were close like siblings, but never like lovers. They knew too much about each other. Like the time Max had gotten drunk on vodka and python venom. She hadn’t wanted Charlie to find out, so Dutch had taken her back to his family’s house. There, in his bathroom, she’d evacuated the poison and nearly everything else in her system from nearly every orifice. She was too sick to stop herself and too embarrassed to talk about it. But she didn’t have to talk about it. Dutch just cleaned up his bathroom and never mentioned it again.
But they both knew he’d also seen too much.
Just like she had when he’d ended up on the wrong side of seven football players because he’d been fucking around with the wrong girl.
Max had dragged a naked, sobbing Dutch back to the Pack house to recover. The linebackers had done a number on him, beating him within an inch of his life. Unfortunately, unlike the MacKilligan girls, Dutch was still going through puberty and had no control of his ability to shift. He could barely unleash his claws, much less turn into a vicious wolverine with a thought. To make matters worse, it had been Charlie who’d come to Dutch’s rescue, beating the unholy crap out of the linebackers. Not because she liked or wanted to protect Dutch, but because she was not okay that seven seniors were beating up one sophomore.
But it hadn’t been seeing Dutch at his worst that had permanently put him in the “love him like a brother!” category. It had been what he did afterward . . . he’d hooked up with the same girl again.
That was such a “dude thing” to do that to this day she really couldn’t let it go. Because he hadn’t done it for love, but for revenge. And Max didn’t have time for that.
It didn’t really matter, though. She needed loyal friends more than she needed another dick attached to some idiot man. She could get dick anywhere, but someone who always had your back? That was like gold.
Max was checking her phone for the fifteen-thousandth time—she was just so bored standing in this goddamn line!—when she noticed that everyone around her had gone silent. Her hackles went up and her claws itched to be released. But she kept control with an iron grip that Charlie had practically beaten into her. “If you just attack every time you feel in danger, you’ll be in prison for the rest of your life,” she used to say.
With her head still down, her gaze still focused on the phone, she sniffed the air; sorted the scents.
She recognized what was behind her. Recognized it well.
It was Dee-Ann Smith. A She-wolf of worldwide renown among shifters. Her entire Pack was world renowned, and not for good reasons. But Dee-Ann was known to be one of the worst. The “killer” of the family, which was saying a lot when the whole Pack was made up of “killers.”
And this particular Smith hated Max. Despised her. Wanted her dead. Not that Max blamed Smith for feeling this way. It was sort of what she’d been aiming for when she’d snuck into Smith’s Manhattan apartment and made herself comfortable with the female’s young pup. She wanted Smith to know fear, to understand that Max “Kill It Again” MacKilligan was not the nice one in her family. Far from it.
Not that Max would have ever hurt that child. She wouldn’t have. And not because of her sisters’ moral leanings or because she knew she’d get into serious trouble if she crossed that particular line with the other shifters.
No, it was none of that. Max would never hurt a child because it was unfair. Kids were not a challenge. Even the scary ones, like hyena cubs who were born with fangs. And if there was no challenge, then what was the point?
So all kids—even the pain-in-the-ass ones—were never to be fucked with in the Max MacKilligan playbook. But that didn’t stop Max from letting Dee-Ann Smith sweat, thinking that her kid was at risk if she fucked with Max’s sisters.
The problem now, though, was Smith hated Max so much she could barely see straight. She went out of her way to let Max know that as soon as she could, she’d kill her. Even