In a Badger Way (Honey Badger Chronicles #2) - Shelly Laurenston Page 0,5
quite large.” She raised one finger. “There is one option that—”
“No,” he said firmly. “We’re not going to discuss this again. Those three are too unstable.”
“First, it amuses me that you think you can force edicts on me like ‘We’re not discussing this again.’ Of course we’re discussing this again, and we’ll discuss it as often as I like.”
And that’s why he adored his wife. She never took any of his shit.
“Second, I’m not talking about all three of them. She has connections to him that we can use to our benefit.”
“But doesn’t she loathe you too?”
“Oh, yes. Absolutely. I doubt she’ll ever forgive me for what I did. But the difference is I have an in with this one.”
“Is that what you call a seventeen-year-old boy?”
Irene smiled. “He’s better than nothing.”
chapter TWO
Three days later . . .
Shen Li opened the cabinet door over the refrigerator, and that’s where he found her. Panting and sweating, her legs pulled tight into her chest, her eyes wide and bright gold.
Her eyes were normally blue, so he sensed that gold wasn’t a good thing at the moment.
She was also naked. Very, very naked. Why the hell was she naked?
“I’m fine,” she said before he could speak. “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine.”
“You want me to close the door?” he asked.
She shut her eyes, turned her head toward the corner, and nodded. Desperately.
Shen closed the door and faced the room. He knew immediately what the problem was.
It was the bears.
A roomful of them.
That would scare most normal people, but Stevie MacKilligan was not a normal person. Not even by his standards. And his standards were pretty liberal, being that he wasn’t really normal either.
How could he be when he could shift into a giant panda? An ability built into his DNA, like his mother’s brown eyes and his father’s weird knuckles.
But even by shifter standards, Stevie was not normal.
Cute. Interesting. But definitely not normal.
Which was why Shen knew she’d stay trapped in that cupboard until the end of time if he didn’t help.
“All right,” he said to the bears. “You guys need to go.”
They glanced at him . . . then went right back to eating the baked goods that Stevie’s eldest sister Charlie had put out before she’d left the house. He’d heard her heading downstairs before the sun was up just so she could bake, meaning only one thing—she was stressed out.
And when Charlie baked, the bears showed up to feed. A situation that didn’t bother Charlie but freaked out poor Stevie.
The bears continued to ignore Shen, but he wasn’t surprised by that. He was dealing with a room filled with grizzlies, polars, and black bears. Bear breeds that didn’t really consider pandas one of their own. Pandas just weren’t terrifying enough because pandas didn’t let the little things bother them. They didn’t explode in a violent rage when someone startled them. And panda mothers never ripped off someone’s head because he was too close to their children. Nor did panda fathers go on hunger-fueled rampages because a meal or two had been missed.
They were pandas. They just rolled along through life. Happy to be happy.
And, like his brethren, it took a lot to push Shen to actually unleash his anger. He’d always had a very high tolerance for bullshit.
Still, he knew that Stevie didn’t have that tolerance. High or otherwise. Although he’d never actually seen it in action, Stevie’s two sisters seemed to have a deep-seated fear of their baby sister “snapping her bolt” as it was called. Apparently it went beyond mere wild-animal rage and into something else altogether.
Not in the mood to deal with whatever cleanup that sort of thing entailed, Shen decided to end this before it became nasty.
He walked out of the kitchen, through the dining room, and straight into the living room. He grabbed the duffel bag he kept behind the chaise lounge, returned to the kitchen, dropped the bag on the floor, and pulled out his favorite weapon. He leaned against the refrigerator and began his assault.
First, he unleashed his fangs and used one to strip off the leaves, which he’d eat later. He then used his back teeth to crack down on the green bamboo shoot, breaking off a piece that he could then chew. Then he did it all over again. And again. And again.
The sound radiated across the room until he saw that every eye in the place was locked on him. Bears—especially grizzlies—hated what they called “weird sounds.” And they found