In a Badger Way (Honey Badger Chronicles #2) - Shelly Laurenston Page 0,62

up,” he ordered.

She slid her ass onto the table and sat back until her legs hung over the edge.

He placed two fingers under her chin and lifted.

“What are you going to tell Charlie when she sees this black eye?”

“I . . . I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Uh-huh. Not even to tell me what your father did? How he got you into this?”

“It’s my fault. I never should have believed him. I know he’s a liar, a scumbag, a useless waste of space.”

“And still your father.”

She felt a tear slide down her cheek and she hated herself for the weakness. But Shen didn’t say anything. He just wiped it with the tip of his finger before he began working on her cuts and bruises.

* * *

“I want my sister!”

Jess Ward Smith let her eyes roll back into her head before she looked over her shoulder at the honey badger that had invaded her home, and snapped, “Shut the fuck up!”

That’s when she got hissed at by a mouthful of needlepoint fangs, which was just weird.

The last twenty-fours had been nothing but weird. The inside of the Pack’s rental house had been nearly destroyed by what had been described to her as a giant tiger-striped honey badger . . . do those even exist? In nature?

And now the girl who had once betrayed her only son had arrived with the Jean-Louis Parker pups and her badger sister. If that was all, it would have been weird enough. But it got weirder! Jess had daughters. Too many daughters, some might say. And they fought constantly. But not like those two had fought. Like WWE wrestlers on primetime.

Now the betrayer was in Jess’s backyard with a goddamn giant panda and the betrayer’s sister was in her living room, screaming.

She had been doomed to this life, hadn’t she? To never have a “normal” existence. And not because she was a shifter. Lots of shifters lived in the suburbs and had nice, normal lives. But Jess never had. Not once.

“We should call Dez,” Sabina said next to her, speaking of the full-human head of the NYPD’s shifter unit. “Let her take these bitches in for what they did.”

“No.” And, of course, that came from her son. “We’re not doing anything.”

“Do you remember what she did to you?” Jess demanded. “Do I need to remind you?”

“No, Mom. You don’t need to remind me. And you need to let it go.”

“You haven’t figured me out yet? I don’t let anything go. Ever. Ask your Aunt Sissy.”

She looked down at her phone and quickly scanned her contacts, looking for the FBI agent’s number until Johnny took the phone from her.

“Really?” she asked him.

He laughed. “Come on.” He pointed at the crazed badger. “You too.”

They started to walk and Johnny followed, looking back at Coop and his siblings. “Can you guys wait here?”

“But we’re nosy,” Coop replied.

“Stay .”

“That doesn’t work on us,” Coop called out after them.

“It actually does,” Johnny replied.

He was right too. It worked on the wild dogs all the time.

They went out into the backyard, the panda smoothing a small Band-Aid on the girl’s cheek.

Johnny dragged Jess until they were right in front of the little con artist.

“Tell her,” Johnny ordered the girl.

Those betraying eyes flickered over to the badger and back to Johnny. The girl shook her head, her lips tightly shut.

“Now what did you do?” the badger sister demanded, pushing past Johnny and slapping at the girl. Using her legs, the girl pushed her sister away, then began to slap back. The two of them no longer looked like well-trained wrestlers but Jess’s twin daughters who had to be put in separate cribs when they got a little older because they kept getting into slap fights.

Johnny pushed them apart, making Jess wince. He had to protect his hands. Getting between a couple of predator siblings was never a good idea when your hands were priceless.

“Tell her what you did,” Johnny insisted. “Now.”

The betrayer rubbed her nose; her gaze focused on the panda’s hand.

Still not looking at them, she began, “My father convinced me—and I stupidly believed—that he just wanted me to get your contact information so he could talk to your mother. He told me he wanted to sell her something. I assumed it was one of his stupid Ponzi schemes and I was sure she’d never fall for it. But he’d researched you. He knew you were a fan of my music and that your mother had a lot of money. I