In a Badger Way

by Shelly Laurenston

Now the three oldest siblings muttered together, “Wow.”

  * * *

  They walked into the Panda Garden restaurant and all the employees called out, “Shen!”

  Stevie took a step back, ready to bolt, but a moment later she knew she wasn’t in danger. These weren’t grizzlies and black bears. These were giant pandas. The cutest of all bears! As far as Stevie was concerned.

  But she knew when she said that, it always annoyed Shen, so she kept the words to herself.

  Shen greeted everyone in the restaurant with a wave of his hand before walking to a table and pulling out a chair for Stevie. She sat down and he took the seat catty-corner from her.

  “Hiya, Shen.” Dorie, the waitress’s badge said. She had two menus in her hands.

  “Hey.” He took a menu, but began rattling off a list of food without even looking at it. And all of it involved bamboo. Bamboo lo mien. Bamboo chow fat. Stir-fried bamboo. Steamed bamboo. Sliced chicken and bamboo.

  “And you?” Dorie asked Stevie.

  “Three orders of chicken with mushrooms and steamed rice. No honey anywhere near my food.”

  “Three orders?” Shen repeated, smiling.

  “I’m hungry,” she admitted.

  Dorie took the menu back from Shen and walked away, then she returned and asked Stevie, “I know what he wants, but what do you want to drink?”

  “Oh. Uh. Water, please. Bottled.”

  “Sure.”

  When she was gone, Stevie added, “I really want a beer, but . . . I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

  “With new meds? Probably not.”

  “Exactly.”

  The water arrived and, once the waitress had again gone away, Stevie pulled the bottle of new meds out and took two pills. Her doctor wanted her to take two for her first dose. “To do a hard reset of your system,” she’d said. After that, it was once in the morning and once in the evening. Always with food and lots of water.

  After gazing at the pills for a long moment, Stevie blew out a breath, popped them in her mouth, and drank several gulps of water.

  She put the bottle down, carefully placed her hands on the table, and looked up to find Shen watching her closely.

  That’s when her head hit the table and she went completely limp.

  * * *

  “Holy shit!”

  Shen reached across the table to lift Stevie up and get her to the closest shifter-friendly hospital he could find. But as soon as he had hold of her shoulders, she began laughing.

  “Are you joking around?” he demanded.

  Stevie sat back, still laughing.

  “The way you were looking at me,” she said around her laughter, “it was like you were waiting for me to die.”

  Shen sat back down. “Stop fooling around.”

  His grumbles, though, only made her laugh harder.

  Dorie came back to the table, gaze bouncing back and forth between them before she asked, “I forgot, do you guys want soup?”

  “Sizzling rice with chicken,” Shen said automatically, abruptly realizing Stevie had said the same thing at the same time.

  They smiled at each other and Shen felt . . . something he wasn’t used to feeling. Like this “zing.” Her smile gave him a zing. He didn’t get a lot of zings.

  Stevie pulled out a folded piece of paper and slowly opened it. She sighed, gazing at it.

  “What’s that?”

  “A list from my doctor,” she said, smoothing it out on the table. “Things she wants me to do as well as taking my medication.”

  “Tough stuff?”

  “No, but ridiculous. Like she wants me to meditate.”

  “I heard meditation is great.”

  “It’s awesome. I make Charlie do it to help with her anxiety. But I already meditate.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah.” She stared at him for thirty seconds. Shen kept waiting for her to say something and she finally did . . . “Bam! Just meditated.”

  “Right. Of course.” Shen cleared his throat. “What else is there?”

  “Make friends.” She looked up at Shen. “Make friends? I have friends.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes. They’re all forty- and fifty-year-old scientists from China and Russia and South Korea . . . but they’re my friends.”

  “Do you see them when you’re not working?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Okay. What else?”

  “Casual time with my sisters.” She gave a hard shake of her head. “Is she kidding? I spend all my time with my sisters.”

  “Yeah, but do you spend casual time with your sisters? Like, going out to dinner at a restaurant or binge-watching movies while lounging on the couch? Or do you only spend time with your sisters when they’re either protecting you or you guys are running for your lives?”

  Again, she stared at him for about thirty seconds. Not to meditate, though. “Fine!” Stevie snapped. She again looked down at the sheet of paper. “Okay, what about this? She wants me to start exercising.” She threw her hands up. “Exercising? Me?”

  “Why not you?”

  “First off, I don’t need to. I’m a shifter.”

  “But you have no muscle tone.”

  “I do too!”

  “No. You don’t. And you come from two very muscular species. Look at Max. She’s honey badger and she is one big muscle, from her head to her toes. Like a pit bull. And Charlie has those wolf shoulders. I’ve seen smaller linebackers in the NFL. But you . . . like a twig.” He tapped the table with his forefinger. “You know, this is a great place to start. Exercise. We can do that.”

  “We?”

  “You need friends and you need exercise. I can provide you with both.”

  She grinned. “Sex?”

  “Why would anyone want to have sex with a stuffed toy?”

  Stevie blew out a breath. “You’re really not letting that go, are you?”

  “That you referred to me as a stuffed toy? No.”

  “As cute as a stuffed toy. It was a compliment!”

  “I’m not going to let you make me feel bad because I’m super cute. The survival of my species relies on our super cuteness. Do you think the Chinese government would be fighting to protect us if we weren’t so damn cute?”

  “Shen’s right,” Dorie said, carefully placing the big bowl of steaming soup onto the table, followed by two smaller, empty bowls. “The Chinese government adores giant pandas. Both shifters and full-bloods. In fact, there’s a port city right outside of Shanghai . . . panda only. No hunting allowed. Or bamboo stealing. Death penalty offense.”

  Dorie held up a bowl of rice. “Ready?” she asked.

  Shen nodded and Dorie poured the rice onto the soup. The sound of sizzling rice filled the air along with the fragrant scent of the soup.

  “My absolute favorite,” Stevie sighed out.

  And there went that smile again. And the zing.

  That goddamn zing.

  * * *

  “And that was my morning,” Irene finished with a one-shoulder shrug.

  Van blew out a breath. “You know, I really thought being threatened with an actual skinning would be the more interesting story. I was wrong.”

  “I have to agree. And she threatened to flay you. That’s the correct terminology.”

  He placed his elbow on his desk and rested his chin on his raised fist. “Because that’s the most important part of this conversation.”

  “It is.” Irene leaned back in the chair and crossed her legs. Van, unable to help himself, growled.

  Irene smirked. “Stop that.”

  “You started it.” He lowered his arm. “So did you tell my cousin?”

  “Ric?” she clarified, since Van had a lot of cousins. “Of course not. Because I knew he’d tell the psychopath.”

  “He calls her his wife.”

  “The biggest mistake we could make would be to eliminate Dr. Stasiuk-MacKilligan simply because she’s a
giant freak of nature that could destroy half this city in record time.”

  “But you’re essentially trying to turn her into a honeypot. Is that really any better?”

  “Than dying at the paws of Dee-Ann Smith? Yes. And I am not turning her into a honeypot. I didn’t tell her to have intercourse with him.”

  “Do you really think Wells will tell her anything?”

  “You know all about wolves and bears and cats, but I know male scientists. If he thinks for a second he can impress her, he’ll tell her anything.”

  “And if her sisters find out what you’ve talked her into?”

  Irene shrugged. “Then we get Dee-Ann and her Irish cat friend involved. But not until we have to. As a last resort.”

  She brought her hands to her face, rubbed her forehead. “I’m afraid we will have only one chance at this.”

  * * *

  After they gorged themselves on some of the best Chinese food Stevie could ever remember eating, they walked down the street to stop at a local ice cream place.

  Stevie had been here before. Bears came here a lot but there were lots of full-humans, too, allowing her to feel much safer.

  The place was pretty packed on this summer day, but Stevie managed to find them a table near the back. She ordered one of the delicious banana splits and Shen got something called “the Panda Palace.” She didn’t ask, but she was sure bamboo was going to be involved.

  Once the waitress had gone to get their orders, Stevie asked, “Can I talk to you about something without you telling my sisters?”

  “Why would you ask me that?”

  “My sisters are concerned about me right now and they’ll ask you questions when we get back or later tonight when they think I’m asleep. They’ll get you when you least expect it, and before you know it, you’ll be telling them everything I said, but I don’t want to have this conversation with them for a reason. It’s something I need to work out for myself, but I need to talk to somebody about it and Kyle’s not here.”

  “You do know Kyle’s seventeen, right?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “He’s a child. He should be coming to you for advice.”

  “He does come to me. And despite Kyle’s age, he’s a very thoughtful young man. I, personally, believe that he’ll be a philosopher in his later years.”

  Shen rolled his eyes and his lip curled in disgust before he let out, “Ech.” He motioned to her. “So what do you want to talk to me, a grown man, about?”

  “Have you ever thought about what your life would be like if you didn’t shift?”

  “No, because I know what it would be like. It would be miserable.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah. Nothing is more awesome to me than”—he leaned in and lowered his voice—“shifting and hanging from a tree limb, in the sunshine . . . or snow and just being me. Oh!” he suddenly added. “Even better, getting a big ball, wrapping myself around it, and just rolling around a yard.”

  “Seriously?”

  “It’s the best. What do you like to do when you are . . .” He glanced around, saw the full-humans and vaguely finished, “. . . your other-self?”

  Stevie gazed at the panda for several seconds before she admitted, “I like to play with Blayne. Or something Blayne-like.” She leaned forward. “Human toys are the best because they kind of fight back. And the screaming weirdly entertains me.”

  “I get that. But that’s a typical predator thing.”

  She nodded. “I guess.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  “Why?”

  “At the end of the day we’re all human. When I”—he cleared his throat—“change, I’m still me. I still know what I’m doing.”

  “You mean you have control.”

  “Right.”

  “But what if you don’t?”

  “But I do.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t.”

  “Wait . . . I don’t . . .” Shen shook his head. “What are we talking about here?”

  Stevie leaned in. “What if, with medication, I could stop shifting . . . forever?”

  * * *

  Max, covered in stolen honey and bee stings—and some of those truly aggressive bees that just wouldn’t let go—trotted through a hole in the back fence that she’d created and cut through the yard. When she reached the front fence, she shifted back to human and batted off the bees, pulled out the stingers, and leaned against the fence.

  That’s when she caught sight of Berg and Dag circling an Escalade that had parked in front of the house.

  The bears on this street didn’t like strangers in general, but since Max and her sisters had moved in, they’d been extra protective. Something that Max found extremely entertaining.

  “I smell cat,” Dag announced to his brother.

  Berg leaned in and took several sniffs against the window. “That’s a big cat . . . and . . .” He sniffed a few more times. “. . . And cheesesteak.”

  “There’s cheesesteak?” Dag pressed his nose against the glass again. “That’s definitely cheesesteak.”

  “We could order cheesesteaks from Jersey Mike’s.”

  “Yeah . . . but I’m hungry now. And the window is open a little.” Dag forced his hands between the window and the metal of the vehicle. He then pushed hard, forcing the window down with a squealing sound that made even Max cringe a little.

  Dag only managed to get it halfway down and couldn’t get his massive body inside. Although it was humorous to watch him try.

  After the third attempt, Dag stood and stared at his brother over the top of the vehicle. Some unspoken words passed between the two triplets.

  Berg went to the back of the vehicle and, again, after looking at each other, they both squatted down and Max watched, her mouth wide open, as the brothers lifted the Escalade up and tipped it toward Dag. Everything that was inside came rolling toward the window.

  “Shake it left,” Dag ordered.

  And they did. They shook the Escalade to the left.

  “Right.”

  Then the right. Then left again. Like someone trying to shake a certain color out of a box of M&M’s.

  When none of that seemed to work, they dropped the vehicle and Berg went to stand by his brother’s side.

  “Maybe we should just call Jersey Mike’s,” Dag suggested.

  “Yeah. But we still don’t know whose Escalade this is.” Berg wrapped his hand around the inside of the open part of the window. “Maybe if it’s unlocked we can just—ooops.”

  Max closed her eyes and lowered her head, giving herself a moment so she didn’t laugh out loud. Hysterically. But the vision of that bear standing there . . . holding that door in his hand . . . because he’d pulled it off the Escalade, was something that would be burned into her mind until she died.

  “That was an accident,” Berg said—and Max believed him.

  “I know,” Dag replied. “But since it’s open anyway . . .”

  Dag leaned in and, eventually, ended up crawling inside, followed by Berg once he leaned the door he’d been holding against the SUV’s back end.

  Together, the pair began to rip apart the inside of the vehicle, still looking for those cheesesteaks. Oh . . . and information. Apparently.

  Max heard footsteps and looked to her right. A male was walking toward her, grinning as he eyed her naked body. The bears on Carthage Street had seen Max naked so many times, none of them reacted to it anymore. But this guy . . .

  He stopped next to her and leaned against the fence, his elbow resting near her face.

  He was good-looking and, Max could now smell, a male lion. A handsome, muscular cat who probably adored his foam green Escalade the way the dogs in their house loved their rubber toys.

  “Hey,” he said, flashing a handsome grin. “How you doin’?”

  Max could have played with him. But she wasn’t really in the mood. It had been a long day already and she just didn’t have the energy
. So she simply nodded her head toward his SUV and watched the cat’s gold eyes grow impossibly wide before he took off running.

  “Hey!” he screamed. “What the fuck—”

  By the time the lion reached the SUV, Berg had already gotten out . . . and stood up. He was at least six-ten and wide. Oh, so very wide.

  That didn’t seem to bother the proverbial king of the jungle. . . and New Yorker. He started yelling at a shocked—and a little hurt—Berg.

  “What are you? Stupid? What the fuck are you doing in my truck? Who the fuck do you think you are?”

  Dag got out, holding an empty brown paper bag. Max was guessing that bag had once held the cheesesteaks the bear kept smelling.

  “Oh, what?” the lion demanded. “You think you and your boyfriend can scare me? You two think I’m afraid of you?”

  But the Dunns really weren’t the problem. Nope. It was what surrounded the lion.

  Max cleared her throat—she was still naked so she figured he’d notice anything she did at the moment—and he spun to face her, but instead faced an annoyed Britta. Although the bond of the triplets had not been tested quite as much or as doggedly as the MacKilligan sisters’ bond, Max had no doubt that Britta would go as far as Charlie should her two brothers ever be at risk.

  And the male lion sensed that.

  “Well—” he began.

  But that’s when more bears showed up, slowly surrounding the cat. Britta was clearly angry, but the others were just curious. They didn’t like cats on their territory, but they really only chased the pack of wolves that lived several blocks over because the howling annoyed them so much.

  Max watched the cat closely from her little spot, noticing how he kept his hands down by his sides. But his fingers twitched. Not a lot, but just enough to tell her what she needed to know.

  The front door to the house opened and Charlie came out. She stood on the stoop and called out, “Hey, guys. There’s stuff on the table in the backyard if you’re interest—”

  Most of the bears were gone before she finished her statement, jumping over the fence and tearing across the yard to reach the table in the back.

  The Dunns, though, were still standing there. The boys confused, Britta just glaring.

  That’s when Charlie said, “I’ve kept some stuff in the kitchen, but they’ll find it if you guys don’t get it now.”