Breaking Badger

by Shelly Laurenston

  Startled, the cats turned their collective attention to the court floor, where Mads stood holding the basketball and glaring at them.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” she asked.

  When no one else said anything and he sensed the arena crowd was waiting for him to reply, he finally mumbled, “Protecting your honor?”

  It was weak, but it was honestly the best he had at the moment.

  He heard Keane snort next to him, so he slammed his elbow into his brother’s side, enjoying the resulting grunt of pain.

  “Oh, my God, you’re all so full of shit!” Mads barked. “Now cut it out! I’m working here!” The lion males sporting the opposing team’s colors lowered their heads to laugh but Mads snapped her fingers at them and snarled, “You, too.”

  “Or what?” one of the males asked.

  Mads took a step closer. “Do you like your knees where they are?” she asked.

  Confused, the lions looked down at their legs, at each other, then back at Mads.

  “Uh . . . yeah,” one of them finally said.

  “Then cut it out!” she spat in a voice ten octaves lower than Finn had ever heard. Mads’s blue eyes had also turned completely black. It was freaky and disturbing, and all the male lions jerked back in their seats.

  Not exactly the kind of basketball-star-against-fan interaction one saw on national TV, to be discussed and analyzed to death on social media for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. No. This was definitely a shifter-only kind of thing.

  Finn liked it. In football, he didn’t get this close to his fans until after the games.

  Mads walked back to the free-throw line. She closed her eyes, took a couple of deep breaths. Her team began cheering for her again and the crowd loyal to the Butchers joined in. Those who hated them comfortably booed or tried to distract her. But there was no more male-cat-on-male-cat roaring.

  One after another, Mads nailed each of those free throws, earning her team three extra points with a shocking amount of ease. After that, she was back in the game until the end of the quarter.

  “Still think she’s not a real athlete?” asked Charlie, who was sitting in the row right in front of Finn.

  “That’s not what I said!”

  “That’s how she’s going to remember it.”

  “Why should she remember that when it’s not what I said?”

  “You know how girls are. We’re very sensitive.”

  “No, you’re not! You’re the least sensitive people I know!”

  “You know what?” Charlie turned around, resting her knees on the seat and leaning toward Finn. He didn’t like it. “To apologize for your egregious rudeness—”

  “It was not egreg—”

  “—you should get some nice flowers from the florist on the first floor and go with the team when they celebrate their win.”

  “They haven’t won yet.”

  “They will. And you should be ready to go with them. They usually have a dinner or something.”

  “They have another quarter left. Anything can happen.”

  “So you don’t want to go to dinner with her?”

  “I didn’t say that either.”

  “Then get the flowers. An interesting arrangement. Nothing boring you’d give your grandmother. And take a shower. You guys are all funky.”

  “You think you smell like roses?”

  “I know I do. One, because I’m a girl. I’ll never smell as bad as a male. And two, because the hair product I’m currently using smells like roses, even when I’m sweating. So eff-you.” She pointed at Keane. “And lend him your SUV.”

  “It’s his SUV. My hood is still fucked up from where Mads landed on it last night. It looks like I wrapped it around a telephone pole. Sort of.”

  “We mostly bent it back,” Finn admitted. “Enough to drive it home. But it still needs a lot of work.”

  “Good. See? There we go.” She motioned for Finn to leave by flicking the fingers of both hands.

  “You’re really bossy,” Finn pointed out.

  Charlie laughed as she turned back around in her seat and sat down again. “You think I was being bossy? Ask Max how bossy she thinks I am.”

  * * *

  When those last few seconds were on the clock, and the Butchers were far ahead in points, they really could have just played a straight game until time ran out. But they were rude honey badgers. So, instead, they played what Mads could only call a really mean game of keep away. They just passed the ball to each other in the most outrageous and ludicrous ways they could think of until, with only three seconds left on the clock, they passed the ball to Nelle. She turned to take her shot and ended up facing a six-two She-tiger who had no intention of letting that happen.

  Nelle didn’t let anyone get in her way, and shifter sports leagues had unusual rules. Which meant she was allowed to climb that She-tiger like she was climbing an old oak. Once she was on the tiger’s shoulders, Nelle launched herself off and slammed the ball into the basket, hanging from the rim for a few seconds before she let go.

  The buzzer went off a split second later and the crowd jumped to its feet. Mads and her team charged at each other, realizing they’d not only won the game, but were headed to the championships. Their ultimate goal for the year. They crashed into one another with Max ending up in Mads’s arms, her legs around her waist. Tock had Nelle on her shoulders and Streep hanging off her hip. The rest of the team surrounded them, chanting the team call, “Butch-er! Butch-er! Kill! Kill! Kill!”

  Max had written the call years ago. Until the badgers arrived, the Butchers had no team call.

  After their opponents grudgingly shook their hands, the team returned to the locker room. There was more singing and dancing and chanting until the coach called for quiet.

  “I just want to say how proud I am of my girls! It was a hard fight, but we’ve done it again! The Wisconsin Butchers have made it into the championships!”

  There was more applauding and cheering for another minute or two. Then the coach said, “Now, you ladies get showered up and pretty and dinner tonight is on me!”

  Mads turned to her locker, happily stripped off her sweaty uniform, and wrapped a big towel around her body. That’s when Streep handed her a white jar.

  “What’s this?”

  “Some of that conditioner I used.”

  “I am not going out tonight with a shower cap on my head.”

  “You don’t have to. My hair was singed. Twenty minutes tops for you. But you really need this.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you want to look good tonight or not? Especially next to us.” Streep turned and flicked her ponytail in Mads’s face.

  Deciding it was just easier to use the damn conditioner, Mads got in the shower, washed her hair, and combed in the conditioner. While it sat in her hair, she had time to kill, so she shaved her legs before washing everything else. When the twenty minutes were up, Mads rinsed her hair and walked out. She dried off quickly and went to the bar area that had been set up with blow-dryers and curling irons and a makeup section. Mads doubted she’d find the same thing in any of the men’s locker rooms but she didn’t care. She hated walking around with wet hair. It made her look like death.

  She blew her hair out, even hit it with the straightening iron a little bit, and to her disgust . . . Streep was right. Her hair looked amazing.

  Mads didn’t bother with makeup because she never did. It just wasn’t her thing. Once she was done with her hair, she went back to her locker and got changed into a black sleeveless shirt, black jeans, and black boots. She would pick up her dirty clothes the next day since she planned to have a good time tonight with her . . .

  Turning around, Mads quickly realized she was the only one in the locker room. Why was she the only one in the locker room? She was the fastest dresser on the team besides Max, who always dressed like she was running from the cops.

  Grabbing her backpack, she walked out of the locker room and right into Finn Malo
ne.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.” She looked past him. “Have you seen the rest of the team?”

  “They’re not here? I thought I was going out to dinner with all of you to celebrate your win.” He frowned. “You did win, right?”

  “Of course, we won. Wait . . . you were at the game, right? Why don’t you know we won?”

  “Charlie told me I needed a shower. And to get you these.” He shoved a bouquet of flowers in her face. “Congrats on your win.”

  She snatched the flowers out of his hand. “Those assholes!”

  “They’re just flowers.”

  “Not the flowers. This. This is a date.”

  “We’re on a date?”

  “We are now. They set us up.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Finn nodded. “So where do you want to go eat?”

  “Where do I want . . . ?” Mads wanted to tear the flowers apart and throw them in Finn’s face but they were so pretty, she simply didn’t have the heart. Instead she asked, “Aren’t you annoyed?”

  “No. I’m hungry. I’m very hungry. I had to drop my hot-dog earlier when that She-lion body-checked you, and defensive line tryouts were a lot of work because Charlie was just tossing everybody around. So after I eat, I might be annoyed. But right now, I’m just hungry. Besides, we should celebrate your amazing ability to be a real asshole on the court. Even Keane was impressed.”

  Mads smiled before she could stop herself. “It was part of our game strategy for this particular team. That level of dickish-ness is not always necessary.”

  “It was great. Seeing you slap that ball away from the net constantly. It was irritating the hell out of the other team.” He motioned toward the exit with a jerk of his head. “Come on. Let’s go celebrate your win.”

  “Okay. But I’m going to yell at them later.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Together, they walked down the hall. And, as they neared the exit where some fans were holding up photos of Mads for her to sign, Finn said, “Your hair looks great, by the way.”

  “Thanks. I used that lion’s recommended conditioner.”

  Finn stopped walking and just let out a small, annoyed roar.

  “What?” Mads asked.

  “I just hate those fucking male lions.”

  “Because they’re pains in the ass? Or because their hair always looks so good?”

  “Honestly? Both!”

  chapter FIFTEEN

  Charlie congratulated her sister and her team, but she was in no mood for a dinner filled with animals she would never dine on—zebra steaks? Really? But eating horse was bad? What was the difference? Why couldn’t anyone tell her that? Because other than the stripes, Charlie didn’t see that big a difference between horses and zebras!—and watching her honey badger sister and her honey badger friends drink more and more deadly snake poisons to “celebrate” their win. So she went home after getting everyone settled for their night of “fun.”

  After parking her car, she debated whether to go to her rental house first or the Dunn house across the street to see the love of her life. The only reason she didn’t go to see Berg first was because she really should check on her baby sister. Although life with her panda had made Stevie a lot more tolerant of having “man-eating bears” around the house, it still freaked her out when they began to “surround us like they’re going to eat us all!” Something the bears on this street would never do because they were smart enough to know that if they ate Stevie or Max, they would never get any more baked goods from Charlie.

  As it was, she wasn’t sure how she was going to tell them that she would be playing football from time to time. If they thought it would cut into her baking time, they might get a little hysterical.

  Charlie heard a whistle and stepped away from her car door. She smiled. Berg was sitting on the open back gate of his triplet sister’s pickup truck. It was specially reinforced, so it could handle weight up to thirty-five-hundred pounds. Which was good because that’s nearly what the triplets weighed together. Not quite, but close . . .

  As always, Charlie loved seeing Berg’s handsome face. True, it matched the faces of two other people in nearly every way, but it was weird how she could immediately tell the difference between him and his “identical” brother, Dag. Even early in the morning, when she barely had both eyes open, and they were dressed exactly alike for that day’s security job, she never kissed the wrong one goodbye.

  “Our own mother gets us confused,” Dag would complain.

  Which would force Charlie to point out that in the brief time she’d met their hippy mother, who loved to smoke the honey-infused cannabis she sold to bears for a hefty sum, “She gets me confused with Max. Max. So I wouldn’t take it too personally.”

  “How did your tryouts go?” Berg asked as soon as Charlie put her arms around his waist and buried her head in his massive chest.

  “Pretty good, I guess.”

  “Just pretty good? I heard you put John Hartman through a wall.”

  “Who’s John Hartman?”

  “Offensive lineman. Used to date my sister. So she adores you like the sun now.”

  “I didn’t know. They just said—”

  “Get the guy with the ball. Yeah. Apparently stories of your tryout are all over the Sports Center. Her hockey team is pissed, though.”

  “Why?”

  “They should have gotten you first.”

  “I. Can’t. Skate.”

  “They figure, how hard can it be to learn?”

  “Very!”

  There was the slightest change in Berg’s body. The slightest shift in the tension of his muscles. But, for once, Charlie had remembered to take her allergy meds, so she could actually smell what was now standing behind her.

  * * *

  Berg knew he could have grabbed her. Could have held her tight. Could have yanked her onto the back of his sister’s truck to keep her away from the two females who’d silently sidled up to them in the dark. He could have done all that.

  But where would the fun be? And that was the upside of loving a MacKilligan sister. The fun! The downside, of course, was the worry when they went out at night and you weren’t sure they’d come back in one piece or come back at all. Because they faced such daunting nightmares out there in the world. But the upside was the entertaining crazy they brought to a shifter world in which everything had run a certain way for the last ten thousand years or so. It didn’t matter if it was Zé dealing with a smiling Max or Shen watching out for an easily startled Stevie or Berg watching a distrustful Charlie. Their lives had not been the same since they’d become involved with the MacKilligans.

  That’s why when Charlie, with blinding speed, suddenly yanked herself out of his arms, spun, and swung her fist at one of the females standing behind her, he didn’t attempt to stop her. He just sat back and watched what Charlie would do next. Because that would all depend on her mood.

  Her brutal fist slammed into a nose that had been broken so many times, another hit should not have hurt, but clearly it did. The She-wolf stumbled back, blood splattering the wolf’s face and Cella Malone standing next to her.

  “You evil little whore!”

  “Oh, my gosh! It’s you!” Charlie put her hands to her mouth in feigned surprise. “I’m so sorry, but you scared me.”

  “Liar!”

  “I didn’t know what was behind me. I just knew I was unsafe.”

  It seemed her mood tonight was “taunting innocence.” Charlie didn’t get to pull that one out very often. Mostly she had to go with “deadly threat” or “no one leaves here alive.” It was nice to see her able to have some fun for once.

  “You poor thing. Are you okay?” She reached out to the She-wolf, who stepped back.

  It was not something Berg ever thought he’d see. Because this wasn’t just any She-wolf. This was a Smith wolf. From a greatly feared pack that had whole Southern towns named after them, towns they ran with an iron claw. But even that wasn’t the most important
thing about this particular She-wolf. She wasn’t just a Smith wolf... she was Dee-Ann Smith. A former Marine and the most feared wolf anywhere apart from her daddy, Eggie Smith. The pair of them were only spoken about in hushed whispers. And the last thing you wanted was one of them showing up at your door for any reason. Even worse . . . was if both of them showed up.

  Shifters of all breeds, all species avoided Dee-Ann Smith. Only those who knew her well ever got close to her. And yet, Charlie MacKilligan had nearly killed her once because Dee-Ann had made her mad. The boundary crossed had to do with Charlie’s baby sister, Stevie, and that was a fool’s move. Max could take care of herself but Stevie . . .

  Well, Stevie was unique. Sweet, brilliant, a little fragile mentally, and wildly unstable when it came to her shifting abilities. Although Charlie and Max rarely agreed on anything in life, they did agree on three things: their love of horror movies, protecting Stevie from the world, and protecting the world from Stevie.

  When it looked like Dee-Ann was about to interfere, Charlie did not hold back. The only thing that kept Dee-Ann alive was that she was a powerful She-wolf with centuries of good breeding stock behind her. And decades of Marine and Eggie training to keep her alive.

  But that shattered nose she was desperately trying to put back in place so it could knit together during the night . . . that was just Charlie toying with her. Because she knew her message had gotten across the first time.

  “I’m really sorry. I didn’t take my allergy meds—”

  Lie. He’d been standing right there when she downed her allergy meds with orange juice and a muffin. Then she’d used her nasal spray.

  “—so I can’t smell a thing! And I heard something behind us—”

  Another lie. The one thing a Smith could do at birth was move without making a sound. Berg didn’t want to think about all the times he’d found a bunch of Smiths suddenly standing next to him at some event where he’d been hired as security. It drove him nuts! How could he be doing his job when he didn’t notice that Smiths had eased their way in without invites? And then sidled up to him without a sound so he didn’t even notice! And yes, he always tossed them out of those venues with way more . . . well . . . let’s just say “enthusiasm” than was necessary.