Page 23 of To Kill a Badger (The Honey Badgers Chronicles #6)

Like Gio, Antonella preferred staying in her animal form.

Unlike Gio, however, he wasn’t even sure the last time he’d seen her as human.

She rarely, if ever, changed into human.

Even Gio would shift to go to bookstores or museums. He didn’t like being around all those full-humans, but he did enjoy visiting very specific places if he was of a mind.

And he couldn’t do that in his six-hundred-pound form with a giant mane.

His sister, however, didn’t seem to want to go anywhere outside the house.

Hell, she barely even went into the house.

She slept outside, mostly during the day, and roamed the neighborhood at night, searching out small game like rabbits.

She sometimes went inside to shower, but mostly she just stood in the rain or turned on the hose with her paw, and had one of the kids spray her down.

Even he had to admit that was a little weird.

Letting out a deep breath, Gio pushed open the big screen glass door and stepped outside. He motioned to the eldest niece, and she rounded up all the younger kids, ushering them back into the house.

Gio moved across the lawn until he reached his sister.

She loved sitting there, all day, watching.

As a fellow introvert, Gio understand her not wanting to go outside their territory, but even he took hours out of his day to read books.

Fiction, nonfiction, history, old, new, even ancient.

He couldn’t imagine his life without books.

But how someone just sat around, watching cubs play in front of her . . .

“Hey, big sis,” he greeted the She-lion. That big gold head turned toward him, and cold, predatory gold eyes locked on his face.

What was his sister thinking? he always wondered. Was she just curious about what he wanted to talk about, or was she plotting to rip his face completely off? He honestly had no idea which it might be. His sister could react in a myriad of ways, depending on her mood.

“It’s about the”—he cleared his throat—“the de Medicis. I thought I should bring you up to speed on the latest, and some suggestions we have for how to move forward.”

Those gold eyes, so beautiful but so flat and uncaring . . . how do gazelles get through a day on the Serengeti when they would find something like his sister watching them all the time? It must be terrifying.

When she didn’t move, but simply continued to stare at him and blink, Gio started talking.

He told her what he’d already learned. All of it.

And told her about how ugly he was worried it might get.

He didn’t hold anything back from her. The worst thing one could do was hold something back from Antonella and she found out later on her own.

That’s how he’d ended up reattaching Pina’s lower jaw back to the rest of her skull.

“Anyway,” he finished off, “we all think we should move the kids to Colorado. You know we’ve got that ranch there. We figure they’ll be safer.”

When Antonella only continued to stare at him without making a sound, Gio assumed they were done talking.

“Okay. Let me know if you need anything,” he told her before turning around and walking toward the glass doors.

That’s when he saw his twin’s eyes grow huge, and he spun around to find his eldest sister standing in front of him in her human form.

Since she never willingly shifted to human, he knew this was bad.

Very, very bad.

* * *

“Ohhhh!” Pina and all her siblings cried out when Antonella shifted to human and stood in front of poor Gio. In her She-lion form, she was much smaller than him. But in her human form, their big sister was nearly six-three and could look Gio right in the eyes.

Unwilling to let her twin face Antonella on his own, Pina ran outside and stepped between the pair; Bria right beside her. The baby of the family sticking by Pina’s side like always.

Abruptly, Antonella took a step forward, and the three siblings, in the face of their eldest sister’s rage, took a step back. Then more steps forward came, and the trio backed up until they stepped inside the house . . . wait.

Pina’s back wasn’t still heading into the house. Instead, it was flush against thick glass, and she realized that her other brothers had closed the glass sliding door behind them, trapping Pina, her twin, and poor Bria outside with an angry Antonella. To protect themselves!

Cowards!

Trapped between the sliding door and their terrifying eldest sister, the three siblings waited. And, as usual, Antonella took her time.

She let her always-gold gaze silently sweep past each one of them, three times before settling on Pina.

“Your idea is to be weak?” Antonella growled out in that deep, scratchy voice of hers that she’d had since she was a cub.

Golden-blond locks reached down to her waist and partially covered her naturally beautiful face.

It was like the words were being ripped from deep inside her.

It seemed that’s how much she hated speaking human words rather than just roaring her unhappiness.

“Well—” Gio began, before one look from his sister shut him down entirely.

“If we run,” Antonella continued, “they will only chase us down. If we hide, they will only find us. We will not run. We will not hide. We will show our strength and stand our ground. Do you understand me?”

“Antonella—” Bria tried.

“Do you understand me ?”

“We don’t know if that’s the best idea,” Pina said, pretending she was as strong as Antonella. She wasn’t, but she’d taken theater classes in high school and had once had the lead role in Our Town . So . . . ya know....

Antonella’s eyes locked on Pina’s face, and the pair stared at each other.

“We?” Antonella asked.

“The family.”

“You mean the males. You got their opinion on this situation? Why would you do that?”

“They’re . . . family?”

“You should have stopped caring about them as soon as their balls dropped. The fact that they still live with us rather than joining another pride irritates me. Then you send one out to talk to me about plans for our pride?”

“He’s my twin.”

“No matter what National Geographic says, males do not run our pride. And we do not live in fear.”

“But should we?” Bria asked. “Live in fear, I mean.”

Antonella’s head slowly turned until she could pin Bria to the spot with those gold eyes that never changed color.

The pair silently stared at each other until Bria added, “I’m asking philosophically.”

“Philosophically?” Antonella repeated. “We’re discussing actual war here, and you’re talking philosophy to me?”

“Just trying to find other options.”

“There are no other options. There is only one.” She held up her right forefinger.

“We don’t run. We don’t hide. And if they come for us, we fight.

” Her forefinger lowered until she was pointing at them.

“If anyone comes for us, we will fight. We will destroy. We will not stop until all of our enemies are dead.” She abruptly turned toward Pina’s brothers behind the glass sliding door.

“And if any of you,” she said slowly as she walked toward them, “try to run or hide or don’t protect the cubs with your very last breath . . .”

She stood in front of the sliding door, her words hanging in the air as she stared at the others and they gawked back.

She still had her forefinger out, but she curled it into her hand before slamming the glass with her fist. She didn’t use much effort, but it was enough to crack the ridiculously thick material.

As Antonella turned to walk away, shifting back into her clearly more natural She-lion form, the crack began to spread from its initial spot and snake out across the entire door.

By the time Antonella was again sitting on her grass-covered mound of dirt, watching over her tiny empire, Pina could no longer see the rest of her siblings behind all those cracks.

Bria, unable to help herself, reached out and skimmed one of the cracks with the tip of her finger. That’s when it shattered and fell into pieces across the ground.

They all gazed down at the shards until Renny muttered, “That went well.”