Page 35 of To Kill a Badger (The Honey Badgers Chronicles #6)

“M orning!”

Keane opened his eyes to see Charlie standing over him with several bakery boxes, a thin piece of string wrapped around each one to keep them closed.

“I brought you guys pastries before they’re all gone. The bears are already lining up for what I made last night.”

Using his elbows to prop himself up, Keane asked, “Did you get any sleep?”

“Not really. But I don’t need to sleep as much as everyone else. Due to my father’s fucked-up genes.”

Swinging his legs off the couch and dropping his feet to the floor, Keane asked, “Do you mention your father’s fucked-up genes to my sister often?”

“You mean our sister, don’t you? And I don’t need to mention it to her. She already knows she has fucked-up genes.”

“Why? Because she’s deaf?”

“Being deaf is probably the best thing that could have happened to that kid, because she can never hear the level of his stupidity.”

“Okay,” Keane admitted. “You have a point.”

She placed the boxes of pastries on the table in front of him.

That’s when Keane warned, “Unless you want me to eat them all—”

Charlie quickly picked up the boxes again and headed toward the kitchen at the back of the house.

A few minutes later, she returned. She didn’t bother to say anything to him this time, most likely sensing his bad mood.

A brief wave, and she was gone again. That was another reason why he liked Charlie so much. She really got him.

Keane buried his face in his hands. He hadn’t slept great. A lot on his mind about the de Medicis; the Malones being around his niece, teaching her things like pickpocketing or breaking legs; the way his father’s brothers kept looking at his mother . . . none of it made him happy!

“Good morning, big brother!”

Hearing Finn’s cheery greeting as he entered the room made Keane immediately bare fangs and give off a roar that had Finn spinning around on his heel and heading back the way he’d come.

Shay stepped into the hallway, but Finn grabbed their brother’s arm before he could open his mouth—and make Keane angrier—and dragged him away.

Probably best for all involved.

* * *

“Should I even ask why all of you are in the shower together?”

“For hot girl-on-girl action just to entertain you?”

“Try again.”

“Because we’re all so hungover, we can’t stand up straight without all of us piled in together?”

“There you go.”

Wolf Van Holtz reached into the large shower and helped his wife out. His brothers grabbed their own wives while Ox informed them, “I need no help. I am not weak like you Americans.”

“You’re speaking to the wall, Ox.”

She realized he was right and spun around too fast, causing her legs to give out. She dropped to the wet floor.

Wolf put his wife on the closed toilet seat and went back for one of her best friends.

“I am okay, weak American.”

“Are you? Because you are just sitting there. Unable to get up.”

It didn’t matter to him, seeing a naked Ox.

He’d known Ox since he’d been forced to help the four teenagers escape East Germany.

He’d only been twenty at the time, and to find a bunch of American schoolgirls fighting their way through Stasi officers had been .

. . weird. Just weird. Of course, then he hadn’t really heard about honey badgers being part of the shifter pantheon.

He knew about bears, big cats, and wild dogs of all kind.

But honey badgers? Really? He had never heard about them as normal animals in the wild, much less that someone looked at the very small species and thought, “I gotta be that!” Yet there they had been, stabbing, shooting, and hacking Stasi officers to death to get their Russian friend to safety.

He’d been forced to help simply to avoid an international incident, lecturing them the entire way.

Not that any of them had taken him seriously.

But, over the ensuing years, he’d watched these dangerous “girls” grow into adult honey badgers—and he’d become much more frightened for the world.

Which was why he didn’t know how he’d finally ended up married, with pups, to one of those She-badgers.

To this day, his mother insisted she’d cast some kind of Eastern European spell on him, and some days he agreed with her.

Because being married to a honey badger when one wasn’t a honey badger was just not easy.

Sliding his hands under her pits, Wolf carried Ox out of the shower she was still sitting in and put her on her feet in the hallway. One of his brothers handed him a towel, and he wrapped it around her.

Then Wolf focused on his mate, who had slipped off the toilet and onto the floor.

“Nixie is pissed, babe,” he told his wife while helping her up. It was why he’d come home. Because of Nixie. They’d had the Can’t you just divorce her? discussion again. Never a good sign.

“She’s always pissed at me,” Trace slurred. “She started punching me while still in the womb. But all I care about is that all our kids are safe.”

“They’re all safe,” he promised. “But Nixie is terrified, babe. That you are going to do something insane. We thought we should come back and get ahead of it.”

“I wouldn’t say it was insane . . .”

With a sigh, Wolf’s brother Hel lifted his own wife into his arms and carried Steph from the bathroom. The rest followed. While holding Trace in his left arm, Wolf briefly stopped to grab a confused Ox with his right and brought both women to the master bedroom with the others.

He put the Russian in a chair and his wife on the wooden chest at the foot of the bed.

“So what’s going on?” he asked. “You haven’t gotten this wasted in years.”

When the four She-badgers looked at one another, Wolf realized he may not be right on that particular point.

“Is this about Uncle Edgar?”

“That wolf holds grudge like cat,” Ox complained, standing and walking-stumbling out of the room.

“He hates me.”

Wolf pushed Trace’s hair off her face. “Sweetie . . . of course he hates you. The man had his paws in some of the most nightmarish shit from the eighties, including the Cold War, the Iran–Contra affair, Chernobyl, and the rise of MTV. And yet, he still calls our wedding the darkest day of his life.”

“Well, however he feels, about us—”

“You mostly, though.”

“Shut up, C. We’re going to prove him wrong.”

“How and what is going to be the blowback? Are we going to have to move out of the country again?”

“We never moved out of the country. It was a vacation.”

“Two years in Switzerland,” Hel barked.

“A very long vacation, I’ll admit.”

Ox returned to the room. She was walking steadier now and had four duffel bags.

Two black, one of which she tossed to Hel for Steph.

A gray one that she heaved at Wolf for Trace.

And a bright purple and dark red one that she handed to Lot for CeCe.

The second black one she kept for herself, opening it and pulling out a cookie tin with holes opened at the top.

“What’s in there?” Lot asked, with a tone of very necessary paranoia.

“Hair of wolf,” Ox said, taking the top off.

Hel reared back, allowing his mate to fall back on the bed. “Tarantulas?”

“Tarantulas are not venomous.”

“Yes, they are!”

“Not to us. And these aren’t tarantulas at all.”

Cringing, Wolf watched Trace, the woman he loved more than life, stick her hand into a tin of crawling spiders.

“What are those, then?” Lot asked.

“Funnel-web!” Trace cheered, pulling one out. “From Australia.” She crunched down on it like it was a celery stalk. It started biting her as soon as she’d picked it up, and she never even winced.

Trace closed her eyes, and her head dropped for a brief moment, but when she looked at him again, her eyes were clear and she was smiling.

“Whew!” she shouted. “Now that’s what I’m talking about!”

She stood, briefly stopping to kiss his forehead. “Love you so much, Puppy.”

“Awww,” his brothers said in laughing unison, “puppppeee—”

“Shut up.”

Ox dug into Trace’s duffel. “What mood are you in now, my friend?”

“It’s a PJ Harvey day.”

The Russian pulled out an old T-shirt that Tracey had gotten from a PJ Harvey concert back in the nineties. Wolf immediately cringed. When Trace was having a “PJ Harvey day,” that meant she was in a mood . A mood that never led to anything good. Ever.

It must have been on his face. The worry. Because Tracey immediately leaned in to wrap her arms around his neck and hug him tight.

“I love you,” she said, and he knew she did. Even after all these years, she loved him like she loved nothing else. “And I need you to go protect our family and trust me. Trust me to handle this.”

“Last time you said that to me, we were all investigated by the FBI for sixteen months.”

“And cleared of any wrongdoing!” she replied with a smile.

“Awww, baby. That’s really not the point.”

* * *

Keane had put off his shower to eat. He’d been starving, and the smell of all those fresh treats from Charlie had him and his brothers tearing through all of them while sitting in the living room with a couple of gallons of milk and the Cartoon Network playing on theTV.

“We didn’t leave the badgers any,” Shay noted, gazing at the empty boxes.

“That sounds like a you problem and not a me problem,” Keane reminded his brothers.

Fed and satisfied, he cracked his neck before announcing, “Okay. I’m getting in the shower, and then we are off to practice.”

His brothers knew not to complain about that, so they simply nodded and focused on the TV. He was about to stand and get ready when the front door was thrown open and more badgers walked into the room. Badgers he was in no mood to see.

“Good morning, kitty cat!” Tracey Rutowski loudly cheered once in the living room. He knew that door had been locked. How did they just walk in? Without kicking it open? Without any warning? Without even a knock? Without general politeness!

“Ooooh. Sexy bare-chest wake up,” Yoon leered, while staring at him and putting Keane’s teeth on edge. “Nice!”