Page 48 of To Kill a Badger (The Honey Badgers Chronicles #6)

T he drive was long, and Keane was ready to start killing everyone Ton principle alone.

But he knew that biting off the heads of a bunch of badgers—even those not connected to her in any way—would only piss Nelle off.

She was already angry at him for shoulder-checking Zeus into the wall face-first when they’d walked out of the elevator on the first floor and he had just been standing there .

. . not protecting her. What was his purpose if he couldn’t prevent a group of badgers from entering their penthouse suite?

Besides, seeing the rude bastard with a bloody nose and dented forehead while they sat in the back of the limo, glaring at each other, gave Keane a lot of brutal satisfaction.

He definitely wanted to bite off fewer heads now.

Keane glanced down at Nelle. She was sleeping peacefully against his arm. Apparently, the world traveler had quite the bout of jet lag. Luckily, he felt just—

* * *

Nelle knew as soon as the cat fell asleep beside her, because he growled-snored. He sounded like an irritated puma on one of those nature documentaries.

She knew he’d try to stay up to protect her, but she’d rather he sleep on their drive to their next location instead of dropping cold in the middle of their meeting. That never looked good. Especially with whom they were going to meet. Manners were quite important to royalty. Even fake royalty.

Sitting up, she smoothed the skirt of her dress over her legs and looked at Zeus.

“Really?” he asked in French, gesturing to Keane. “I offer you everything, and this is what you choose?”

Zeus was Swiss-born, and his English had a heavy German accent.

But the twelve other European languages he spoke were absolutely flawless.

He came from a bear-only enclave in the Swiss Alps.

Her father had recruited him when the family went on a skiing vacation one year.

And no matter what Keane may think at the moment, Zeus had been a great choice, because he knew Paris so damn well. Even better than Nelle.

She knew there was no point in explaining to Keane that Zeus had absolutely been doing his job when he’d allowed Travers and his badger gang to sneak into their suite through the walls.

She’d been waiting for them anyway. But she thought they’d at least give her the night before arriving.

She’d really wanted that date with Keane.

But, alas, some things were not meant to be. At least not right now. Besides, she could not forget that she was here for business. Important, life-or-death business. The kind that would keep people up with worry.

Not Nelle, of course. She could sleep through damn near anything, but others, like Charlie and definitely Stevie . . . they liked to stay up and worry.

Nelle, however, simply liked to get things done.

The drive to their destination lasted more than three hours. Nelle stayed busy working on her phone and a tablet that Zeus kept at the ready in his briefcase. There were cars in front of them and behind them that kept an eye out for trouble . . . even if that trouble came from Nelle.

Hanging out with her teammates for the past decade or so had spread Nelle’s reputation across the globe and separated her from the family’s more refined one.

A situation that had bothered her mother, although Nelle always thought it had less to do with Nelle’s growing reputation among shifters and more about how Nelle had gotten that reputation while hanging out with Max MacKilligan.

Of course, her mother had been anti-Max since the day the kid had walked into their immaculate Wisconsin home in her big, dirty boots she refused to remove and announced to everyone, “Mind if I see what’s in the fridge?

No, no! I can do it! Thanks, Mrs. Z!” The look of horror that had been on her mother’s face that day still haunted Nelle’s dreams.

The entourage turned onto a dirt road and traveled deep into a forest until they reached the forest’s edge and the massive chateau within, bright lights shining down on it and what appeared to be a party going on inside.

Realizing they’d arrived at their destination, Nelle reached over and gently slid her fingers through Keane’s hair; his head resting on her shoulder.

His eyes immediately opened, and he sat up, looking directly at Nelle.

The smile that bloomed across his face at the sight of her nearly took her breath away.

Zeus growled, and Keane seemed to become fully aware of where he was and who else was in the SUV with them.

The cat’s head snapped around, his gaze locked on Zeus, and his brutal snarl filled the space like a hard clap of thunder.

“Gentlemen?” Nelle warned when she heard the badgers in the front seat begin to growl. “How about we hold off on this apex predator fight until after our meeting?”

The SUV stopped in front of the chateau, and her door opened.

“Mademoiselle Zhao, please come with me,” Travers said, holding his hand out.

Nelle reached for that hand, but a large hand with scars from past football games reached past her, grasped Travers’s hand, and yanked the badger over her lap.

She pulled back a bit, hands raised so she didn’t touch Travers’s stunned body.

“She goes nowhere without me,” Keane told Travers through his extremely large fangs, drool dripping down on the badger’s face. “And if you try to separate us in any way, I’ll eat your skin.”

She’d heard a lot of insults and threats in her life—many of them from opponents on other teams toward herself and her teammates—but that was definitely a new one.

And, to be honest, she didn’t doubt Keane’s words at all.

Which she found kind of hot. Not the eating skin thing—that was disgusting—but the willingness to do that for her.

Keane shoved the badger out of the vehicle and onto the ground before saying to Nelle, “Let’s go.”

After they stepped out of the vehicle and over Travers, they followed the other badgers inside, Nelle slipping her arm through the cat’s and whispering, “Subtle.”

“I am known for my subtlety. It’s a cat gift. Like our flexible spines.” He looked around at the amazing grounds and asked, “Do we need a plan?”

“A plan for what?”

“In case this gets weird.”

“I’m sure it’ll get weird,” she promised. “But not positive a plan will assist in any way.”

“That is not comforting.”

She used her free hand to rub his arm. “I know.”

* * *

This wasn’t a mansion or a simple country house. This was a castle. An actual castle in the middle of the woods. Who could afford this? Such a ridiculous thing. To live in a place like this. He wasn’t against normal-sized homes, but castles . . . really?

They were led to the side of the building to another entrance that had no guests.

Keane assumed “servants” used this one, and he was immediately insulted.

But he kept his mouth shut and his simmering annoyance under wraps as he and Nelle were escorted into a room filled with a big desk, a leather chair, and floor-to-ceiling cases filled with books.

Once inside, the badgers left, indicating Zeus should follow them. With a nod from Nelle, Zeus did what he was ordered and left.

“Isn’t he your bodyguard?” Keane asked. “Shouldn’t he be with you during all this?”

“I don’t need protection from other badgers. And there is no blood feud between my family and the Von Sch?fer-Müllers.”

“Is that a thing you have to worry about? Blood feuds between badger families?”

“Sometimes. If we’re bored and there’s nothing else to do.”

“I know from life with Nat that a bored badger is a problem.”

“Oh, it is.”

Keane walked over to the bookcases and studied the titles. Almost everything was in either German, French, or Italian, except for three books in English that were all about getting “amazing abs.”

“See that Monet painting?” Nelle whispered.

He turned in the direction she was pointing. “Yeah.”

“My cousin did that. He’s really talented. See how he captured the way Monet played with light? Brilliant.”

Keane stared down at her. “Does the family you need to ask for help know your cousin painted this?”

“Probably not. They picked this up at Musée d’Orsay right here in Paris during a nighttime heist. Replaced it with the one a cousin of theirs did, thinking they were taking an original, and here we are.”

“Does that sort of thing happen often?”

“Yes.”

She kept gazing at the painting. “Sadly, their cousin isn’t nearly as talented as my cousin. Soon, someone is going to figure out the one at the museum is a fake. My cousin’s version, though, had been there for over a decade. No one ever spotted it wasn’t an original.”

She patted his arm. “Best to keep that quiet while we’re here, though.”

He shrugged. “I’d have to care about stolen paintings between badgers to say anything about it.”

“Excellent. They do have a lovely book collection, though.” She pointed. “A very early printing of Dante’s Divine Comedy. A signed copy of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis . Oooh, and a Hermann Hesse signed first edition. Damn. How did they get that?”

“Wait . . . wasn’t Hesse a—”

“That was Rudolf,” she quickly cut in. “Wrong Hesse.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Keane heard metal scraping against metal and looked around the room. When he glanced down, he saw a head stick up from a grate built into the floor.

“Uhhh . . . Nelle?”

Nelle leaned around him and stared at the space next to the desk. “Johann? Hello!”

“My dearest Gong!”

The badger crawled out of the hole in the floor, briefly stopping to push the metal grate back into place.

“Sorry to keep you waiting. It’s never easy to get away from eager guests.”

The badger held his hand out for Keane to shake, but he just gawked at it.

“You just crawled out of a sewer,” Keane noted. “I’m not touching your hand.”

“It’s not a sewer. It’s just a simple way to get around the house unseen.” He swept his arm in a big arc. “Through the walls! Much better than walking out of a room in full view of everyone.”