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

Max came across the room in her big combat boots, tiptoeing around all the blood and gore and bear bodies like an evil ballerina. It was adorably ridiculous, which Nelle assumed was just Max’s brand at this point. “Adorable Ridiculousness Designed by Max now available at your local Target.”

She pirouetted to a stop in front of Nelle and Mads. “How are we all doing?” she asked with a big smile.

“The crone watched too many slasher movies, and Mads felt me up.”

“I did not feel you up. I checked your bones.”

“Did you just call me a crone?” Rutowski rested the blood-covered head of her axe on her shoulder like a lumberjack. “And after I fixed your nose, too.”

“You didn’t fix anything.”

“She’s right,” Max agreed, leaning in close to study Nelle’s nose. “You did not fix anything.”

“At least she can breathe now.”

“No. I can’t.”

“The American weakness of the young badgers sickens me.”

Nelle glared at the Russian She-badger, Oksana “Ox” Lenkov.

Tall, for a badger, Ox had been born and liberated from the Soviet Union when she was still a teen.

How that happened, though, was something none of the older She-badgers would share with anyone.

Which, of course, made Nelle wildly curious about the whole situation.

Not enough to look into it or anything, but .

. . yeah. Getting a teenager out of the Soviet Union during the Cold War without them being professional ballerinas on tours or gymnasts during the Olympics must have been . . . challenging.

“I am hardly American,” Nelle reminded the Russian.

“She says with British accent,” Rutowski muttered.

“My family has always gone to British-run private schools in Hong Kong. How do you expect me to sound? As if I’m from Brooklyn?”

“My cousins are from Brooklyn,” Steph Yoon announced, prying her axe from some bear’s spine.

“I don’t care,” Nelle shot back. “Look at my face! My beautiful, perfect face!”

Max quickly put her hands on Nelle’s shoulders and turned her away from the dismissive crones.

At least she tried. Despite the pain coming from the wounds on her neck, Nelle kept her gaze locked on the three badgers while the rest of her body kept moving in the opposite direction.

She also growled in annoyance so everyone knew how pissed off she was.

Max finally took hold of her jaw and turned her head as well, so that Nelle was forced to look at her.

“There’s my little baby girl,” Max teased in a ridiculous “mom” voice. “There she is! Who’s my baby girl? Who’s my pretty baby girl?”

Nelle rolled her eyes and fought hard not to laugh.

Max had been doing that to soothe Nelle’s rage for years.

The first time had been after a colossal fight with Nelle’s mother.

It was normal that a rage like that would stick with Nelle for days, even weeks.

But when Max started saying such stupid things during the middle of a game, in front of both teams, coaches, an audience, and Nelle’s mother, Nelle could do nothing but laugh.

Laugh so hard she was benched for a bit until she could stop.

It was when Nelle finally laughed this time that Max went ahead and broke Nelle’s nose again—completely ignoring her snarl of pain—putting the pieces back together into something that, at the very least, allowed Nelle to breathe.

“This is your fault,” Mads argued, pointing an accusing finger at her aunt.

“ Me? What did I do?”

“You gave us no warning about—”

“Bears? We told you there were bears. We were very clear about the bears.”

“You said we’d be in and out. More of a heist than a slam-and-slaughter combined with a rescue mission!”

Appearing genuinely confused, Rutowski asked, “Why are you so upset? You guys do this sort of thing all the time.”

“Not during championships!” they all yelled in unison.

“Oh, my God . . . is this about baseball?”

“No, no, no,” Yoon corrected. “Soccer. They play soccer.”

“I thought bowling,” Lenkov guessed.

Nelle’s nose was completely forgotten as she and Max quickly grabbed Mads before she could get her hands around her aunt’s throat and choke the very life from her.

The three older badgers stepped back in shock, eyes wide.

“Basketball!” Mads bellowed. “We play basketball!”

“Is it really that serious, sweetie?” Rutowski asked.

Nelle had to dig her heels in even harder, the muscles in Max’s arm bulging as they both fought to restrain Mads.

“We’re pros,” Mads snarled between clenched fangs. “It’s our job to win . And you are getting in my way.”

Nelle and Max smirked at each other behind Mads’s back.

Because their teammate had gone from “our” to “my” really fast. But when it came to winning, it was always more Mads than the rest of them.

They all enjoyed winning, but they would tank a game in a second if it would help them in a heist or some other thing they also enjoyed doing.

But they’d learned very early on that was not an option for them.

Not with Mads as part of any team they happened to be on.

The girl liked to win, and anything that got in the way of that was nothing but an enemy that must be stomped out.

Including even her newly found aunt, whom she really seemed to like.

“I don’t understand,” Yoon interjected. “You guys just came back from starting a war. This is part of that whole thing. How is any of what we’ve done in the last few hours a problem?”

Mads closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. She let it out. Then she calmly announced to Nelle and Max, “They’re clearly going to get in the way of the championship. I say we kill them all now and be done with it.”

While Rutowski and the others gasped in shock, and Max lowered her head so Mads didn’t see her laugh, Nelle simply nodded and calmly replied back, “Completely rational response.”

Mads shrugged. “I know.”

* * *

Keane Malone walked down one of the long hallways toward the sports medical center. He was dressed in his practice uniform and equipment, except he hadn’t put on his cleats or helmet. They were back at the practice field with the rest of his team.

He usually didn’t leave practice. He liked to be there with everyone else, getting in his workout and cracking the whip on any of the losers who thought they could float through the time because they could naturally run over fifty miles an hour due to their freakish long legs and ability to lick their own asses.

“Why do we need practice? We’re cats! We’re naturally gifted,” they’d all say to him.

At least the bears complained less, and the wolves didn’t complain at all, because they needed to work off their extra energy anyway.

They were like border collies left alone in a house .

. . they became destructive if not given something constructive to do.

The complainers, though, were always cats. His people, yes, but they drove him nuts! The constant complaining. The constant grooming. The constant knocking stuff over for no reason. It was endless! And Keane had no patience for any of it.

Still, he had left practice because his shoulder had been bothering him for about a week, and his coach ordered him to see a doctor to make sure it wasn’t a real problem.

Keane didn’t think it was, though. It was probably just sore from the last few days of drama he’d recently had in his life.

Fighting lions and fellow tigers had probably done some temporary damage.

He wasn’t really that worried, because the season hadn’t started yet, and the doctors working at the arena were all well-trained and fellow shifters.

They knew how to care for their kind. Not only that, but it wasn’t easy to permanently harm shifters.

That’s why their football league was way better than what the full-humans had.

Full-humans were so brittle. Like porcelain on a high shelf.

Keane went around a corner, and that’s when he saw a woman in four-wheel roller skates.

She was leaning over at the waist and staring into the face of someone sitting on a bench across from the medical office.

She reached out her hand and said to the one on the bench, “Now don’t panic.

I’m just going to take your arm and lead you into the office. You’re going to be fine.”

It took a moment for Keane to understand what was going on.

The female sitting on the bench? That was Nelle Zhao.

She hung around Max MacKilligan. They played basketball together on the women’s pro team.

She had amazing legs and lots of private jets.

The other female was Blayne somebody. He found her annoying, but she wasn’t the problem.

The problem was Blayne somebody’s husband.

He was half-Amur tiger and half-something else.

He played hockey. Keane hated him. The half-tiger, half-something else hated Keane.

It was a mutual hatred that worked for both of them.

What worried Keane was that the mixed-breed freak had fangs that no normal shifter should ever have.

Two long ones that looked like something from a walrus.

The pair of them avoided each other, because it would be a nasty fight and neither wanted to get so wounded they couldn’t play for their next games or be forced to get replacement joints.

A shifter couldn’t continue on a pro team if they had any titanium in their body.

It gave them too much of an edge during gameplay.