Page 80 of To Kill a Badger (The Honey Badgers Chronicles #6)

R enzo de Medici pushed his younger brothers aside and stared down at the body of his older brother.

Grabbing the corpse by the mane, he pulled it off the female who’d killed him.

She was still alive, her left hand nothing but chewed skin and bloody, broken fingers, the middle one nearly falling off.

He motioned to one of his cousins, who had already shifted, and the five-hundred-pound mammoth walked over to the female, slowly opening his maw at the same time.

She raised her mangled hand as if to ward him off.

It would have been sad if she hadn’t killed his brother.

But then he heard a crack sound. Loud and close by.

Renzo looked down and watched as sinew reattached with sinew, bones snapped back into place, and muscles wrapped around bone, followed by flesh. In seconds, what had been a mangled hand was now just a terribly scarred one with that middle finger slightly off.

The female lifted just her eyes to Renzo and bent those healed fingers into a fist. She pulled back her arm and punched.

Renzo and his brothers reared back from the female when that blood and brain splattered them from the back of his sibling’s head. Her arm through his skull, the female stretched her fingers out again, moved them around a little before pulling her arm back out.

When Renzo returned his gaze to hers, she lowered her head and leered up at him with blood-red eyes.

“Merda,” he sighed out.

* * *

Keane landed on the polar’s back, digging his claws in. Zeus reared up on his hind legs, then fell backward. Releasing the bear, Keane rolled out of the way before he was trapped under that weight. They both moved away from each other until they were on their feet and Zeus charged him.

Using his ursine bulk, Zeus rammed Keane into the ground, picked him up by his head, and slammed him into the ground again.

Needing to stop the bear’s fangs from cracking his skull, Keane wrapped his forearms around Zeus’s neck and rolled him onto his back.

He opened his jaw and leaned in to clamp down on the bear’s throat, but bullets hit him in his side.

Startled, Keane lifted his head to roar, and the bear tossed him off, sending him flying across the garden until a tree stopped his momentum.

* * *

His Uncle Renzo pushed him out of the way as he ran up the stairs.

Hurtful. He thought his uncle had liked him.

But he understood the panic. The assassin who had been sent to kill them was like a machine. No matter what they did to her, how many walls they slammed her into, how many balconies they tossed her over, how many shots they put into her body . . .

She just. Kept. Coming.

He’d seen enough of what his uncles had done over the years to know another predator when he saw one. Whether it was a fellow shifter or the full-humans they made deals with.

But this female . . .

She hadn’t even shifted yet. She’d stayed human the whole time, and she didn’t relent. Covered in blood from his male kin and her own body, she didn’t seem to notice nor care. She was on a mission, and she’d been moving through their house with a brutality he’d only ever seen from his own uncles.

It seemed like every injury, every wound, every defensive attack that harmed her, only made her stronger.

Ridiculously strong. And mad. He knew angry females.

Saw it in his own mother’s eyes when she had to deal with his father.

A father whose body had been carelessly tossed onto a coffee table once his massive head had been turned completely around until his massive lion neck had snapped.

Backing up in the hallway toward the bedroom he had shared with a now-dead cousin, he’d almost reached the doorway when his Uncle Renzo charged toward him in his lion form.

At first, he thought Renzo was coming to kill him, but he saw the whites of his eyes and realized it was a panic run. The lion was terrified.

His uncle launched himself up, probably trying to get over him and into his bedroom and maybe out the window, but in midair she caught Renzo’s foot and, with two hands, yanked the six-hundred-pound lion back.

He would have laughed at the startled look on his uncle’s face, but he couldn’t while watching that female push her hands into his uncle’s maw and separate his jaws .

. . and separate . . . and separate, until there was nothing but the sound of cracking, splitting bone, and his uncle’s whimpering. Then, eventually, even that stopped.

With a casual cruelty, she tossed Renzo’s body over the balcony, like she’d done to so many other of the males in his family, and then her eyes latched onto him.

Now he whimpered, taking a few steps back from her.

She walked toward him until she was no more than three meters from him. Then she stared at him, examining him from head to toe.

Finally, she asked, “Age?”

He blinked. Confused. He’d been learning English, but it was still very foreign to him.

Then she asked, “Quanti anni hai?”

He cringed at her awful American accent, but he understood what she was asking.

“I am thirteen,” he replied in Italian.

She nodded. “Paolo?”

He looked away from her gaze. He’d heard some of his uncles screaming about her “red eyes,” but her eyes were brown. That’s all he saw. Still, even that was terrifying. He didn’t want to challenge this female.

But he also didn’t want to say anything about his Uncle Paolo. De Medicis didn’t betray their own. It was a death sentence in the coalition. Although, now that he thought about it, there weren’t a lot of them left to hand out something like that anymore.

So, he didn’t say anything. He simply glanced up to the fifth floor and just as quickly looked away.

“Uhhhh . . . trova tua madre. . . ?”

Her accent was horrendous, and she was clearly not confident, but he understood what she was telling him. “Go find your mother.”

He hadn’t been able to spend any time with his mother once he’d turned thirteen.

The adult male de Medicis always pulled the sons from their mothers when they turned that age.

There was no question and no complaining.

But all night, when he was alone and trying not to cry, all he’d wanted was his mamma.

And knowing she was alive somewhere . . .

He nodded at her statement, then watched her examine the ceiling until she spotted a small vent.

Launching herself from a nearby table to reach the high ceiling, she used a claw to yank out the grate and then, somehow .

. . she crawled into that tiny space without shifting.

He couldn’t hear her moving around in there, but he could sense it.

Could sense she was tracking down his Uncle Paolo.

Should he stay? Should he help?

Before he did anything, he pulled out his phone from his back pocket and texted his mother.

She responded in seconds with an address, a username and password for the car service he could order through his phone, and a sobbing emoji. I love you, baby. Come. Now.

He angrily wiped at the tears streaming down his own face—angry because his father had always told him tears were for “females and men with more pussy than cock”—before he charged down the stairs and headed toward the door in the kitchen that would take him to the emergency exit.

As he entered the kitchen, he stumbled to a stop when he saw the small female standing there.

When she saw him, she raised her hands as if to ward him off. But then, she looked him over and . . . she smiled. Her smile was so large, he was actually frightened by it. She seemed so ridiculously happy! Why? What was she so happy about in a house of death?

She opened the kitchen door and motioned for him to go, urging him along in very precise and formal Italian. She’d clearly had more Italian lessons than the frightening female hunting down his Uncle Paolo.

He hesitated the briefest second—afraid she’d kill him as he passed her—but then he ran . . . and she let him go, closing the door behind him and sending him off into a future that would no longer be dictated by lion males he loved but hated at the same time.

* * *

Something grabbed his back paw and dragged him through several rosebushes, the thorns tearing at his fur-covered flesh before they reached the clearing.

Keane knew it was Zeus who had him. The polar’s two-inch fangs digging deep into his muscle.

He rolled Keane onto his back with a hard slap against his side and settled in next to him, Zeus’s jaw closing around his throat and tightening until Keane could no longer breathe.

That’s when Keane snapped out of his tree-induced confusion and ripped at the bear’s face with his claws. When he couldn’t move the bear’s mouth off him, he went for his eyes, tearing one out of its socket with a single claw.

Zeus lifted his head to roar, and Keane was about to attempt to throw the polar off before he resecured his position on his throat, when she landed on the bear’s back.

In silence, Nelle slammed her knife into Zeus’s other eye, blinding the animal.

In a rage, Zeus jumped up and shook her off, sending Nelle flipping across the garden. She collided into a nearby ivy-covered wall.

Zeus faced her, hearing her grunt when she slammed against the stone. He was blind, but he could sniff her out.

Keane scrambled to his feet and, over the bear’s head, he could see Nelle get to hers.

They stared at each other over the raging bear and, as the polar charged toward her, Keane attacked him from behind while Nelle came at him from the front.

Keane slammed his front paws into Zeus’s hind legs, unleashed his claws into the polar’s hide, and dragged the beast down. Nelle landed on Zeus’s head. Using the blade in her hand, she stabbed at the bear’s neck, making sure to rip the wounds open until she could reach those major arteries.

With the bear down, Keane rolled Zeus over onto his back and bit into his groin, digging his three-inch fangs into the flesh and proceeding to pull and tear and rip.