Page 86 of To Kill a Badger (The Honey Badgers Chronicles #6)

P aolo woke up slowly. He remembered being caged. He remembered being shoved out of a plane in that cage. Now he was on the ground, but he wasn’t dead. Strange. The fall should have killed him. Then he saw the material covering his cage. A parachute, he guessed.

He stood and quickly realized he was lion. He tried to shift to human, but nothing he did . . .

Drugs must still be in his system.

He tried again. And again. Waited an hour, then tried again.

He couldn’t shift back to human.

What the fuck?

He remembered someone landing on his back and plunging a needle into his neck. He thought it was to knock him out, but he remembered his body being forced to change, despite him trying to stop it. Now he couldn’t change back.

He wasn’t sure, but he felt like this was . . . permanent? No. It couldn’t be.

Paolo walked toward the cage door, and with one push, he was outside of it. He padded a few feet away and realized they’d dropped him in the middle of Africa.

Fucking wolves. Fucking wolves!

When he saw them again, he’d kill them all! And when he tracked down the MacKilligans . . .

Until then, he would stay here. He could make a life here until whatever they’d used on him wore off and he was able to shift back to human. He was among his own kind, wasn’t he?

Deciding to find water and hunt down some food—he was famished—he started walking but came face-to-face with a . . . man? He sniffed. No. A shifter. Honey badger. As if life wasn’t bad enough right now.

With wide eyes, the badger looked at Paolo, then his cage. His eyes narrowed, and he started to say something, but his entire body jerked, and he ran off into the bush.

Paolo didn’t know why until he heard a small roar.

It was a pride, walking toward him. Three males and a large number of females.

Perfect. He could make this work. They weren’t smarter than he was. They were just animals. He was a shifter. Far superior.

He walked toward the pride, ready to become one of them, when he saw two of the females run back to protect the cubs following behind. This pride had cubs. Shit.

The males roared, and the females began to circle around him.

Paolo roared back, not sure how to communicate with them. Not sure how to tell them he was one of them. He just wanted—

A male jumped on his back, and Paolo threw him off. But a female attacked his hind legs, dragging him to the ground. More females attacked; the males charged, going for his neck, slashing paws against his spine and face.

He fought back, kicking off the female who held his leg and running off into the bush where he’d seen the badger go.

Paolo neared a body of water that the badger was currently trying to get through.

He thought if he could get through it, too, he might get the pride off his scent.

But a massive female tackled him from the side, taking him down before he ever reached the water, and the males joined in, grabbing him around the throat, the groin, and the gut.

The last thing he saw as he felt fangs and claws tear his body apart was that fucking badger fighting off a crocodile that had sprung at him from the water.

The badger was kind of winning, too . . .

* * *

Keane had just lined up all the champagne glasses and was about to send them flying across the room with a twitch of his claw when Nelle’s mother barked, “No! Bad!” at him like he was a cat she’d found in her backyard trash cans.

Then she snapped at the all-Asian waitstaff and motioned for them to clean up all the glassware.

“Stop doing that!” she ordered him before swan-ing away to greet people at other tables with a fabulous smile and a charming laugh.

A few minutes later, Nelle dropped into a chair next to him.

“You doing all right?” she asked.

“Your mother hates me.”

“And I love you for that.”

She motioned to a waiter, and two glasses of champagne were placed on the table. But the waiter said something to Nelle in Chinese before quickly walking away.

Nelle laughed. “My mom told the staff to take any plates or glasses away as soon as you’re done with them and before you shot-put them across the room.” She laughed harder.

Seeing her laugh, though, absolutely made his day.

She had not been happy since she’d been forced to spend the night in her sister’s suite with all the other “idiots,” as she had called the bridal party.

She had texted him selfies the entire evening of her unhappy face in different situations with the bride and her bridesmaids in the background.

He had wanted to rescue her, but she’d insisted it wasn’t necessary.

But to have “bail money ready in case I kill every one of these pple in the nxt 3 hrs.” He was beginning to learn some of her weirdly worded texts, although she kept more of the seriously coded words to a minimum once she had realized he’d had to ask his baby sister what the hell she was talking about.

It had been a nice wedding service, though.

A seamless combination of two very different cultures.

Although Keane could see why Nelle didn’t understand what her sister was doing.

It wasn’t simply because her sister’s new husband was a full-human, or because he had to be the whitest white man alive, or even because he was an annoying billionaire tech bro who thought his money had made him a “man of the people”—actual idiot words spoken by an actual idiot at one point during the evening—but because the man was, in fact, monumentally stupid.

Keane had been forced to overhear a conversation between the man and some of his friends, and it had been so painful that Keane had finally lobbed a plate of food in their direction just to shut them the fuck up.

He’d lost a lovely bit of half-eaten prime rib, but it had been worth it.

And the staff had immediately replaced his food without question with some Kobe beef.

One of the dude-bros had come over to challenge Keane for his “outrageous asshole-ness,” but as soon as Keane stood up and scowled, the six-foot-two, former NFL player had slunk back to his friends, and they had ignored him the rest of the night.

Keane had to admit it . . . he loved bullying full-human males. It had to be the most non-Nelle-involved fun he’d had in a long time. They were just so stupid.

Then again, Nelle’s sister was incredibly vapid. Maybe this really was the best she could do.

“Uh . . . Nelle?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you have a black eye?”

Grinning, she nodded. “And so does my sister!”

“So your mom hates you, too?”

“Probably, but I don’t even know if my mother has heard about it yet. But my sister started it.”

“You sound like Max.”

“I know.”

He pointed across the enormous room that held more than five hundred guests—this event was absolutely insane— and asked, “You do know your friends are stealing, right?”

Nelle glanced over at her teammates. Somehow those four badgers had gotten an entire dance floor full of people to polka. Keane didn’t know how, but he admired the skill required.

“No. They’re not stealing.”

“I’m a Malone, Nelle. I know when I see pickpocketing. For some of my cousins, it’s the first thing they learn after using the potty.”

“Yes, they’re stealing, per se. But they’re not taking anything. They’re just”—she waved her hands around—“mixing things up a little.”

“What?”

She gestured to a woman speaking to her mother.

“That’s Dame Lora Norris-Brunwich. The necklace she’s wearing is costume jewelry.

It wasn’t when she arrived, though. What she was wearing was that .

” She pointed at another female. “That’s Jenny D’Bomb.

DJ and social media influencer, who is now wearing a one-point-five-million-dollar necklace made from the finest jewels of India.

The question is, will anyone notice before either woman leaves? ”

“Everyone’s pretty well drunk, so probably not. But your friends are weird.”

“They are. And they’re my ‘teammates,’ ” she said with air quotes, “when Streep’s around.”

“Got it.”

Nelle suddenly crawled into his lap and rested her head against his shoulder.

“Thanks for coming to this shit show,” she sighed out.

“Thanks for not forcing me into a tux.”

“I told you I wouldn’t.”

“You ever see a big-chested guy in a tux? No matter how good the tailoring, we always end up looking like the Hulk tearing out of his clothes. It’s not attractive.”

“You look perfect in your all-black, ‘I’m just secret security’ outfit.”

“I borrowed the jacket from Berg. Or his sister. Or his other brother. I really don’t know which one.”

“It is hard to tell those three apart.”

She lifted her chin to look at him. “I was wondering—”

“If we could have sex in the bathroom? The answer’s yes.”

“No. Yes . . . later. But no, I was wondering if you’re okay with how things worked out?”

“With what? This wedding? Because I don’t care. Wait . . . am I supposed to care?”

“No, no. Not the wedding.” She chuckled a little. “Look, I know you’re very particular about your vengeance.”

“I am.”

“And that things didn’t work out, recently, the way any of us expected.”

It took Keane a second to realize what she was talking about, but once he did . . .

“Oh. That. Uh. Yeah, I’m fine with how it all went down. In the end.”

“You are?”

“Yes. Um . . .” He took a moment to look all around him before continuing with his reply in a low voice.

“I didn’t care if it was me or Finn or Shay or even my mom who took care of .

. . those things. I just wanted it done by family.

It was owed to us. And, between you and me .

. . I do feel that Charlie MacKilligan is, truly, family. ”

“Awwwwww!” that voice said from behind him and Nelle , before Streep wrapped her arms around them from behind and continued saying “awww” in the most annoying way possible.

“I am so happy you two are in love!” she loudly cheered. “And that you finally see the MacKilligan sisters as family, Keane! Because they love you, too!”

“Where did you even come from?” Keane snarled. “I looked for you!”

She squeezed them tighter, making Keane again wonder how strong these badgers actually were.

“Mads,” Nelle called out, “you better come get your girl.”

“Oh?” Mads said, standing on the other side of the table and clearly not helping, “is she doing something you didn’t ask her to do? Like decorate your house or buy a dress and shoes that fit perfectly? Does her doing that bother you?”

“Get Streep, or I’m breaking both my hands before the champion—”

“Fine!”

Mads walked quickly around the table and pulled Streep’s arms away from Keane and Nelle.

“But I just want to smoosh their faces together!” Streep begged.

“Not today. Maybe some other time. Now,” Mads suddenly called out to anyone in earshot, “let’s all polka !”

“No, no!” Nelle’s mother said, quickly coming over. “No more of that.” She forced a smile before turning on her daughter, fangs out, and snarled, “Get your friends out of here this minute !”

“Are you sure? I thought you wanted me to stay until the very—”

“Do it!”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Slipping off his lap, Nelle waved at her teammates. “Let’s go. Right now.”

Mads dragged a still-grasping Streep toward the exit. She really wanted to “smoosh” their heads together. Keane just didn’t know why.

Tock was right behind them, her gaze on her watch. Max caught up a few seconds later and, as she passed Nelle, said, “Probably a good idea to go. Someone just realized she wasn’t wearing that eighty-thousand-dollar tennis bracelet she had on when she walked in.”

Once the others were clear, Nelle took his hand, and they began to weave their way through the enormous crowd and toward the exit he’d been looking at with longing all night.

Nelle waved at her father just before they walked out. He gave her a warm smile before returning to the conversation he’d been having with some prime minister from somewhere important and, before Keane knew it, they were outside and free.

He stopped to take in a breath of fresh New York City air . . . well, it was summertime. So “fresh” was relative. But still. It felt like freedom!

“Hey!” Max called to them from a few feet ahead. “We’re starving. You guys up for diner food?”

“Yes!” Nelle replied. “I’m assuming you’re hungry,” she said to him in a quieter tone.

“I’m a tiger. I’m always hungry.”

“You don’t mind eating with my teammates?”

“Will Streep keep trying to smoosh our heads together?”

“She will, but I’ll beat that out of her before the entrees come.”

“Then it’s fine.”

“I’m texting Keane’s brothers and my man to meet us,” Max announced.

Those lucky bastards hadn’t been invited since the Zhaos hadn’t authorized any “plus ones” to Nelle’s teammates.

Nelle released his hand to wrap her arms around his waist, leaning into him as they followed behind the others.

“I love you, Nelle,” he told her, unable to stop himself.

“I love you, too.” She squeezed him a little tighter. “And I love you even more because my mother absolutely hates you now.”

“That should bother me,” he admitted, hugging her close. “But you know what, beautiful? It really doesn’t.”