Page 9 of To Kill a Badger (The Honey Badgers Chronicles #6)

Mads was about to start yelling at people to get back to work when she spotted Keane walking over to a battling Nelle and Max.

He was with one of the football coaches—she didn’t know which one .

. . or care. It just seemed strange to see him here at all without one of his brothers.

He didn’t really bother to attend their basketball practices on his own.

Mostly because he hated basketball as much as she loathed football.

She did, however, hope he’d be the one to pull Nelle and Max apart, because she didn’t really want to be bothered.

Getting in the middle of a badger fight always left open wounds and damaged feelings.

She simply wasn’t in the mood for any of it.

She had a team to pull together! At this very moment, she didn’t feel they were ready to take on their Los Angeles enemies.

Those trifling Southern California bitches.

She was ready to wipe them from the map!

To take all they love and turn it into nothing but ash and memories!

Shaking her head, Mads thought, Okay. Wow. I went full-Viking there fast, didn’t I?

“What’s Keane doing here?” Streep asked.

“No idea.”

“Should we ask?” Tock questioned, glancing at her giant watch.

“Must we?”

Streep clasped her hands together. “I thought I heard the word wed-ding !” she annoyingly sang. “We should find out what that’s about.”

“We’re not worrying about any weddings until we’re done with the championship,” Mads reminded them. “We don’t have time for anything but that right now.”

“Then maybe we shouldn’t have started a war with cats,” Tock pointed out.

“We didn’t start anything,” Mads reminded her. “They did.”

“We always have time for weddings,” Streep pushed. “All that love and romance and—”

“Jewelry,” Mads and Tock said together.

“Insured jewelry,” Streep said with a smile. “So no real moral issue.”

“How do you get there?” Mads had to know.

“Easily.”

With that, Streep happily skipped over to Max, Nelle, Keane, and that woman Mads didn’t know.

Streep leaned close to Nelle and Max, still struggling on the floor, and asked, “Did I hear wedding?”

Streep had always been fast, so she quickly moved out of the way of Nelle’s slashing claw.

“We are not going to that wedding!” She had Max by the throat again and had pinned her to the floor. “And you, Max, are going to call that idiot and tell her you’re not involving any of us in this bullshit!”

“It’s the wedding of the cent— ack !”

Finally fed up with getting choked to death—and probably coming to the realization that no one was going to help her—Max brought her knees up to her chest, then kicked them both out, sending Nelle slip-sliding across the court floor.

Free, Max sat up, coughed a few times, and rubbed her neck before turning to Streep and announcing, “We are all going to the wedding of the century!”

Streep squealed. Max cheered. Mads rolled her eyes. And Tock looked at her watch again.

“I am not going to that wedding,” Nelle told them now that she had picked herself up off the floor. “I refuse.”

“But—”

“Quiet,” Nelle ordered before looking at Keane and the coach. “And what do you two want again?”

“Nothin’,” the eldest Malone brother replied before turning to leave. Not that Mads blamed him. It was rare to see Nelle pissed off about anything. But, man, when she was pissed off, it was best to simply stay away.

Yet the football coach grabbed his arm, and easily yanked the much bigger cat back to her side. “You said you had a doctor that could help, since Mr. Weak Kitten here is afraid of a little sledgehammer.”

“It wasn’t little, and no one is hitting me with that thing!”

Rubbing her forehead with the back of her hand, Nelle replied, “Yes. I know someone.”

“Then take him now.”

“We’re in the middle of practice,” Mads was quick to remind the football coach before Nelle could say anything. “That may mean nothing to you, but—”

Mads halted her lecture when she realized that Nelle had Max pinned to the ground again and started to pummel the badger’s face.

At this rate, with all this drama over Nelle’s sister, nothing would get done for the rest of the day.

Streep was dancing in a circle about going to some fucking wedding, and Tock kept looking at her watch until she finally announced, “I have a date tonight.”

That seemed to stop everyone.

“With who?” Mads asked.

Tock frowned. “Who do you think? Shay.”

“Oh. Why?”

“What?”

“You’re already fucking him. What do you need to date him for?”

“Okay. I’m walking away. But understand that in exactly three hours, I am out of here. I will not be late for my date.”

“Fine.” Mads motioned to the once-again fighting Nelle and Max. “Take her,” she ordered Keane.

“I’m not getting in the middle of that.”

“Oh, my God, Malone! Would you pussy up already and just grab her!” his coach yelled.

Apparently used to taking orders from coaches, Keane reached down and took hold of Nelle’s arm, yanking Mads’s teammate away from her prey. But he’d only gotten a few feet toward the exit before Nelle ordered Keane to put her down, which he immediately did.

Calmer now, Nelle took a moment to brush away the stray slashes of blood that had come from Max’s nose. Although it didn’t actually wipe anything away. Just spread the blood around.

Nelle pointed at Keane. “Go take a shower, change your clothes, and meet me outside, at the first-floor main entrance, in fifteen minutes.”

“Why can’t we just—”

“You smell. I’m not sitting in a car with you smelling like sweaty male.”

“That’s my musk.”

“That’s disgusting and no .” She swung around, now pointing that damning finger at Max. “And you . . . fix what you have wrought.”

“But—”

“I will destroy what you love!” Nelle warned as she marched toward the locker rooms.

Grinning, face bloody, Max looked up at Mads and the others. “This is going to be the best wedding ever. ”

And Mads had to ask, “How are you not dead yet?”

“I don’t know!” she replied, still smiling. “You’d think it would have happened by now! Because people shockingly hate me.”

“Shockingly?” Tock repeated. “Are we sure that’s the right word?”