Born to Be Badger (Honey Badger Chronicles #5)(78)

*

Finn found his older brother sitting on the stoop and staring across the street at the bear triplets’ house. He tried to sit next to him, but their shoulders made that impossible, so Finn went down a step and looked up at Shay.

“What’s wrong?”

“Dani’s spending the night at the bear house.”

“Why?”

“She wants to spend the night with Nat, and I refused to let her spend the night in a house filled with guns.”

That was probably a good idea. Not long ago, Finn had found a sawed-off shotgun taped under the kitchen table. He hadn’t told his brothers because he trusted Charlie MacKilligan when it came to weapons. But it was one thing to have their seventeen-year-old sister living here with angry, armed women. And quite another to have their ten-year-old niece stay the night.

At the same time, Finn also understood why Dani wanted to stay. Nat was the girlfriend-slash-sister that every ten-year-old girl needed in her life. Her mother was not that woman and neither was their mother. But with Nat, Dani could play with makeup and clothes and learn how to take down a deer without getting her face battered by a hoof. Important things all female cubs needed to know.

“I wouldn’t worry,” he told his brother. “You know Nat will watch her.”

“I do. I do know that. I just don’t want her to think she’s getting tossed off somewhere. Again.”

“Didn’t she ask you if she could stay?”

“Yeah.”

“And wouldn’t she have just thrown a fit if you’d said no?”

“Yeah.”

“Then stop worrying. It’s not like you’re leaving her here for weeks.”

The screen door behind them opened and Shay could hear the heavy human footsteps of his brother seconds before Keane stepped over them to get down the stoop stairs.

“Are you two coming with me?” he barked at them. Keane wasn’t in a bad mood. He just spoke to everyone as if he was in a bad mood.

“No,” Finn said before Shay could figure out what he wanted to do. “Shay’s going to hang at Mads’s house with me for a little while.”

Keane gazed down at him for a second before asking, “You gonna try and fuck Tock?”

“What? No!”

“What is wrong with you?” Finn demanded on a surprised laugh.

“She’s just a friend,” Shay insisted.

“So, you’re saying you’re not gonna hit that? Is that because she’s too short for you? You know, there’s a benefit to banging a short woman. If they’re tough enough, you can just toss them around like a Tonka toy,” Keane said.

Without another word, Shay got up and stormed across the street, heading to Mads’s house.

Finn shook his head and, grinning, asked his eldest brother, “Why do you insist on starting shit with him?”

“He lets me,” Keane admitted.

*

“What do you want to eat?”

He stopped short when a phone was shoved into his face.

“What?”

“What do you want to eat? We’re ordering dinner. And we need to order dinner now because in another twenty minutes all the good restaurants will stop delivering.”

Shay carefully placed his hand on the top of the phone and slowly lowered it so he could see Tock’s face.

“I don’t care what I eat,” he told her. “Just make sure there’s meat.”

“So then you do care what you eat, but you don’t want to make a decision.”

“I’m not a bear. I need protein. Not vegetables and honey.”

“I’ll just ask Finn,” she said with an annoyed sigh, looking back at her phone. “You’ll eat what he eats, right?”

“Yes. We’re interchangeable.”

“I noticed that,” Max said, pirouetting around him in the big kitchen of Mads’s newly purchased house. “But Stevie said I was being racist. How can I be racist, though?” She stopped, arms up like a very big-shouldered ballerina. “I’m Asian, too.”

“We’ll take care of dinner,” Finn said, pushing Shay out of the kitchen and toward the living room.

Shay sat down on the couch and examined the room around him.

“Nice, right?” Nelle asked, sitting in a club chair near him.

“It is.”

She winked at him. “Thanks.”

Apparently, Nelle had designed Mads’s house without Mads’s knowledge or consent and it was definitely a sore spot between them. He didn’t know why, though. Nelle had done a really nice job. Not that Shay would ever say that with Mads around. Finn had and she’d bitten his head clean off.

“Okay,” Tock said, walking into the room. “We ordered Chinese food, but Max keeps saying just calling it Chinese food is racist. We’ve chosen to ignore her.”

Shay and Nelle exchanged mutual eyerolls. Max was . . . a lot. How that black jaguar put up with her, Shay didn’t know. Maybe his breed had more patience with irritating weasels than tigers did. Of course, Zé Vargas was currently in his cat form, asleep on the top of a cabinet across the room, his long black tail twitching and turning on its own. They played football together, and Vargas was a pretty good running back.

Tock sat down next to Shay, tapping furiously on her phone.