Now, yes, it was true he’d been working with the honey badgers to find out who’d killed his father, but so what? He’d do anything to not only find the assholes behind his father’s death but to rain down the kind of vengeance his kind was known for. He wouldn’t stop until his father’s killers were in their graves or their remains had been spread across the Eastern Seaboard. Either scenario would suit him. And if that meant working with and spending time with the most difficult and annoying species known to man, then fine.
That didn’t mean, however, he was willing to lose any more family to this vendetta he had against his father’s murderers. He wouldn’t lose his brothers or sister over that. Not now, not ever.
So seeing Shay lying there . . .
“You need to breathe,” his brother flatly warned, and Keane realized his fangs were sliding out of his gums again.
Deciding Finn was right for once, Keane took a few deep breaths. He did need to calm down if he was going to deal with all these new badgers and the doctors and nurses who, for some reason, seemed to be made up mostly of lions and snow leopards, which was just weird. All he truly cared about right now was Shay’s health and safety; the last thing he needed was to be kicked out of this hospital because he couldn’t keep himself from biting off the heads of a few honey badgers who had managed to piss him off.
Keane stood in the hallway, away from the room with all the badgers—so that he didn’t have to see their stupid faces and get angry all over again—with Finn standing silently beside him. Just when he thought his anger was finally under control, he heard the ding of an elevator. An older female walked out, a phone glued to her ear. She spoke in a language he didn’t know and looked around at the different rooms before turning and heading away from him and Finn. Keane didn’t think much about it until he saw Charlie MacKilligan slip out of a doorway to follow her. Still nothing noteworthy except he could see Charlie was carrying a pump-action shotgun.
Eyes wide, he glanced at Finn and, without saying a word to each other, they both ran down the long hallway after the insane honey badger who was genetically related to their baby sister. They were cats and fast so they caught up quickly, before Charlie could do anything. Keane wrapped his arms around her waist at the same time Finn tried to yank the gun from her hands. When he couldn’t get it loose, Keane spun away and went in the opposite direction with Charlie clasped tight against his chest.
“Hi,” he heard Finn say to the female who had just turned around. “If you’re looking for the honey badgers, they’re in the opposite direction.”
The female’s high heels clicked on the floor as she passed Keane. Her eyes, dark and suspicious, were looking at him so hard, he could do nothing but turn again with Charlie still clasped against him so the She-badger wouldn’t spot her or her weapon.
Thankfully, Charlie didn’t put up a fight. He played football with her now, and she was the strongest, meanest fighter he’d ever seen. He was not in the mood to get his ass kicked by a tiny, rabid animal if he could help it.
When they heard a door close somewhere down the hallway, Keane dropped the crazy female and pushed her away from him.
“Are you insane?” he wanted to know.
“According to my therapist, I just need to focus on what’s important. And what’s important is putting that bitch out of my misery.”
Finn grabbed the shotgun again and tried to pull it from her. His brother was using both hands; Charlie held on with only one. It was sad. After about ten seconds, Charlie finally told Finn, “You know you won’t get it from me unless I give it to you.”
“I am aware of your freakish strength,” Finn said. “But I’d appreciate if you’d just give it to me. Please.”
She released the weapon and Finn let out a long breath. “I swear,” he muttered. “You two.”
“What does that mean?” Keane wanted to know. “Unlike her, I don’t use guns. I simply tear the spine from my enemies.”
“And I like to avoid too much mess,” Charlie announced.
“How is a shotgun less messy?”
“Angle of the weapon.”
“Really?” Keane nodded. “I didn’t know that.”
“Stevie says it’s all about physics.”
“Could both of you stop it?” Finn snapped. “When I was hoping you two would eventually get along, I didn’t want it to be over the way people should cleanly die for pissing you off.”
“I told that old bitch to leave my sisters alone and she didn’t listen to me,” Charlie argued.
“See?” Keane said, nodding again, “I totally get that.”
Finn briefly closed his eyes, which meant he was really getting annoyed. He tried to hide it but his feline temper was no better than Keane’s.
“I understand you are both upset, but Stevie and Shay are both adults who can make their own decisions. Stevie wanted to help. Good for her! It seems the help is greatly needed. And Shay is going to be okay. You can yell at him when he’s better,” he said to Keane.
“Good. Because I will.”
“Until then,” Finn went on, “don’t attack little old ladies in hallways.”
“She is not a little old lady,” Charlie corrected. “She is a honey badger that has destroyed entire governments with her schemes. She may remind you of your grandmothers but she’ll tear your throat out as soon as you look at you.”
“I don’t deny that, but she’d probably do it some place private. Not in the middle of a shifter-only hospital. We do have rules, you know.”
Charlie blinked. “We do?”
“Yes,” both males said together.
“You mean they’d call the cops? They’d rat me out?”
Keane always forgot that the MacKilligans didn’t have much experience with the global shifter world. They, like most honey badgers, spent more time in the full-human world. One reason was because that’s where most of Stevie’s early work had been done. But it was also because they’d never had the overall shifter experience as Keane and his family had. They weren’t born in shifter-only hospitals. They didn’t go to shifter-only summer camps or shifter-only vacation spots. According to his baby sister, the MacKilligan girls didn’t have anything close to that life until they were forced to move in with Charlie’s grandfather after her mother was killed. He was wolf and even though he accepted his granddaughter and her half-sisters, the rest of his pack were extremely uncomfortable with having three honey badgers around.
Glancing at Charlie, Keane realized he might have more in common with her than just his baby sister. They’d both lost a parent at a young age. They’d both been forced to grow up way too fast because of that loss. And, now, the most important thing to both of them was protecting the family they had left.
He still wished his sister was spending most of her time at his house with the rest of the family, but he also began to feel a little better about her living with Charlie. He wished he could say the same about living with Stevie and Max, but he didn’t want anyone experimenting on her and he didn’t want Max teaching her to be a sociopath. He had enough to worry about these days without those concerns.