“She’ll be fine, D,” Keane called out. “Badgers and She-lions fight all the time. Don’t worry about it. We’ll finish the team meeting and then we’ll go with you. Okay?”
Shay had nearly returned to his team when “Daddy!” was viciously screeched across the field. And it was not a plea. It was an order. One that must be followed. So Shay turned back around and started running toward the exit.
“Burt!” he called out to a black bear sitting on the sidelines, eating spoonfuls of honey from a jar. “Watch my kid.”
“We can watch her,” Keane argued, indicating himself and Finn. “We’re not going any—”
“Go with him!” Dani ordered her uncles.
“Listen to me, little miss—”
“Nowwwwwwww!”
Shay was not surprised when his brothers caught up to him a few seconds later as he ran down the hall, following his daughter’s scent back to the food court.
*
Keane stopped his brothers as soon as they got to the food court. He didn’t want to be involved in this mess. He didn’t want his family involved either.
The Malone name had a bad enough reputation; he wasn’t about to make it worse by entangling himself and his brothers in what his father would have called “a Malone family reunion.”
Tock wasn’t even part of the fight! She’d been pushed aside by her teammates, who had probably just arrived at the sports complex for their own team’s practice but decided it was a good idea to get into a screaming match with She-lions instead.
“I am not getting in a fight with Anya Morozov. We’re leaving,” Keane told his brothers.
“Going back without Tock?” Shay asked. “Dani will have your ass.”
“Then go get her,” Keane snarled between clenched teeth. Because this was embarrassing!
“Okay, okay. Calm down.” Shay lumbered off like he had bear genes or something.
“You know she won’t leave the others, right?” Finn asked with that smugness in his voice Keane was ready to beat out of him. He’d only gotten that tone since he’d been hooking up with Mads, and Keane didn’t like it one bit!
“What?”
“Tock isn’t going to leave her girls in the middle of a She-lion fight. So if you want us to move them out of here, you better step in yourself.”
“Why me?”
“You know why.”
“I’m not dating a She-lion. I’m definitely not dating a She-lion from Staten Island.”
“I can’t express to you how much no one wants you to date anyone, but you can still end the fight just by being yourself.” Finn chuckled. “And one bad date with Donna Datolia, and the entire female shifter population of Staten Island is doomed?”
“Yes.”
*
“Hey, Tock.”
Tock looked away from what she liked to call “the crazy yelling” of her friends to find Shay standing next to her.
She’d forgotten the time—and that team practice was only an hour away—when she got into it with the She-lion, so it surprised her when her teammates came running in, yelling at the She-lions and pushing Tock out of the way. While Max, Nelle, and Streep kept up the yelling, Mads had turned to her and asked what happened.
“Nothing, really. Just something with the kid and the dogs.”
“Dani?”
“Don’t worry. I sent her back to her dad. Didn’t think she should see this.”
“I’ve spent time over at the Malone house. Trust me. The kid has seen cats fight before.”
“Not when we’re involved.”
“Good point.” Mads had looked back at the She-lions. “Want me to shut this down?”
“The kid’s safe, so I don’t care.”
“Well, it might be a good idea to do this before practice. Get it out of our system and all.”
“Pre-practice fights do cut down on the rage explosions during layups and in the showers.”
“Exactly. But keep an eye out,” she had added before stepping back into the fray. “Charlie drove us here and is looking for a parking spot. Let us know when she gets up here so we can pull Max out. Because Charlie will just assume—
“—Max started it,” they had said together.
So that’s what Tock had been doing. Keeping an eye out for Charlie while her friends got all that natural aggression out of their collective system. So it took her by another surprise to see Shay standing beside her.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Dani wanted me to rescue you.” When she frowned, he added, “No. Really. She thought you were in true danger.”
“Oh, my God, Shay,” she said softly. “That is so cute.”
“Not so cute when she snarled at me,” but he said it with a smile.
Tock covered her mouth with three fingers to keep from smiling. “She snarled at you?”
“Apparently I wasn’t moving fast enough for my little princess. You know, because clearly you needed to be saved from the big bad cats.”
Together, they looked over at the still-screaming badgers and lions. It was a tactic Tock and her teammates had used for years. Sometimes it was a distraction during a job. Sometimes it was because someone was being rude but not rude enough to warrant getting their head blown off. But usually it was just Tock and her teammates trading crazy for crazy. This allowed them to work off their aggression without actually having to think too much about what they were doing or saying. Sure, there was still angry pointing and raging hysterics, but if anyone listened carefully, they’d realize that Mads and the others were simply screaming nonsense.
“I’m a ho! You’re a ho! We’re all hos!”
“Four score and seven years ago, I wasn’t even born!”
“If you live like an animal! You will die like an animal! And you’re nothing but animals!”
“And then I told that director, you don’t know what love is! That was in the eighth grade and he still doesn’t know!”
See? Nonsense.
“I have to admit,” Tock said, turning her attention back to Shay, “I was impressed that Dani left when I signaled her to go.”
“She’s been trained to do that since birth. By both me and her mother. I seem to attract fights without even trying. Just walking by. And Dani’s mom is . . . well, she’s rude. And we needed to ensure that Dani knew how to run and hide when shit started.”
“Smart. I like that.”
“Thanks for protecting her.”
“I was pretty certain you didn’t want your baby to see me pummel a She-lion within an inch of her life before shooting her in the back of the head. If that became necessary, I mean.”
“Yeah. I agree. I wouldn’t want her to see . . . that.”
“She’s too young,” Tock reasoned.
“She’s too young,” Shay echoed.
Gazing at each other, they both laughed.
“Look,” Tock told the cat, “they’ve just been playing with these cats. If you want us to shut this down—”
“No need. It looks like Keane is going to handle it. And that should entertain you and your friends for another five minutes.”