It was easy for these women, too. This was not a battle to end all battles between honey badger and hyena. This was a near-decimation that took less than two minutes and had left his aunt completely alone. No backup. No protection. His uncles simply too damaged to move. His aunt might count him on her side, but Pete didn’t want her to count him. He couldn’t get his feet to move. Not even to run away. All he could do was gawk and tremble. Not a pretty sight when one was considered an apex predator.
Focused on his aunt, the first woman said, “If you think you’re fast enough, you can take the sho—”
His aunt took the shot. It should have blown the woman’s head off. It didn’t. Because she moved. So fast, Pete barely saw her move. One second, she was standing in front of his aunt, about five or six feet away with her friends beside her. The next, her friends had scattered and the woman had spun around, facing the same direction as Freja, and with both palms on the hand holding the gun.
Without releasing Freja’s hand, the woman somehow managed to take the gun apart. She didn’t break the weapon into pieces the way a grizzly would. Or break Aunt Freja’s hand the way a grizzly definitely would. But somehow, she took the gun apart; pieces of it dropped to the ground at their feet until his aunt held nothing but the ammo-less frame.
With no useful weapon, Freja used her free hand to grab the back of the woman’s head. The woman lifted her arm, bent it, and brought it back, burying the elbow in the middle of Aunt Freja’s face. She did it so hard that his aunt’s nose wasn’t simply broken; half of it was buried deep into her skull. He wasn’t sure she could breathe out of it anymore.
As the woman stepped away, his aunt slid to the floor, both hands over her face. When the woman reached her friends, the four of them pulled out their own guns and aimed them at Freja. Pete was going to cry out, hoping to stop them, but the woman said something first.
“What the hell are you guys doing?”
The blonde glanced between Freja and the woman. “We kill her now. Yes?” She had a heavy Eastern European accent and was pretty, now that he could see her clearly.
“No. We’re not killing her.”
“We’re not?” the brown-skinned Latina asked. “Why?”
“I promised Mads I wouldn’t kill her mother.”
“You mean when she was ten?”
“Yes! I made a promise.”
“You promised me her soul,” the blonde growled.
“Oh, my God.” The woman faced the blonde. “Is this about your ancestors again?”
“The year was eight-fifty-six—
“Seriously?”
“—and life in Rus was hard, but not for honey badger. But then the Galendotters raided my people’s village. Nearly wiped all of my ancestors out. But we survived and vowed revenge. And honey badgers . . . we never forget. We never forgive.”
“I’m not letting you kill her because of a more than thousand-year-old grudge.”
“What kind of badger are you?”
“One that keeps promises to her sweet and sensitive niece.”
The woman dug her phone out of her black jeans with one hand and motioned to Pete with the other.
“Come here, sweetie,” she said kindly and, with no other options, he finally managed to move. Toward her. He couldn’t believe she’d even noticed him. He wasn’t crazy about the idea of standing next to her, but she didn’t hurt him or even threaten him. Simply put her arm around his shoulder and walked him to the door.
“I’m going to give you a number to call,” she told him, real kindness in her voice. “The man who answers helps orphan shifters. He’ll get you a place to stay and some food and figure out what you want to do next so you don’t have to go back to any of Freja’s foolishness if you don’t want to. Okay?”
He nodded, not sure what else to do.
“You have a phone, right?” she asked when they were outside; a black SUV idled on the street right in front of the empty store. He sensed it was there for her and her friends.
Pete pulled his phone out and in seconds she’d sent him the number where he could find help. He prayed she wasn’t lying, but he had no other option but to trust her.
“Now if you don’t want to go back in there . . . and I wouldn’t if I were you”—she turned him away from all her blood-splattered friends—“you should just walk down the street and make the call. Okay? My friend will send someone really nice to pick you up if he can’t. Okay?”
He nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”
“Good luck, sweetie,” she said.
As he was walking away, wondering what the hell was going to happen to him—and also wildly relieved he had been given some kind of weird permission from a honey badger not to go back into that empty store to take care of his broken family—he heard the badger speaking into her own phone. He slowed his step to listen, making sure she wasn’t calling someone to come get rid of him. But she wasn’t.
“It’s me,” he heard her say.
As she reached the waiting SUV, he heard a man from inside the vehicle yell, “I knew this would happen! Why don’t you ever listen to me?”
“My niece is in trouble,” the woman said into the phone, ignoring the man who’d yelled. “And if my niece is in trouble, so’s your granddaughter.”
Chapter 2
She didn’t speak to him. Not during the drive to the air-Sport. Not when they were getting on the private jet. Not when they took off and headed . . . somewhere. She didn’t say anything. But she did keep checking two things: her phone and her watch. He didn’t understand why she needed to check her watch when she could easily see the time on her phone. Then again, her nickname was Tock. From things Mads and the other badgers had said, the woman was big on keeping time. Maybe looking at her watch was just a habit. Habits were hard to break.
About an hour into the flight, she disappeared into the bathroom, and when she returned, she was dressed in a tight black T-shirt and leggings and thick black boots. She put on a black tactical vest and began loading several weapons: four guns with what he could only describe as a shitload of extra magazines; and six knives of varying sizes that she slipped into sheathes cleverly sewn into her clothes.
“That’s a lot of weaponry,” he noted.
“Is it?”
“Well . . . for me, it’s a lot. I don’t really know anything about guns or knives.” He lifted his hands. “I just use my claws.” He unleashed them, watching his fingers change so that the short human nails instantly disappeared and the tiger claws exploded from the tips. His claws were over four inches. Longer than those of full-blood Amur tigers, but that was typical of shifter cats as they tended to have longer claws and fangs than their full-blooded cousins, and were often larger and weighed more. It made sense. Big shifters breeding with other big shifters often led to even bigger cubs and pups.
“See?” Shay asked, holding his claws up for her.
She glanced up, frowned, and went back to loading her weapons.
Realizing she had no interest in holding a conversation with him, Shay looked around for something else to do. He noticed a stray looped thread coming from the fancy leather seat next to his fancy leather seat. Curious whether he could catch the tiny loop, he reached one of his claws out toward it . . .