He knew honey badgers, though. Not only from his recent dealings with Tock and her teammates but from his own little sister. Keane might want to pretend that Natalie was “only half badger” but she really wasn’t. She was all badger. In every way. Which meant that from the time she’d been born, she showed no fear. Even when she lost her hearing completely, she didn’t seem to care or notice or cry about it. She just learned sign language and how to read lips and, when necessary, used her loss of one sense to get what she wanted from those she called “too stupid to be worth treating with respect.”
Shay actually found it funny when his sister manipulated people by suddenly being unable to read lips or speak or acting lost and terrified. True, he’d made her give the million dollars’ worth of diamonds back to the dealer after fooling him into thinking she was having a breakdown in the middle of his store; when he went to call 911, she’d swiped the diamonds from the counter while another customer attempted to help her. She’d almost swallowed them before Shay gripped her hand and made her drop the damn things. She didn’t even want that stuff. She never wanted diamonds or pearls or any jewelry to wear. It had just been something she could do and, in the moment, he’d laughed. But he refused to let his sister become an outright thief. The Malones had enough felons in their family.
Despite all his knowledge of badgers, he still felt as if his heart had been ripped out of his chest when he stared down at Tock’s face and saw tears leaking from her eyes. Logic told him that the tears were simply protecting her from dry eye because she couldn’t blink; but with her in his arms, unable to move, she seemed so vulnerable. Honey badgers never seemed vulnerable. Despite their tiny size and big mouths. He wanted to wipe her tears and kiss her forehead, but he knew better. Tock was not a woman who would appreciate being tended to like a wounded fawn.
So, instead, he simply said, “Don’t worry. We’re going to get you better.” That’s what he said out loud. Inside, he thought, I will never let anything happen to you until you can rip throats from necks again.
The elevator dinged when they hit the first floor, and the doors slid open. That’s when he looked away from Tock and into the face of an armed man he did not know.
Shay roared but when the man didn’t back away or start shooting, he quickly realized he was dealing with another badger cousin.
“Found them!” he yelled to someone. Of course, “found them” seemed inaccurate because he had done nothing but stand in front of an elevator while it came down. It should have been, “Here they are.”
Shay didn’t have time to point that out, though, as the badger gripped his shoulder and pulled him out of the elevator with Tock still held tight in his arms.
“With me, with me,” the badger ordered, pushing Shay toward the front doors. “We have transport outside.”
And they did. An actual helicopter, waiting on the lawn in front of the building. A nice one, too.
The helicopter door was opened from the inside and the female who had been on the private jet with them motioned him forward.
“Come on!” she yelled over the engine noise.
Scrunching down as far as he could so the top of his head wasn’t taken off by the rotating blades, Shay got into the copter. He had settled into a seat with Tock in his arms but she was quickly removed by someone else, and the clothes he’d left behind on the ground were shoved into his now-empty arms.
“Put something on,” the female complained. “No one wants to see your big tiger dick.”
Lovely.
While Shay struggled into his clothes without being able to stand up, he looked over his shoulder to see IVs being put into Tock’s arms and blood being drawn. They’d also closed her eyes.
“Stop worrying,” the female ordered him. “We’re pretty sure she’ll be fine.”
“Pretty sure?” he barked back.
“What? You want absolutes in this life?” She sniffed. “There are none. Better get used to it, kitty cat.”
Yeah. He was positive now. As the helicopter took off while another landed to retrieve the rest of the badgers they’d left behind, Shay felt positive he hated these people.
*
Once her cousins closed her eyes, Tock couldn’t see anything. But it was a relief not to have them stuck open. That had been particularly unpleasant. Of course, now she could only guess what was happening around and to her from the prodding hands and annoyed voices.
Then again . . . her family always sounded annoyed. As if everything they were doing for you was sooo much work and sooo much trouble. They’d do it . . . for you . . . but it was a lot of work so you really should appreciate all of it! They didn’t do that just to family members either. President of a country, prime minister, richest person in the world, ten-year-old whose ball rolled under a car—everyone, to Tock’s family, was an equal opportunity annoyance.
“Aa-sha, how much longer do we have to wait?” she heard a distant cousin complain.
“Listen to you. Our cousin could be dying! And you complain about being forced to wait.”
“You were just complaining five minutes ago!”
“I’m hungry! Do you want me to starve to death?”
Tock tried again to move parts of her body as she’d done with her arm. She figured she must be annoyed enough by now. But no. She couldn’t move anything.
She’d be more freaked out except that she could still feel that big cat hand on her. Sometimes he had his hand on her shoulder, against her forearm, or brushing her hair from her face after someone took out her ponytail to sew up a small cut in her head. Someone had asked him to leave. More than once. But his answer was always the same: “No.” And one really couldn’t move a tiger if they didn’t want to be moved.
So Shay remained even when they reached the shifter medical facility, and Tock’s family came and went. Along with medical staff made up of cats, dogs, and a couple of bears. Yet they didn’t seem to know how to fix her either.
After a while, Tock began to panic. Was she going to be like this forever? Trapped in her own body? Waiting for death?
Before Tock could really spiral into suicidal ideation, someone was prying open her eyelids.
“Hi, Tock. It’s me . . . Stevie.”
Fuck! Why was Stevie MacKilligan here? Who had brought her here? What was Tock’s grandmother thinking?
There were two things she knew never to do when it came to the MacKilligan sisters. One: Never say, “I dare you” to Max MacKilligan. Because not only would she take the dare, but she would make sure to destroy everything in a ten-mile radius while performing the dare. The second thing . . . ? Never. Fuck. With. Stevie!
Not because Stevie was a problem. She wasn’t. No matter what Max said. In fact, Stevie was a very sweet, soft-spoken genius who made Albert Einstein seem kind of slow. But Stevie was protected. She had to be because all sorts of people wanted to use her genius for their own evil goals. If you messed with Stevie, you had to deal with Charlie MacKilligan.
And no one wanted to deal with Charlie MacKilligan.