Born to Be Badger (Honey Badger Chronicles #5)

“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.”

Keane pushed his way into the middle of the screaming, finger-pointing females and bellowed, “That is enough!”

He spread his arms wide, forcing the two groups of females to separate.

“There is no reason for any of this,” he told them. “So let it go.”

The She-lion leader raised her arm high, forefinger pointing at Tock. “That bitch”—Tock pressed her hand to her chest, mouth dropping in faux shock at the insult—“came at my son?”

“Really?” Keane briefly glowered at Tock and she thought for sure he was about to yell at her. But he turned back to the She-lion and said, “Tock is the most calm and rational of this unholy group of insane badgers—”

“Thank you, brother to my half-sister!”

“—so I have to wonder what your son did.” Crossing his arms over his chest, Keane took a step forward so he towered over the She-lion despite her six-inch, tacky, knockoff designer heels. “By that, I mean what your son did to my niece. Or did it involve my brother’s dog and her puppies? You see, my niece is very attached to those puppies. And I’d be very cranky if someone upset her. Whether it was about the puppies. Or the dog. Or standing near her. Or even just looking at her weird. Whatever upset her, I would take it very personally. You understand what I’m saying to you, Anya?”

The pair glared at each other for several extremely long seconds until male lions came out of the nearby sports gear store and walked toward them.

“What’s going on here?” one of them asked.

Keane replied by locking his eyes on the three males and roaring. Just once.

Looking up. Then down. Then remembering they had left something in the sports store, the males retreated. The free food and housing provided by their mates apparently weren’t worth the trouble of engaging three male Amur tigers.

The She-lion rolled her eyes, clearly disgusted with the males she’d chosen to help father her pride’s offspring, and took a step away from Keane.

With one more glare for Tock, the lioness spun around and walked off. Her tacky sisters and cousins followed.

The She-lion did keep talking, though, but now she spoke Russian.

Unfortunately for them, Tock knew Russian. Just as she knew Polish, German, French, Czech, Slovak, or any other language that her people might have spoken before immigrating to Israel.

It didn’t matter that she understood, though. Because she was going to be the bigger person and just let it go. She was just going to ignore those females. Yeah. She had been going to.

Until she heard the She-lion say in Russian, “Forget those ugly cunts and that alley cat’s fat, lying niece.”

Tock had a lot of issues with what was said, yet she could still have ignored it all . . . except what was said about Dani. It was bad enough that the misogynistic full-human society they were forced to live in would do their best to give the kid a self-image problem. It was bad enough that she called a ten-year-old fat. What Tock couldn’t ignore was the disloyalty of female to female. It was bad enough they had to put up with males’ bullshit all day, every day. Did they actually have to attack each other, too? It was fine if instinctive enemies went after each other. Tock did that all the time. But she never went after another female just because she was female. And she would never do that to a female child!

That was something she couldn’t and wouldn’t ignore.

So Tock walked past her silent teammates, stopping a few feet in front of them and yelling out in Russian, “Your son doesn’t know how to take ‘no’ for an answer. And if you don’t teach him now about how to interact with women, one day, when he’s older, someone like me is going to cut his throat. And no one will miss him. And no one will miss you if you get in my way.”

The She-lion spun around so fast, the females with her took several steps back, staring back and forth between Tock and their leader with wide gold eyes. A few had their fangs out; others, their claws. Because they were expecting a reaction. So was Tock.

She braced herself, her right hand pressed against the small of her back. Max pressed the handle of a tactical knife into Tock’s palm and Tock waited. It didn’t take long. In fact, it happened in seconds.

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