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Synopsis
An Amazon Most Anticipated Book!
“Shelly Laurenston’s shifter books are full of oddball characters, strong females with attitude and dialogue that can have you laughing out loud.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Honey Badgers are at it again in the New York Times bestselling and outstandingly witty, snarky, sexy, shape-shifting, world-building Honey Badger Chronicles. This time around, a family of clueless tiger shifter brothers have no idea how lucky they are to have caught the eye of three fierce honey badger females.
Emily “Tock” Meyerson-Jackson is on a mission to rid the world of shifters trafficking humans for hunting and cash. And now that she’s narrowed down her suspects to a brutal coalition of male lions, nothing will get between this honey badger and her prey—not even a dog-loving Tiger with absolutely no time management skills. Doesn’t matter that Shay Malone is ferociously adorable. With a war brewing between cat families, Tock doesn’t have time to lounge around with a football-playing tiger shifter. But when she realizes the coalition is also responsible for the death of Shay’s father, she’s forced to partner up with the flirtatious feline. . . .
Revenge is most definitely on the menu for Shay and his tiger shifter brothers. But when it comes to Shay’s alluring partner in crime-solving, so is seduction. Tock might be a bad-ass of a honey badger, but she’s awfully cute when she’s flashing her fangs, which she’s pretty much doing all the time these days. Good thing revenge is a dish best served hot. Because when it comes to Tock, Shay knows just how to turn up the heat. . . .
Release date: November 28, 2023
Publisher: Kensington Books
Print pages: 368
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
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Born to Be Badger
Shelly Laurenston
Eleven years later . . .
First the bump; from behind. Then the mumbled apology. Lastly, a piece of paper shoved into her left hand.
Emily “Tock” Lepstein-Jackson kept walking through the crowd, not looking at the man who’d bumped into her. Instead, she waited until she reached a porta potty. She didn’t go in. She couldn’t do that. She went around it and stopped between the porta potty and the six-foot security fence to look at the piece of paper in her hand.
This sort of thing hadn’t happened in a while, because she wasn’t working for anyone. Well, she wasn’t working for any government. She did work for the shifter nation. That’s where her true loyalty lay. Governments were changeable entities—one day a democratic paradise, the next a totalitarian nightmare. She didn’t want to end up on the wrong side of history, so she gave her loyalty to the one group that hadn’t changed in thousands of years. Shifters. Their only goal was to keep their kind safe and able to thrive. They never wanted to be science experiments. They didn’t want to be hunted for trophies. They didn’t want to be sex toys for those who thought they were “exotic.” And they definitely didn’t want to end up as steaks on some full-human’s dinner plate.
That was a belief system Tock could get behind. And an employer who didn’t sneakily shove pieces of paper into her hand in the middle of a street party thrown in honor of her teammate Mads’s grandmother. She was in Detroit with her four teammates and some big cats to relax. To eat amazing food, to get in a little street ball, maybe to flirt a bit with the local cutie pies. Not to be part of some covert operation that could get her—
“Shit.”
Tock crumpled the paper, pulled out a lighter she only used for this sort of thing because she didn’t smoke, and set the paper on fire. She held it between her thumb and forefinger until it had burned down to the tiniest scrap. Her fingers hurt a little from the flame, but they’d heal soon enough.
She dropped the remaining scrap and came around the porta potty, pulling out her phone and sending a quick text to her teammates: Gotta run. See you back in Manhattan. Won’t miss practice.
The last line was specifically for her teammate Mads. She knew that would be Mads’s first question. Their pro shifter team, the Wisconsin Butchers, was headed to the finals, and her friend wouldn’t let anything get between them and possibly winning this year’s championship. Because when it came to basketball, Mads was a little . . . obsessive. She’d always been that way, though. Since the day Tock had met her. The girl loved basketball. It made sense when Tock thought about it. Basketball was Mads’s “safe space.” A place no one could touch her. Literally. The girl practically had wings on her feet. No matter how horrible Mads’s family was to her—and they had always been fucking horrible—they couldn’t say anything to make her feel insecure about basketball. Because Mads was that good.
Of course, Tock wasn’t a bad ball player either. She just didn’t take it as seriously as Mads did. Tock did like winning, though. She was very good at winning. She even had a little “we beat your ass” dance.
She really shouldn’t put herself at risk—which meant possibly risking the championship—but she knew that there were times in life when you couldn’t ignore a request. Even when you really wanted to.
Away from the street party, Tock quickly found the car that was waiting for her. All the information she needed had been on that slip of paper: the car she would drive to the airport about an hour away; the private jet she’d take back to the East Coast; and an inkling of what she’d be doing once she got there.
She slipped her hand under the back left wheel well of the car until she could feel the key stuck to the metal. Pulling it out, she wirelessly unlocked the door and started the engine.
Tock walked to the driver’s side door and opened it.
“Where ya going?”
Startled, she glanced up at the big cat leaning against the passenger side of the car while he ate a Jamaican beef patty out of a greasy paper bag.
“What are you doing?” she snapped. “Why are you following me?”
She was at least a mile from the party. He had to have been following her!
He shrugged. “Just curious.” While still eating, he held out the greasy paper bag to her. “Patty? They’re really good. I’ve already had, like, eight.”
“Cats,” Tock sighed.
Shay Malone watched the honey badger. She was glaring at him, but he wasn’t sure why. He hadn’t really done anything. He was just curious whether she was stealing this really nice car. A brand-new Mercedes-Benz that easily cost over a hundred grand was not something someone just picked up as a rental. And who left the key under the tire?
People up to no good. That was who.
And honey badgers were always up to no good, weren’t they? At least from what he’d seen so far.
Tock leaned across the roof of the car and snarled, “Go. Away.”
“Are you stealing this car?” he asked. “That is so not cool.”
“No.”
“I know it’s a rich person’s car but that doesn’t mean you can just take it. That’s wrong. Stealing is wrong.”
“I’m not stealing anything.”
“If you’re not stealing, what are you doing?”
“I have to take care of something. Alone.”
“Okay. I’ll just tell Mads that you drove off in a car that’s not yours and you keep whispering. In the middle of Detroit.”
Tock immediately glanced at the watch on her wrist. It was a big watch and looked very expensive. Maybe a boyfriend’s watch. He didn’t know. He’d never asked.
“Fine.” She glared at him. “Get in.”
Luckily, the car was a sedan and not a small, two-door nothing that his legs could barely fit in, much less his shoulders.
Once inside, with the doors and windows closed, Tock said, “I have to go help someone. I’m not stealing anything. This car was left for me.”
“Wait . . . should I get Mads and the oth—”
“No.” She closed her eyes again and let out a breath. “I don’t want them involved.”
“Why not?”
“That’s my business. Now get out.”
Shay thought a few seconds before replying, “Nah.”
“What do you mean, ‘nah’?”
“I mean, nah. I’m not going anywhere. If you’re not going to have your friends backing you up, you should at least have me. I’m helpful.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“Either I go or I get Mads. And when she hears you’re doing something dangerous alone so close to the championships . . .”
Tock gripped the steering wheel with both hands and began taking in breaths through her nose and blowing them out through her mouth.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“It’s a calming technique that will hopefully prevent me from beating you to death.”
What was disturbing was how calmly she made that statement. Only her gripping hands and red knuckles told him how pissed she was at the moment.
“I’m just trying to—”
“Stop saying you’re trying to help. You’re just being a pain in the ass.”
Shay didn’t say anything. He simply stared at her until she turned her head, her eyes going wide.
“Are you about to cry?” she asked.
“No.” And he wasn’t. “But my feelings are hurt.”
“Cats don’t have feelings.”
“Yes, we do. And you’ve hurt mine. But I’ve made a commitment—I’m going with you. Despite your cruel words. That were so hurtful to me.”
She began to say something, stopped, let out a long sigh, and finally pulled away from the curb.
When they hit a stoplight, he held the bag of beef patties under her nose.
“Want one?” he asked.
The way she glared at him. Glared at him so hard. They sat there long after the light had turned green. They didn’t move until the drivers behind them began to lean on their horns and yell curses out their windows.
That glare . . . he honestly didn’t know if he should laugh or find a way to hide under the wheel well like a confused kitten.
He was relieved he didn’t have to make the decision one way or the other when she finally began to drive the car forward and held her right hand out so he could put a patty in her palm.
Tracey Rutowski swung out the doors of the Gucci store on Old Bond Street. It was early morning and she had appointments all day at the Royal Academy of Arts in the hopes of finding the next Michelangelo or Monet. Or, even better, the next Mapplethorpe or Basquiat. But first she had to check out a nearby empty storefront to see if it would work for her newest gallery.
She stopped at the black SUV waiting for her and handed over the Gucci-branded shopping bag that held her new black purse. It would go into her closet with all her other black purses and backpacks and clutches; black jeans; and black T-shirts and sweaters. It was her signature style. Black.
The feline standing by the driver’s-side door took the bag, his nose twitching when he looked at it.
“What?”
“More shit you won’t do anything with but spend a lot of money on?” he replied before rudely tossing it into the open car door.
“You’re always so negative.”
“I’m a realist. And you’re a hoarder.”
“I am not a hoarder.” She glanced away before adding, “I just like pretty things. Just be glad I purchased it and I’m not running down the street with Gucci security chasing behind me.”
“You mean like last time?”
“That was not Gucci . . . that was Harry Winston and I was just keeping my skills on point. Now stay here,” she continued. “I just have to go check a building about a block away. After that we’ll be—”
“Really?” he cut in . . . with that tone. “You have to do this right now?”
Neil Jeffers had been her bodyguard, driver, assistant, and friend since they’d met all those years ago when they were both way too young to be doing what they were doing. But it had bonded them. Like war buddies, except Neil was still a feline; which meant he was “dick-y” on principle. Just to irritate her.
“Patrice wants me to take a look. It’ll take five min—”
“Twenty. It’ll take twenty minutes. And I thought Patrice was on vacation.”
“She is, but she never stops working. We both know that. And once I get this done, we can go.” When he rolled his eyes, “What? What?”
“Nothing. Go, go. Keep everyone waiting, like no one has anything better to do but wait for you.”
“Why the feline sarcasm?”
“There’s no sarcasm. We all just looooooove waiting on you. It’s the most amazing part of our day.”
“Sarcasm,” she accused before turning away from him and heading down the street until she reached the empty storefront her Realtor, Patrice, had texted her about.
Patrice often found Tracey the best locations for her galleries, no matter what country they were in. They’d worked together since the ’90s, when Patrice had located that burnt-out building in the Bronx for Tracey’s first show of local young artists. Most of them were people of color with strong political opinions that they clearly expressed in their work. The event was a huge success, bringing in some very wealthy, pretentious art investors and critics as well as people Tracey actually wanted to impress. But then the NYPD showed up and it turned into a horrible riot . . .
Okay. Maybe she caused the riot. But the cops had made her mad.
In the end, though, that little felony on her record didn’t stop her career. In fact, over the last three decades, she’d gone from edgy, rebel art procurer to ruling establishment art procurer.
At this moment, she had galleries in Paris, Rome, Toledo, Manhattan, Los Angeles, São Paulo, Lagos, Johannesburg, and Sydney. She also handled private procurements for billionaires upon request. She was supposed to have opened a gallery in Hong Kong a few years back but she’d been banned from entering China since the late ’80s so . . . yeah . . . no gallery in Hong Kong. Or Tokyo. Or Seoul, for that matter. East Asia had pretty much banned her, but every couple of years she still attempted to make her way in. It wasn’t as if she didn’t bring a lot of money with her. But gee . . . you steal a few Ming Dynasty items by tunneling into a few unknown tombs with your claws and honey badger skills, and everybody gets mad at you! She was young! A teen! You’d think they’d let it go. Especially once she’d returned what she’d taken.
And yes, Tracey already had a gallery in London, but she’d always wanted to get her gallery onto Old Bond Street. A near-impossible task for an American like her, unless you knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who had connections with Buckingham Palace.
A place she’d also been banned from entering since the late ’80s.
Her reputation with Parliament wasn’t much better, but at least they hadn’t cut her off like the Crown. Because who knew when they’d need her and her sunny disposition to help out MI6 again? Not that they’d asked for that help, but she’d given it willingly anyway. Whether they’d wanted it or not.
Tracey knocked on the big wooden door. When no one answered, she pulled on the wooden handle. The door silently opened and she stepped inside.
“Hello?” she called out. “Anyone here?”
She stepped farther in, her attention focused on the building’s layout. Walls would have to be knocked down as this had been a clothing store previously. But the high ceilings were great, and she loved the natural light that . . .
Tracey’s nose twitched as a very specific scent hit her . . . offensive on every level.
Hyenas. Fucking hyenas.
She hated when Neil was right. She should have gone right to her meetings instead. She didn’t even have her gun on her. She’d left it in the car so she could go into Gucci without problems. She’d forgotten to grab it before coming here.
She wasn’t surprised this was a setup. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d been ambushed. Or the fifteenth time. But she was surprised when the hyena who emerged from the shadows wasn’t a Romanian female with muscles the size of cantaloupes. Tracey had taken a Matisse right out from under the talentless bitch and she knew it was an affront that would not go unchallenged.
This, however . . . she never saw coming.
“Freja?” she asked. It had been years since she’d seen the mean She-beast. “Freja Galendotter?”
The hyena smiled. “Hello, Tracey.”
More hyenas moved in from the shadows she’d so appreciated when she’d first walked in. They surrounded Tracey but kept their distance. Because they were all male. Not a female hyena among them except Freja. And she knew why.
“That’s right.” Tracey couldn’t control her wide grin. “I’d heard my niece kicked your ass. Tore your entire Clan apart with the help of a few lion males.” She kissed her fingers like a French chef. “Sensational.”
Freja’s expression hardened into one full of rage and hatred. Not so much for Tracey—they really didn’t know each other well, despite years of threats between them—but for Mads, the daughter Freja hated because she hadn’t turned out to be some super beast. A combination of hyena and Tracey’s idiot brother had produced what most mixes with badger produced: a regular ol’ honey badger. Just like her father. Honey badger genes always ruled supreme when it came to shifters. None of those coydogs or ligers or bear-cats. No matter what you or your family was, if you mated with a honey badger . . . you got a honey badger. And the Galendotters never let her poor niece forget it.
Tracey’s mom had offered to take the poor kid into the family, but Freja was such a vindictive sociopath that she refused. She kept the kid she hated just so she could make Tracey’s brother miserable. Because he hadn’t given her what she wanted: some freakish child she could use to torment her enemies.
Freja also made it clear that if any of the Rutowskis attempted to take the kid, she’d kill Mads herself. Cut her throat right in front of them. At the time, Tracey believed that threat. Why? Because Freja’s own mother and the females of that clan would do whatever they were ordered. If that meant killing a kid, they would do it. Without even a question.
But that was before Mads had finally fought back and wiped out her mother’s clan. This attack must be Freja’s last-ditch effort to turn her fate around. To once again become one of the most feared hyena clans in the States. By killing her daughter’s family.
“So let me guess,” Tracey said. “Mads destroyed your Clan and now you want revenge? My God!” she blurted out. “What did my brother ever see in you? You are so mundane.”
“I’m not here because of Mads. I’m here for you. You’ve got so much money on your head, I’ll win my Clan back. That’s why I’m here.”
“You expect me to believe that this has nothing to do with my niece?”
“I don’t have to do anything about her. She and her friends and all you worthless vermin . . . all of you will be getting what you deserve, and I won’t have to lift a finger.”
Tracey frowned. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“You really should be worrying about yourself right now.”
“Because of you?” Tracey snorted. “Oh, please.”
Freja sneered. “I should have taken you out a long time ago.”
“So you’re a bounty hunter now?”
“As much money as they’re offering for you?”
“Is this bounty out of Germany?” Tracey asked. The Romanian female was out of Germany.
“No.”
“Rome?” She lowered her voice. “The Pope?”
“What?” the hyena snapped, surprised at her question. “No.”
“Sierra Leone?”
“Would you stop? You’re pissing me off!”
“From what my brother says, that’s not hard.”
The hyena pulled a gun from the back of her jeans waistband, pointing it directly at Tracey’s head.
“A gun?” Tracey said, smiling. “How edgy.”
“I know all about you. I’m not taking any chances.”
“You? You know about me?”
“Yeah. I know. Badgers. Tough to kill.”
“No. Not about the honey badgers. I mean about me. Maybe my brother told you? About my past.”
“You were a whore?” Freja asked drily.
“Besides that . . .” Tracey lowered her voice. “About my involvement with different governments? About the accidental military coup in Mexico?” She gave a little grimace. “That unfortunate thing with Margaret Thatcher?” She lowered her voice even more. “About Gorbachev?”
“What? What are you talking about? You sound insane.”
“So . . . my brother never told you anything. About me. Huh.”
Pete didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to have this crowbar in his hand. He didn’t want to be in a foreign country! But he didn’t have much choice. It sucked to be a hyena male. Especially if you were born into a clan that had such mean females running it.
He was only sixteen. Too young to set off on his own. At least that’s what his mother had said before telling him she and his sisters were leaving to join another clan and he might as well stay part of Freja’s. She’d dumped him like so much trash and now here he was. About to see a middle-aged woman shot to death for . . . what? Existing? And was the gun necessary? He’d been raised to believe that his kind didn’t need weapons. They didn’t need to fight. But now his aunt was about to kill a middle-aged lady with gray in the roots of her black-and-white hair and lines around her eyes. He didn’t want to hurt her. He didn’t want to hurt anyone! He just wanted to go. Anywhere.
But before he could scream that out, he heard something pop and the uncle standing next to him went down screaming. He saw that his uncle’s leg didn’t look right seconds before a baseball bat slammed into the back of his uncle’s shoulders. He crashed to the ground, sobbing in pain.
Pete looked at the woman now standing beside him. She was a short, brown-skinned Latina with thick, black hair that was a messy mix of braids dyed purple and curls. There was a tiny heart tattoo under her right eye, a bigger tattoo on her right hand that said something in Spanish. She had on loose, worn blue jeans, splattered with blood . . . and some paint, he guessed, since blood wasn’t usually blue, green, and purple; a black tank top with the Motörhead logo on the front; and a double silver chain necklace with an eagle charm and a feather charm.
She barely glanced at him, but then he heard her ask, “How old are you?”
“Si-si-si . . .” He swallowed, tried again. “Sixteen.”
She motioned behind her with a jerk of her head. “Get over there,” she ordered. “Stay out of the way. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he muttered before quickly moving to the far wall. When he turned back, he saw a cousin’s head snap around from the swing of that bat. A different woman had struck the blow that sent his cousin reeling, though. This lady didn’t have dark hair with white streaks. She was blond, her hair in a thick braid down her back. And she wore more expensive-looking clothes than the other ladies: a tight black skirt, white silk blouse, and very high heels that she twisted and turned around in without ever slipping or falling on her butt. She simply ducked another cousin’s punches before slamming the front of the bat into his gut and then pulled back and swung, cracking his cousin in the head. He went down hard and didn’t move, but he was still breathing.
Done, the woman tossed the bat to yet another middle-aged lady, who easily caught it. She flipped the bat in her hands, spun her body around for momentum and swung, sending an uncle flying across the empty store. Swung again, and a cousin crashed into a nearby pillar.
This woman had on a white sleeveless T-shirt, a sleeveless denim jacket, gray jeans, and work boots with big heels. Her hair was chin length on one side and shaved down to the skull on the other. The remaining hair barely covered an old tattoo that Pete couldn’t quite make out.
As all these new women attacked and battered his cousins and uncles, they moved forward until they’d knocked out or so damaged the male members of his family that none of them could move from the floor they were lying on.
Finally, the women stood beside the first woman he’d seen, but his aunt still had her gun pointed at that woman’s head. Yet that woman hadn’t moved. She hadn’t looked away. She’d done nothing but stand there and stare down his Aunt Freja.
Pete didn’t understand. Who were these women? And where had they come from? His uncles and cousins had searched the place before lying in wait for the first woman to show up. They hadn’t seen anyone in the store. Hadn’t smelled anyone. And yet here they all were. All staring down his aunt.
He knew all the women were supposed to be honey badgers but the only thing he and his uncles and cousins had been told was to make sure they didn’t get their claws on a gun or knife because badgers didn’t fight fair. Due to their small size, they felt it was their right to even the odds when going up against bigger predators. Meaning his Aunt Freja felt justified using a weapon on this lone badger. Fuck shifter honor, apparently. Pete was sure Aunt Freja never expected backup for the honey badger female or for these additional badgers to be so damn mean and handy with one simple baseball bat.
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.”
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
First the bump; from behind. Then the mumbled apology. Lastly, a piece of paper shoved into her left hand.
Emily “Tock” Lepstein-Jackson kept walking through the crowd, not looking at the man who’d bumped into her. Instead, she waited until she reached a porta potty. She didn’t go in. She couldn’t do that. She went around it and stopped between the porta potty and the six-foot security fence to look at the piece of paper in her hand.
This sort of thing hadn’t happened in a while, because she wasn’t working for anyone. Well, she wasn’t working for any government. She did work for the shifter nation. That’s where her true loyalty lay. Governments were changeable entities—one day a democratic paradise, the next a totalitarian nightmare. She didn’t want to end up on the wrong side of history, so she gave her loyalty to the one group that hadn’t changed in thousands of years. Shifters. Their only goal was to keep their kind safe and able to thrive. They never wanted to be science experiments. They didn’t want to be hunted for trophies. They didn’t want to be sex toys for those who thought they were “exotic.” And they definitely didn’t want to end up as steaks on some full-human’s dinner plate.
That was a belief system Tock could get behind. And an employer who didn’t sneakily shove pieces of paper into her hand in the middle of a street party thrown in honor of her teammate Mads’s grandmother. She was in Detroit with her four teammates and some big cats to relax. To eat amazing food, to get in a little street ball, maybe to flirt a bit with the local cutie pies. Not to be part of some covert operation that could get her—
“Shit.”
Tock crumpled the paper, pulled out a lighter she only used for this sort of thing because she didn’t smoke, and set the paper on fire. She held it between her thumb and forefinger until it had burned down to the tiniest scrap. Her fingers hurt a little from the flame, but they’d heal soon enough.
She dropped the remaining scrap and came around the porta potty, pulling out her phone and sending a quick text to her teammates: Gotta run. See you back in Manhattan. Won’t miss practice.
The last line was specifically for her teammate Mads. She knew that would be Mads’s first question. Their pro shifter team, the Wisconsin Butchers, was headed to the finals, and her friend wouldn’t let anything get between them and possibly winning this year’s championship. Because when it came to basketball, Mads was a little . . . obsessive. She’d always been that way, though. Since the day Tock had met her. The girl loved basketball. It made sense when Tock thought about it. Basketball was Mads’s “safe space.” A place no one could touch her. Literally. The girl practically had wings on her feet. No matter how horrible Mads’s family was to her—and they had always been fucking horrible—they couldn’t say anything to make her feel insecure about basketball. Because Mads was that good.
Of course, Tock wasn’t a bad ball player either. She just didn’t take it as seriously as Mads did. Tock did like winning, though. She was very good at winning. She even had a little “we beat your ass” dance.
She really shouldn’t put herself at risk—which meant possibly risking the championship—but she knew that there were times in life when you couldn’t ignore a request. Even when you really wanted to.
Away from the street party, Tock quickly found the car that was waiting for her. All the information she needed had been on that slip of paper: the car she would drive to the airport about an hour away; the private jet she’d take back to the East Coast; and an inkling of what she’d be doing once she got there.
She slipped her hand under the back left wheel well of the car until she could feel the key stuck to the metal. Pulling it out, she wirelessly unlocked the door and started the engine.
Tock walked to the driver’s side door and opened it.
“Where ya going?”
Startled, she glanced up at the big cat leaning against the passenger side of the car while he ate a Jamaican beef patty out of a greasy paper bag.
“What are you doing?” she snapped. “Why are you following me?”
She was at least a mile from the party. He had to have been following her!
He shrugged. “Just curious.” While still eating, he held out the greasy paper bag to her. “Patty? They’re really good. I’ve already had, like, eight.”
“Cats,” Tock sighed.
Shay Malone watched the honey badger. She was glaring at him, but he wasn’t sure why. He hadn’t really done anything. He was just curious whether she was stealing this really nice car. A brand-new Mercedes-Benz that easily cost over a hundred grand was not something someone just picked up as a rental. And who left the key under the tire?
People up to no good. That was who.
And honey badgers were always up to no good, weren’t they? At least from what he’d seen so far.
Tock leaned across the roof of the car and snarled, “Go. Away.”
“Are you stealing this car?” he asked. “That is so not cool.”
“No.”
“I know it’s a rich person’s car but that doesn’t mean you can just take it. That’s wrong. Stealing is wrong.”
“I’m not stealing anything.”
“If you’re not stealing, what are you doing?”
“I have to take care of something. Alone.”
“Okay. I’ll just tell Mads that you drove off in a car that’s not yours and you keep whispering. In the middle of Detroit.”
Tock immediately glanced at the watch on her wrist. It was a big watch and looked very expensive. Maybe a boyfriend’s watch. He didn’t know. He’d never asked.
“Fine.” She glared at him. “Get in.”
Luckily, the car was a sedan and not a small, two-door nothing that his legs could barely fit in, much less his shoulders.
Once inside, with the doors and windows closed, Tock said, “I have to go help someone. I’m not stealing anything. This car was left for me.”
“Wait . . . should I get Mads and the oth—”
“No.” She closed her eyes again and let out a breath. “I don’t want them involved.”
“Why not?”
“That’s my business. Now get out.”
Shay thought a few seconds before replying, “Nah.”
“What do you mean, ‘nah’?”
“I mean, nah. I’m not going anywhere. If you’re not going to have your friends backing you up, you should at least have me. I’m helpful.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“Either I go or I get Mads. And when she hears you’re doing something dangerous alone so close to the championships . . .”
Tock gripped the steering wheel with both hands and began taking in breaths through her nose and blowing them out through her mouth.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“It’s a calming technique that will hopefully prevent me from beating you to death.”
What was disturbing was how calmly she made that statement. Only her gripping hands and red knuckles told him how pissed she was at the moment.
“I’m just trying to—”
“Stop saying you’re trying to help. You’re just being a pain in the ass.”
Shay didn’t say anything. He simply stared at her until she turned her head, her eyes going wide.
“Are you about to cry?” she asked.
“No.” And he wasn’t. “But my feelings are hurt.”
“Cats don’t have feelings.”
“Yes, we do. And you’ve hurt mine. But I’ve made a commitment—I’m going with you. Despite your cruel words. That were so hurtful to me.”
She began to say something, stopped, let out a long sigh, and finally pulled away from the curb.
When they hit a stoplight, he held the bag of beef patties under her nose.
“Want one?” he asked.
The way she glared at him. Glared at him so hard. They sat there long after the light had turned green. They didn’t move until the drivers behind them began to lean on their horns and yell curses out their windows.
That glare . . . he honestly didn’t know if he should laugh or find a way to hide under the wheel well like a confused kitten.
He was relieved he didn’t have to make the decision one way or the other when she finally began to drive the car forward and held her right hand out so he could put a patty in her palm.
Tracey Rutowski swung out the doors of the Gucci store on Old Bond Street. It was early morning and she had appointments all day at the Royal Academy of Arts in the hopes of finding the next Michelangelo or Monet. Or, even better, the next Mapplethorpe or Basquiat. But first she had to check out a nearby empty storefront to see if it would work for her newest gallery.
She stopped at the black SUV waiting for her and handed over the Gucci-branded shopping bag that held her new black purse. It would go into her closet with all her other black purses and backpacks and clutches; black jeans; and black T-shirts and sweaters. It was her signature style. Black.
The feline standing by the driver’s-side door took the bag, his nose twitching when he looked at it.
“What?”
“More shit you won’t do anything with but spend a lot of money on?” he replied before rudely tossing it into the open car door.
“You’re always so negative.”
“I’m a realist. And you’re a hoarder.”
“I am not a hoarder.” She glanced away before adding, “I just like pretty things. Just be glad I purchased it and I’m not running down the street with Gucci security chasing behind me.”
“You mean like last time?”
“That was not Gucci . . . that was Harry Winston and I was just keeping my skills on point. Now stay here,” she continued. “I just have to go check a building about a block away. After that we’ll be—”
“Really?” he cut in . . . with that tone. “You have to do this right now?”
Neil Jeffers had been her bodyguard, driver, assistant, and friend since they’d met all those years ago when they were both way too young to be doing what they were doing. But it had bonded them. Like war buddies, except Neil was still a feline; which meant he was “dick-y” on principle. Just to irritate her.
“Patrice wants me to take a look. It’ll take five min—”
“Twenty. It’ll take twenty minutes. And I thought Patrice was on vacation.”
“She is, but she never stops working. We both know that. And once I get this done, we can go.” When he rolled his eyes, “What? What?”
“Nothing. Go, go. Keep everyone waiting, like no one has anything better to do but wait for you.”
“Why the feline sarcasm?”
“There’s no sarcasm. We all just looooooove waiting on you. It’s the most amazing part of our day.”
“Sarcasm,” she accused before turning away from him and heading down the street until she reached the empty storefront her Realtor, Patrice, had texted her about.
Patrice often found Tracey the best locations for her galleries, no matter what country they were in. They’d worked together since the ’90s, when Patrice had located that burnt-out building in the Bronx for Tracey’s first show of local young artists. Most of them were people of color with strong political opinions that they clearly expressed in their work. The event was a huge success, bringing in some very wealthy, pretentious art investors and critics as well as people Tracey actually wanted to impress. But then the NYPD showed up and it turned into a horrible riot . . .
Okay. Maybe she caused the riot. But the cops had made her mad.
In the end, though, that little felony on her record didn’t stop her career. In fact, over the last three decades, she’d gone from edgy, rebel art procurer to ruling establishment art procurer.
At this moment, she had galleries in Paris, Rome, Toledo, Manhattan, Los Angeles, São Paulo, Lagos, Johannesburg, and Sydney. She also handled private procurements for billionaires upon request. She was supposed to have opened a gallery in Hong Kong a few years back but she’d been banned from entering China since the late ’80s so . . . yeah . . . no gallery in Hong Kong. Or Tokyo. Or Seoul, for that matter. East Asia had pretty much banned her, but every couple of years she still attempted to make her way in. It wasn’t as if she didn’t bring a lot of money with her. But gee . . . you steal a few Ming Dynasty items by tunneling into a few unknown tombs with your claws and honey badger skills, and everybody gets mad at you! She was young! A teen! You’d think they’d let it go. Especially once she’d returned what she’d taken.
And yes, Tracey already had a gallery in London, but she’d always wanted to get her gallery onto Old Bond Street. A near-impossible task for an American like her, unless you knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who had connections with Buckingham Palace.
A place she’d also been banned from entering since the late ’80s.
Her reputation with Parliament wasn’t much better, but at least they hadn’t cut her off like the Crown. Because who knew when they’d need her and her sunny disposition to help out MI6 again? Not that they’d asked for that help, but she’d given it willingly anyway. Whether they’d wanted it or not.
Tracey knocked on the big wooden door. When no one answered, she pulled on the wooden handle. The door silently opened and she stepped inside.
“Hello?” she called out. “Anyone here?”
She stepped farther in, her attention focused on the building’s layout. Walls would have to be knocked down as this had been a clothing store previously. But the high ceilings were great, and she loved the natural light that . . .
Tracey’s nose twitched as a very specific scent hit her . . . offensive on every level.
Hyenas. Fucking hyenas.
She hated when Neil was right. She should have gone right to her meetings instead. She didn’t even have her gun on her. She’d left it in the car so she could go into Gucci without problems. She’d forgotten to grab it before coming here.
She wasn’t surprised this was a setup. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d been ambushed. Or the fifteenth time. But she was surprised when the hyena who emerged from the shadows wasn’t a Romanian female with muscles the size of cantaloupes. Tracey had taken a Matisse right out from under the talentless bitch and she knew it was an affront that would not go unchallenged.
This, however . . . she never saw coming.
“Freja?” she asked. It had been years since she’d seen the mean She-beast. “Freja Galendotter?”
The hyena smiled. “Hello, Tracey.”
More hyenas moved in from the shadows she’d so appreciated when she’d first walked in. They surrounded Tracey but kept their distance. Because they were all male. Not a female hyena among them except Freja. And she knew why.
“That’s right.” Tracey couldn’t control her wide grin. “I’d heard my niece kicked your ass. Tore your entire Clan apart with the help of a few lion males.” She kissed her fingers like a French chef. “Sensational.”
Freja’s expression hardened into one full of rage and hatred. Not so much for Tracey—they really didn’t know each other well, despite years of threats between them—but for Mads, the daughter Freja hated because she hadn’t turned out to be some super beast. A combination of hyena and Tracey’s idiot brother had produced what most mixes with badger produced: a regular ol’ honey badger. Just like her father. Honey badger genes always ruled supreme when it came to shifters. None of those coydogs or ligers or bear-cats. No matter what you or your family was, if you mated with a honey badger . . . you got a honey badger. And the Galendotters never let her poor niece forget it.
Tracey’s mom had offered to take the poor kid into the family, but Freja was such a vindictive sociopath that she refused. She kept the kid she hated just so she could make Tracey’s brother miserable. Because he hadn’t given her what she wanted: some freakish child she could use to torment her enemies.
Freja also made it clear that if any of the Rutowskis attempted to take the kid, she’d kill Mads herself. Cut her throat right in front of them. At the time, Tracey believed that threat. Why? Because Freja’s own mother and the females of that clan would do whatever they were ordered. If that meant killing a kid, they would do it. Without even a question.
But that was before Mads had finally fought back and wiped out her mother’s clan. This attack must be Freja’s last-ditch effort to turn her fate around. To once again become one of the most feared hyena clans in the States. By killing her daughter’s family.
“So let me guess,” Tracey said. “Mads destroyed your Clan and now you want revenge? My God!” she blurted out. “What did my brother ever see in you? You are so mundane.”
“I’m not here because of Mads. I’m here for you. You’ve got so much money on your head, I’ll win my Clan back. That’s why I’m here.”
“You expect me to believe that this has nothing to do with my niece?”
“I don’t have to do anything about her. She and her friends and all you worthless vermin . . . all of you will be getting what you deserve, and I won’t have to lift a finger.”
Tracey frowned. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“You really should be worrying about yourself right now.”
“Because of you?” Tracey snorted. “Oh, please.”
Freja sneered. “I should have taken you out a long time ago.”
“So you’re a bounty hunter now?”
“As much money as they’re offering for you?”
“Is this bounty out of Germany?” Tracey asked. The Romanian female was out of Germany.
“No.”
“Rome?” She lowered her voice. “The Pope?”
“What?” the hyena snapped, surprised at her question. “No.”
“Sierra Leone?”
“Would you stop? You’re pissing me off!”
“From what my brother says, that’s not hard.”
The hyena pulled a gun from the back of her jeans waistband, pointing it directly at Tracey’s head.
“A gun?” Tracey said, smiling. “How edgy.”
“I know all about you. I’m not taking any chances.”
“You? You know about me?”
“Yeah. I know. Badgers. Tough to kill.”
“No. Not about the honey badgers. I mean about me. Maybe my brother told you? About my past.”
“You were a whore?” Freja asked drily.
“Besides that . . .” Tracey lowered her voice. “About my involvement with different governments? About the accidental military coup in Mexico?” She gave a little grimace. “That unfortunate thing with Margaret Thatcher?” She lowered her voice even more. “About Gorbachev?”
“What? What are you talking about? You sound insane.”
“So . . . my brother never told you anything. About me. Huh.”
Pete didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to have this crowbar in his hand. He didn’t want to be in a foreign country! But he didn’t have much choice. It sucked to be a hyena male. Especially if you were born into a clan that had such mean females running it.
He was only sixteen. Too young to set off on his own. At least that’s what his mother had said before telling him she and his sisters were leaving to join another clan and he might as well stay part of Freja’s. She’d dumped him like so much trash and now here he was. About to see a middle-aged woman shot to death for . . . what? Existing? And was the gun necessary? He’d been raised to believe that his kind didn’t need weapons. They didn’t need to fight. But now his aunt was about to kill a middle-aged lady with gray in the roots of her black-and-white hair and lines around her eyes. He didn’t want to hurt her. He didn’t want to hurt anyone! He just wanted to go. Anywhere.
But before he could scream that out, he heard something pop and the uncle standing next to him went down screaming. He saw that his uncle’s leg didn’t look right seconds before a baseball bat slammed into the back of his uncle’s shoulders. He crashed to the ground, sobbing in pain.
Pete looked at the woman now standing beside him. She was a short, brown-skinned Latina with thick, black hair that was a messy mix of braids dyed purple and curls. There was a tiny heart tattoo under her right eye, a bigger tattoo on her right hand that said something in Spanish. She had on loose, worn blue jeans, splattered with blood . . . and some paint, he guessed, since blood wasn’t usually blue, green, and purple; a black tank top with the Motörhead logo on the front; and a double silver chain necklace with an eagle charm and a feather charm.
She barely glanced at him, but then he heard her ask, “How old are you?”
“Si-si-si . . .” He swallowed, tried again. “Sixteen.”
She motioned behind her with a jerk of her head. “Get over there,” she ordered. “Stay out of the way. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he muttered before quickly moving to the far wall. When he turned back, he saw a cousin’s head snap around from the swing of that bat. A different woman had struck the blow that sent his cousin reeling, though. This lady didn’t have dark hair with white streaks. She was blond, her hair in a thick braid down her back. And she wore more expensive-looking clothes than the other ladies: a tight black skirt, white silk blouse, and very high heels that she twisted and turned around in without ever slipping or falling on her butt. She simply ducked another cousin’s punches before slamming the front of the bat into his gut and then pulled back and swung, cracking his cousin in the head. He went down hard and didn’t move, but he was still breathing.
Done, the woman tossed the bat to yet another middle-aged lady, who easily caught it. She flipped the bat in her hands, spun her body around for momentum and swung, sending an uncle flying across the empty store. Swung again, and a cousin crashed into a nearby pillar.
This woman had on a white sleeveless T-shirt, a sleeveless denim jacket, gray jeans, and work boots with big heels. Her hair was chin length on one side and shaved down to the skull on the other. The remaining hair barely covered an old tattoo that Pete couldn’t quite make out.
As all these new women attacked and battered his cousins and uncles, they moved forward until they’d knocked out or so damaged the male members of his family that none of them could move from the floor they were lying on.
Finally, the women stood beside the first woman he’d seen, but his aunt still had her gun pointed at that woman’s head. Yet that woman hadn’t moved. She hadn’t looked away. She’d done nothing but stand there and stare down his Aunt Freja.
Pete didn’t understand. Who were these women? And where had they come from? His uncles and cousins had searched the place before lying in wait for the first woman to show up. They hadn’t seen anyone in the store. Hadn’t smelled anyone. And yet here they all were. All staring down his aunt.
He knew all the women were supposed to be honey badgers but the only thing he and his uncles and cousins had been told was to make sure they didn’t get their claws on a gun or knife because badgers didn’t fight fair. Due to their small size, they felt it was their right to even the odds when going up against bigger predators. Meaning his Aunt Freja felt justified using a weapon on this lone badger. Fuck shifter honor, apparently. Pete was sure Aunt Freja never expected backup for the honey badger female or for these additional badgers to be so damn mean and handy with one simple baseball bat.
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.”
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
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Born to Be Badger
Shelly Laurenston
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