To Kill a Badger

Book 6: Honey Badger Chronicles

by Shelly Laurenston

Genres: Shifters

Synopsis

Laugh-out-loud humor, a feminist outlook, and one-of-a-kind shape-shifting romance come together with the continuation of the fan-favorite Honey Badger Chronicles from New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Shelly Laurenston.

Nelle Zhao is a social media maven who knows what matters. And the only thing that matters right now is survival. Not easy, though, when her honey badger teammates attract trouble the way she attracts attention. She didn’t know when it became her job to protect the ones she cares about from themselves, but even she has to admit…she’s really good at it. Too bad some people don’t appreciate when she’s being helpful. Especially Keane Malone, who doesn’t know how to accept a friendly paw. But Nelle excels at helping! And at ignoring other people’s irrational demands, such as doing it all alone. Keane, poor pretty kitty, doesn’t understand the kind of assistance a shit-starting honey badger like Nelle can truly offer . . .

Keane knows two things—he doesn’t like other people, and he is going to crush the de Medicis, an evil coalition of male lion shifters who are not only snatching innocent humans for fun and profit, but also killed his father. And for once, he may not be able to fight this fight alone, forcing him to let long-legged, jet-setting Nelle join the fight. And getting close to Nelle is suddenly bringing out his roar . . .

Release date: August 26, 2025

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 400

Reader says this book is...: action-packed (1) rich setting(s) (1) sex scenes (1) terrific writing (1) unputdownable (1)

Sample

Eleven years later . . .

Claws slashed by, missing her by no more than half an inch. Nelle ducked under the big fur-covered forearm swiping at her, and went back to work on the lock.

“Get him off me!” she yelled out when she felt another swipe near her spine. “Get him off!”

The full-humans trapped inside the cage she was working on continued to scream until she snapped, “Quiet.”

They immediately did as ordered, giving her a few seconds of peace. She worked the lock until it finally released. She yanked off the thick metal and pulled open the cage door.

“Out!” she ordered, the full-humans stumbling as they pushed and shoved one another to get free. She was about to roll her eyes at the pathetic way these people were acting when something grabbed her around the waist and yanked her off her feet.

The next second, Nelle was flying. Across the room and directly into a wall. She hit it hard, her nose crushed on impact, before she rebounded off and landed on the floor.

She laid her hands flat on the ground and pushed herself up until she was on all fours. But before she could stand, that forearm grabbed her again and threw her.

It was Nelle’s back that hit the other wall this time before she slid down and landed on her ass. She lifted her gaze in time to see the thousand-pound grizzly charging toward her.

They’d been told that Lithuanian bears would be protecting this transport ship filled with full-human cargo, but no one had told them the Lithuanian bears would be drugged out of their minds. There was a combination of cocaine-infused honey that had been making the rounds with bear addicts, but whatever these bears were on was way stronger. Because no matter how many times they were getting stabbed or shot, they just kept fighting.

As the bear neared, it opened its maw and grabbed her leg. If she were another breed, it would have bitten her leg clean off, but she was badger. Made of tough bones and even tougher skin.

Frustrated she wasn’t already bleeding out, the bear swung her around for a few seconds while Nelle reached over that giant head to tear out the bastard’s eyes with her claws before bashing him, headfirst, into the floor. But the doped-out-of-his-mind bastard still didn’t release her.

Nelle grabbed at the gun holstered to her hip, yanking it out just when Max landed on the bear’s back and stabbed at it with two tactical knives, hitting it in the neck and head.

It dropped Nelle, and she landed at its giant back paws, the front ones trying to slap Max off. Nelle put a round in the chamber of her Sig Sauer and, ignoring the blood pouring from her leg, proceeded to quickly climb the front of the bear while it tried to get Max off its back. She avoided its swinging forearms and snapping fangs, which allowed her to reach its shoulders. She moved to its right side and wrapped her legs around its neck, pressing the barrel of her gun against the top of its head. She pulled the trigger three times, and the bear dropped to its knees, then face-first to the floor.

Before it could hit the ground, though, she had already rolled clear.

Too bad there was another crazed bear just a few feet away. She only had a moment before that claw hit her right across the face and sent her flying again.

When she landed on the ground this time, she raised her weapon to start firing, hoping to at least get the bear to back off until she could shoot it directly in the head, but she never pulled the trigger. She was too busy staring at the older She-badger. It was Tracey Rutowski. Mads’s aunt whom they’d only recently met. And the female had an axe. A big one, probably grabbed from somewhere on the ship. Holding the weapon with both hands, the She-badger lifted it above her head and, with a roar, swung it down. The axe head embedded into the middle of the bear’s face. The crazed beast screamed in pain, blood spouting from the wound, but that didn’t stop Rutowski. After a couple of hard tugs to dislodge the weapon from its skull, Rutowski kicked the bear in the chest, knocking it to the ground. Her sleek, gray bob—expertly cut in some exclusive Manhattan salon, no doubt—fell in front of her face as she swung that axe again. She hit the bear in the face, then the neck, the shoulder. She just kept swinging the axe again and again until the bear stopped moving and its face and head were nothing but hacked bone, muscle, and blood.

Panting a little, the She-badger stopped her assault and held out a blood-soaked hand; Nelle grabbed it and allowed the female to help her up.

Rutowski studied her for a moment. “Your nose. Here.”

“No, n—” was all Nelle managed to get out before Rutowski viciously yanked the pieces of bone back into what probably looked like a nose. Maybe. Nelle felt less certain about that when the older badger cringed a bit after taking a look at her handiwork.

“You may still need a bit of plastic surgery there, kid,” Rutowski told her, before gripping Nelle’s jaw with her fingers and roughly turning her head to the right. “You may want to get this checked out, too. That bear got you good.”

Nelle was aware of the bodily damage she’d already sustained. She didn’t need this female tugging her face like a pimp checking out new product.

Instead of telling Mads’s aunt to unhand her, Nelle instead informed her, “Behind you.”

“Huh?”

“Behind—”

Rutowski didn’t wait for her to finish a second time, probably sensing the bear charging toward them both. She simply swung that axe again, more blood hitting Nelle in her already wounded face.

Rutowski was now having trouble getting the axe out of the bear’s shoulder, and this one was fighting back because his brain hadn’t been damaged yet. The pair struggled away from her, and that allowed Nelle to see that this She-badger’s middle-aged friends had also found their own axes and were finishing off the rest of the drugged-out bears. With axes. Because, clearly, none of them were part of a functioning society! Who lived like this? Using axes in this way? What was the eighties like, exactly? Nelle wondered. Did the Cold War make them like this? Just turning them into wild badgers with axes? Every last one of them had their own gun or tactical knife or bear-specific pepper spray! This sort of messy violence was unnecessary!

To be honest, though, the axes were only a small part of the problem. Because this was not how all this was supposed to be going. Nelle and her teammates had just done some necessary work in Italy, before doing a little shopping in Switzerland—then, on the way back to the States in one of her family’s private jets, they’d gotten a message from Rutowski asking for help in raiding a transport ship outside Boston Harbor. Charlie MacKilligan, who had been with them, had headed home immediately to check on family and friends, but the rest of them had all shrugged at each other and said, “Sure. Why not?”

It wasn’t until they’d invaded the ship and found the human cargo that Nelle realized she should have stayed on the jet and headed back to New York with Charlie. And, for once, Nelle couldn’t even blame Max for this fiasco. Max was usually the source of all their crazy, but not today. Today it was Rutowski and her Old Crone Reading Club—as Max liked to call them—dragging them unprepared into a very bad situation. Nelle and her teammates were already exhausted from what they’d taken care of in Italy, and now they had to deal with all . . . this.

Mads ran up to Nelle, shooting a charging bear twice in the face before stopping in front of her. “Are you okay?”

“My face—”

“Will heal. What about the rest of you? Any broken bones? How are your shoulders? Knees?”

Nelle could only open one eye at the moment, but she narrowed it on her teammate. “You’re not asking about this because you care. You’re asking because of the championships . . . aren’t you?”

“Of course, I care . . . about you . . . as a friend. My friend, I mean.”

“You liar! I have a crushed face, and you just want to make sure I haven’t broken my legs or arms because of that goddamn championship.”

“You’re our power forward!”

The five of them had been playing basketball since they were thirteen. After they’d graduated from high school, they’d gotten picked up by the Wisconsin pro shifter-only team. Most basketball teams were filled with big cats and bears. The occasional She-wolf. While the badgers would normally be considered too small to go up against a six-five She-grizzly with aggression issues, honey badgers were all about aggression. While others were running away from rampaging bears, honey badgers were running right at them.

Nelle and her teammates, though, were not simply vicious players. They were good. They worked together well and enjoyed taking other players’ balls away. It amused them.

But of the five of them, Mads was the most competitive about the game. She’d loved basketball from when she was a toddler, according to her great-grandmother. So anything, absolutely anything, that got between Mads and a possible championship win made her intolerable.

Intolerable!

“Stop touching me!” Nelle snapped, slapping at Mads’s groping hands on her shoulders.

“That bear tossed you around like a dog toy—”

“Thanks for intervening with that.”

“—and if you get any bones or joints replaced with titanium, you’re off the team, Nelle. You’re off the team!”

Nelle lifted her hand, palm out, and turned her face to the side. “You’re getting hysterical. I don’t like it.” She let out a small snarl before growling at Rutowski, “And would you stop hacking that bear! It is definitely dead!”

Max came across the room in her big combat boots, tiptoeing around all the blood and gore and bear bodies like an evil ballerina. It was adorably ridiculous, which Nelle assumed was just Max’s brand at this point. “Adorable Ridiculousness Designed by Max now available at your local Target.”

She pirouetted to a stop in front of Nelle and Mads. “How are we all doing?” she asked with a big smile.

“The crone watched too many slasher movies, and Mads felt me up.”

“I did not feel you up. I checked your bones.”

“Did you just call me a crone?” Rutowski rested the blood-covered head of her axe on her shoulder like a lumberjack. “And after I fixed your nose, too.”

“You didn’t fix anything.”

“She’s right,” Max agreed, leaning in close to study Nelle’s nose. “You did not fix anything.”

“At least she can breathe now.”

“No. I can’t.”

“The American weakness of the young badgers sickens me.”

Nelle glared at the Russian She-badger, Oksana “Ox” Lenkov. Tall, for a badger, Ox had been born and liberated from the Soviet Union when she was still a teen. How that happened, though, was something none of the older She-badgers would share with anyone. Which, of course, made Nelle wildly curious about the whole situation. Not enough to look into it or anything, but . . . yeah. Getting a teenager out of the Soviet Union during the Cold War without them being professional ballerinas on tours or gymnasts during the Olympics must have been . . . challenging.

“I am hardly American,” Nelle reminded the Russian.

“She says with British accent,” Rutowski muttered.

“My family has always gone to British-run private schools in Hong Kong. How do you expect me to sound? As if I’m from Brooklyn?”

“My cousins are from Brooklyn,” Steph Yoon announced, prying her axe from some bear’s spine.

“I don’t care,” Nelle shot back. “Look at my face! My beautiful, perfect face!”

Max quickly put her hands on Nelle’s shoulders and turned her away from the dismissive crones. At least she tried. Despite the pain coming from the wounds on her neck, Nelle kept her gaze locked on the three badgers while the rest of her body kept moving in the opposite direction. She also growled in annoyance so everyone knew how pissed off she was. Max finally took hold of her jaw and turned her head as well, so that Nelle was forced to look at her.

“There’s my little baby girl,” Max teased in a ridiculous “mom” voice. “There she is! Who’s my baby girl? Who’s my pretty baby girl?”

Nelle rolled her eyes and fought hard not to laugh. Max had been doing that to soothe Nelle’s rage for years. The first time had been after a colossal fight with Nelle’s mother. It was normal that a rage like that would stick with Nelle for days, even weeks. But when Max started saying such stupid things during the middle of a game, in front of both teams, coaches, an audience, and Nelle’s mother, Nelle could do nothing but laugh. Laugh so hard she was benched for a bit until she could stop. It was when Nelle finally laughed this time that Max went ahead and broke Nelle’s nose again—completely ignoring her snarl of pain—putting the pieces back together into something that, at the very least, allowed Nelle to breathe.

“This is your fault,” Mads argued, pointing an accusing finger at her aunt.

“Me? What did I do?”

“You gave us no warning about—”

“Bears? We told you there were bears. We were very clear about the bears.”

“You said we’d be in and out. More of a heist than a slam-and-slaughter combined with a rescue mission!”

Appearing genuinely confused, Rutowski asked, “Why are you so upset? You guys do this sort of thing all the time.”

“Not during championships!” they all yelled in unison.

“Oh, my God . . . is this about baseball?”

“No, no, no,” Yoon corrected. “Soccer. They play soccer.”

“I thought bowling,” Lenkov guessed.

Nelle’s nose was completely forgotten as she and Max quickly grabbed Mads before she could get her hands around her aunt’s throat and choke the very life from her.

The three older badgers stepped back in shock, eyes wide.

“Basketball!” Mads bellowed. “We play basketball!”

“Is it really that serious, sweetie?” Rutowski asked.

Nelle had to dig her heels in even harder, the muscles in Max’s arm bulging as they both fought to restrain Mads.

“We’re pros,” Mads snarled between clenched fangs. “It’s our job to win. And you are getting in my way.”

Nelle and Max smirked at each other behind Mads’s back. Because their teammate had gone from “our” to “my” really fast. But when it came to winning, it was always more Mads than the rest of them. They all enjoyed winning, but they would tank a game in a second if it would help them in a heist or some other thing they also enjoyed doing. But they’d learned very early on that was not an option for them. Not with Mads as part of any team they happened to be on. The girl liked to win, and anything that got in the way of that was nothing but an enemy that must be stomped out. Including even her newly found aunt, whom she really seemed to like.

“I don’t understand,” Yoon interjected. “You guys just came back from starting a war. This is part of that whole thing. How is any of what we’ve done in the last few hours a problem?”

Mads closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. She let it out. Then she calmly announced to Nelle and Max, “They’re clearly going to get in the way of the championship. I say we kill them all now and be done with it.”

While Rutowski and the others gasped in shock, and Max lowered her head so Mads didn’t see her laugh, Nelle simply nodded and calmly replied back, “Completely rational response.”

Mads shrugged. “I know.”

Keane Malone walked down one of the long hallways toward the sports medical center. He was dressed in his practice uniform and equipment, except he hadn’t put on his cleats or helmet. They were back at the practice field with the rest of his team.

He usually didn’t leave practice. He liked to be there with everyone else, getting in his workout and cracking the whip on any of the losers who thought they could float through the time because they could naturally run over fifty miles an hour due to their freakish long legs and ability to lick their own asses. “Why do we need practice? We’re cats! We’re naturally gifted,” they’d all say to him. At least the bears complained less, and the wolves didn’t complain at all, because they needed to work off their extra energy anyway. They were like border collies left alone in a house . . . they became destructive if not given something constructive to do.

The complainers, though, were always cats. His people, yes, but they drove him nuts! The constant complaining. The constant grooming. The constant knocking stuff over for no reason. It was endless! And Keane had no patience for any of it.

Still, he had left practice because his shoulder had been bothering him for about a week, and his coach ordered him to see a doctor to make sure it wasn’t a real problem. Keane didn’t think it was, though. It was probably just sore from the last few days of drama he’d recently had in his life. Fighting lions and fellow tigers had probably done some temporary damage. He wasn’t really that worried, because the season hadn’t started yet, and the doctors working at the arena were all well-trained and fellow shifters. They knew how to care for their kind. Not only that, but it wasn’t easy to permanently harm shifters. That’s why their football league was way better than what the full-humans had. Full-humans were so brittle. Like porcelain on a high shelf.

Keane went around a corner, and that’s when he saw a woman in four-wheel roller skates. She was leaning over at the waist and staring into the face of someone sitting on a bench across from the medical office. She reached out her hand and said to the one on the bench, “Now don’t panic. I’m just going to take your arm and lead you into the office. You’re going to be fine.”

It took a moment for Keane to understand what was going on. The female sitting on the bench? That was Nelle Zhao. She hung around Max MacKilligan. They played basketball together on the women’s pro team. She had amazing legs and lots of private jets. The other female was Blayne somebody. He found her annoying, but she wasn’t the problem. The problem was Blayne somebody’s husband. He was half-Amur tiger and half-something else. He played hockey. Keane hated him. The half-tiger, half-something else hated Keane. It was a mutual hatred that worked for both of them. What worried Keane was that the mixed-breed freak had fangs that no normal shifter should ever have. Two long ones that looked like something from a walrus. The pair of them avoided each other, because it would be a nasty fight and neither wanted to get so wounded they couldn’t play for their next games or be forced to get replacement joints. A shifter couldn’t continue on a pro team if they had any titanium in their body. It gave them too much of an edge during gameplay.

Like any decent cat, though, the half-tiger, half-something else was known to protect his mate, as any shifter would once they had a cub or two. Which meant that if Blayne somebody pissed off that honey badger, she was going to find herself mauled beyond recognition, and the half-tiger, half-something else would go on a vengeful rampage. A perfect example of a “violence circle.” The kind of thing that Keane usually sat back and watched with feet up on his ottoman and a big bowl of popcorn in his lap.

But Mads was with Keane’s brother now, and he didn’t want to hear that idiot’s whining because she was unhappy. Meaning Keane knew he had to step in.

Blayne somebody almost had her hand on Nelle’s forearm when he caught hold of it and pushed her away. Not hard, though, since she was wearing skates and simply glided backward.

“Hey!” she exclaimed. “Get off.”

“Leave her alone.”

“I’m just trying to—”

“Help. Right. Nelle,” he asked without looking at the badger, “do you need help?”

“No.”

“Do you want this woman to touch you?”

“No.”

“Do you want her to go away?”

“Yes.”

“See?” he asked Blayne somebody, releasing her arm. “She wants you to go away. So go away.”

“She’s bleeding.”

Keane shrugged. “She’s badger. She’ll be fine.” He motioned to Blayne somebody. “Go find someone else to help.”

“Look at her face. She’s sweaty and pasty. Having trouble breathing.”

“And?”

“Her neck is wounded on the left, and the bleeding hasn’t stopped since I’ve been standing here.”

Keane looked Nelle over, trying not to focus too closely on Nelle’s body in that basketball outfit. Tank top. Shorts. Her legs crossed at the knee. Sneakers with heels already built in, which was just weird and ridiculous. Then he moved up to her neck, leaning a bit so he could get a clearer look. And Blayne somebody was right.

“You are bleeding.”

“I am?” Nelle put her hand to her neck and pulled back bloody fingers. “Huh.”

He pointed at the medical office about fifty feet away. “So when you get a chance, go see one of the docs. Okay?”

“Sure.”

“Great.”

Keane turned and started off to get to his last-minute medical appointment.

“Is that it?” Blayne somebody yelled.

“Is what it?”

“You’re just going to leave her?”

“She’s a badger. She’ll be fine.” When the female’s mouth opened, and her eyes went wide, and she shook her head back and forth at him like some kind of confused foxhound, he asked, “Don’t you have some homeless people to help?”

“It’s unhoused, and I do that on Sundays. Help her!”

“I’ve got an appointment right now, and also, I don’t care.” In shock, Keane took a quick step back and asked, “Are . . . are you crying?”

“I am about to get really mad with you. And sometimes that means tears. And when there are tears, I usually lose my mind!” she hysterically screeched. “Help her!”

Not sure what was happening, Keane went back to the bench and quickly grabbed Nelle’s forearm. With his gaze locked on the insane mixed-breed canine snarling at him, he pulled the badger off the bench and dragged her across the floor toward the medical office.

“You can’t pick her up?” the canine sobbed.

“She’s fine!”

“You are a worthless human being!”

“That’s because I’m a cat!” he yelled back before throwing open the medical office door and dragging the badger inside with him. He stopped long enough to close the door behind him, and then he turned the lock to keep the crazed canine out. She stood in front of the door, obviously seething, and he knew he’d done the right thing. Hopefully there wouldn’t be any real emergencies that needed to get in before he got Nelle Zhao out of his life.

“Blayne giving you shit?” the receptionist asked with a laugh.

“Does she just sit outside forcing people to deal with bleeding badgers?”

“No. She’s waiting for her husband and daughter. The kid is getting her shots for the upcoming kid’s hockey season. You know . . . all the important ones. Measles, mumps, flu . . . canine flu, distemper, feline AIDS, parvo, plus flea and tick prevention.”

“Are you supposed to tell me any of that?”

“Probably not. You know . . . the whole HIPAA thing, but they don’t even know we exist so . . . who cares?”

Not in the mood to argue with a bobcat, Keane simply announced, “My trainer booked me in here to see the orthopedist about my shoulder. And the badger’s bleeding from the neck.”

“You sound like you really care,” the bobcat teased.

“No, I don’t. Because I don’t care. I know it. The badger knows it—”

“I do,” Nelle muttered. “I really do. And I’m okay with it.”

“See? Completely rational.” He pointed at the clear door the heaving mixed-breed canine was standing in front of. “But that female is insane.”

“You afraid to take her on, Malone?” The bobcat laughed.

“No. But I can promise that none of you guys want me and her husband going crazed in your very nice offices here.”

“That’s true. But, uh . . . your little badger friend there—”

“She’s not my badger friend. Simply a badger I know.”

“Yeah, well, whatever she is to you . . . it looks like she’s passed out. Or is dead. You know . . . from the bleeding.”

Startled, Keane looked down at the female, whose arm he still held, and said the only thing he could think of . . .

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!”

“Are you stabbing me in the neck?” Nelle asked whomever was poking at her throat.

“I’m trying to repair your carotid artery, but . . .” Dr. Jai Davis, doctor to the sports stars—at least the shifter ones—took a step back from the operating table and, slightly panting, asked, “Is your artery. . . fighting me?”

“Possibly.”

“I . . . I think it keeps attacking my instruments,” she noted, studying the tiny heads of the equipment she was currently using.

“Yes. That can happen.”

“How is that normal?”

“Full-humans don’t know we even exist. How is that normal?”

“Great,” the doctor sighed out. “I get the philosopher.”

“Just close up the wound, so I can go.”

“I’m trying, but your arteries are fighting me, and you are supposed to be out. Why aren’t you out? Or screaming in pain and panic now that you’re awake?”

“Because I don’t need you repairing my artery. It’ll repair itself.”

“You were bleeding out in our waiting room. You were clinically dead for at least three minutes when the tiger brought you in here.”

“I only brought her in because of that crazed canine outside the office harassing me.”

With the operating table tilted at a ninety-degree angle so the doctor didn’t have to bend over to work on her neck, Nelle only had to move her gaze to the other side of the room to see Keane Malone sitting on a separate table, another doctor examining his shoulder.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

“My shoulder has been bothering me.”

“I don’t mean why are you seeing a doctor. I mean why are you in the operating room with me? This whole thing feels terribly unhygienic.”

“Stop whining, you’ll be fine,” the doctor snapped, while still fighting whatever was going on inside Nelle’s neck.

“I strongly suggested that she not work on a honey badger alone,” the other doctor told Nelle. “The last time I did that, I nearly got my throat ripped out.”

“You did go for the nurse’s throat when we thought you were dead, Miss Zhao. Didn’t she, Hugo?”

“She did!”

“Is that why I’m strapped to the table?” Nelle asked.

“Yes,” the doctors said in unison.

“Mind if you unstrap me?”

“Are you going to act right?” Davis asked.

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Yes, that’s the problem.” But she undid the straps holding Nelle down anyway, before returning to her wounded neck.

The orthopedist working on Keane’s shoulder abruptly walked out of the room, but returned a few minutes later with big goggles resting on his forehead and a giant sledgehammer.

“Well,” he said to Keane, “let’s get this done.”

He lowered the goggles over his eyes and lifted the massive sledgehammer, resting the big head on his shoulder.

Eyes wide, Malone blurted out, “What the fuck are you going to do with that thing?”

“I need to rebreak this shoulder. Sledgehammer is the easiest way.”

“Are you insane? I’m not letting you do that!”

“Oh, come on! Don’t be such a pussy!” Then the lion male laughed at his own joke. “Get it? Because we’re all pus—”

“Yes. Yes. I get it. But if you try to hit me with a hammer, I’m going to beat what little brains you have right out of your giant lion head.”

“I went to Princeton. Where did you go?”

“Long Island ‘I will beat the shit out of you if you touch me with that hammer’ University.”

As entertained as Nelle was—and she was just so entertained right now!—she raised her hand to stop the escalating argument. You never know what could set two cats off, but she was pretty sure threatening one with a sledgehammer would do it.

“Everyone calm down; I can—” Nelle paused while her doctor struggled to pull something from her neck. She tugged and tugged, her mountain-lion fangs slipping from her gums, until she finally yanked something free. Holding up her blood-covered hand, she showed off what she held tightly with a pair of titanium needle-nose tweezers.

“Is this a bear claw?” she asked.

It wasn’t the whole claw, but yes. That was a piece of bear claw she held.

“I had a feeling something was in there,” Nelle explained. “I just didn’t know what.”

Davis leaned in closer. “It looks . . . gnawed upon.”

“Just my blood fighting back.”

“See what I mean? Even for shifters, that’s weird. That is just so weird.”

Ignoring Davis’s observations over her kind’s blood cells, Nelle calmly told the orthopedist, “Don’t break his shoulder. I’ll take him to my guy. He can fix that shoulder without breaking anything.”

“What?” the lion immediately sneered. “Some Eastern, hippy medicine crap, involving tea and prayers?”

Feeling much better now that the piece of bear claw was out of her neck, Nelle decided to have a little fun.

“Why would you ask that? Because I’m Asian. And because I’m Asian, I must be taking Malone to some old man from Shanghai who has a decrepit office somewhere in Chinatown, where he’s doling out tiger dong tea to heal rashes and cancer?”

The lion blinked at her behind his goggles. “No, no. I didn’t mean—”

“My people are just all the same to you, aren’t we?”