PROLOGUE
A nose, both cheekbones, and an upper jaw broken by the force of a ball. A twisted arm cracked from the pressure, then a shoulder. A kneecap destroyed by one kick. A lower jaw cracked by a fist. A trachea crushed by another fist.
A circle formed, preventing the prey from running.
Charles Taylor knew he had to intervene, but he was fascinated. What he shouldn’t be, though, was surprised. Their team had just won the Girls’ High School Basketball State Championship. Because if it was one thing they knew how to do, it was how to be a team.
Finally, he stepped out from beside the tree. One of the prey reached out for him, begging him with tear-filled eyes for help.
Charles, instead, looked at the predators and they all stared back, waiting for him to yell, to chastise, until one happily waved at him.
“Hi, Pop-Pop,” his granddaughter greeted with a wide grin, one eye bruised and swelling. Her lip and jaw doing the same. Marks on her throat suggesting she had been choked first. He glanced down at the men, parts of them so badly broken they couldn’t get up. Several, however, attempted to drag themselves away. One was faster than the others, but before he could get very far, one of the teammates stepped in front of him.
She, like his granddaughter, was a little thing. Deceptively small and innocent looking . . . except for the broad shoulders and thighs. And the eyes. Their eyes betrayed what they were. What his granddaughter was, but only because Max was not his blood. He’d adopted her the same way he’d adopted her younger sister—with absolutely no state or federal involvement and no legal paperwork. But their kind didn’t often do things like the full-humans who surrounded them. When his blood-related granddaughter had come to his Pack-owned home, she’d brought her half-sisters with her and all three had become his concern. His responsibility. His problem.
And, to be quite honest . . . his entertainment. Because where the three of them went—whether together or apart—trouble didn’t simply follow. It nested inside them like a parasite. The trio were the Typhoid Marys of trouble.
So he had no idea how these men had gotten on the bad side of his granddaughter Max and her teammates, but he also knew that Max Yang didn’t attack without reason. Honey badgers never did. But God help you if you attacked them, because they never stopped. They never would stop. No matter how much bigger their enemy, how much stronger, how much faster. Badgers never stopped.
Unless, of course, one offered them something better.
“Your sister is making breakfast. You better get home.”
“Breakfast?” She looked at her watch. “Little late.”
“She calls it brunch, but when waffles are involved, it’s breakfast. Or dinner. It’s never brunch.”
She shrugged those brawny shoulders of hers and looked at her teammates. It was a Saturday but the boys’ basketball team had been given a parade for their championship win. The girls, however, who’d rocked the state championship as only a group of badgers could, had not been rewarded with such spirit. So the ladies had gone to the parade in their team uniforms and, knowing them as he did, had probably started a lot of shit because they had gotten no respect from their own school. The school they’d played and won for.
Although the whole team was great, it was these five who had led them to glory and who probably got the most attention. And, most likely, the attention of these men.
Charles knew the broken men on the ground. They didn’t live in his little town but they drove through it when they were on their drug runs, their American-made motorcycles making rumbling noises that just upset those in his Pack.
men usually didn’t mess with the residents but maybe it had been too hard to resist five young women in matching, bright yellow basketball jerseys and shorts walking down the street. Maybe that had bothered them or enticed them, but when they didn’t get the response they wanted, they’d hurt Charles’s granddaughter.
And that’s why they were crumpled into screaming piles five feet into Charles’s territory.
“Up for waffles?” Max asked and the four other girls nodded.
“But we should clean up,” one of them said, a basketball under her arm, her badger gaze locked on her cursing and sobbing prey. “It’s always good to be tidy.”
“None of that,” Charles replied, immediately knowing these girls weren’t discussing washing their hands. “You five will not be doing any cleaning up of anything.”
“Well, you shouldn’t do it,” Max debated. “You’re getting old.”
“It’s like you want a paw-slap.”
Another raised her hand to silence them, her head turning, eyes closing. She lifted her nose to the air. Sniffed.
“They’re coming,” she finally announced, her voice ominous.
Charles immediately knew who “they” were, and it wasn’t his Pack. It wasn’t more humans. It was a Clan. Not the Klan, of course, with a k. The Klan had come onto their territory once, back in his father’s time to put a stop to the “mixed-race utopia going on over there” . . . and were never seen again. But a Clan with a capital C.
Hyenas. They’d moved into the farm next door to Charles’s Pack a few years back. Thankfully, neither side gave the other much trouble, but a fight this close to territorial lines could cause all sorts of problems if not handled correctly. Especially since one of these basketball players was the half-sister of some of the hyena adults. Although her badger genes overrode anything else inside her, giving her full-on honey badger traits, the Clan still believed her to be their “property.” The way they believed all the male hyenas were their property. At least, she would be until she turned eighteen. Unless she was at basketball practice, the hyenas didn’t take kindly to her hanging out with her honey badger teammates outside of school.
Charles didn’t hesitate. “All of you go to the Pack house. Now.”
“We’re not leaving you here alone,” Max informed him.
Charles wasn’t worried. Not when he had the perfect distractions right in front of him, still trying to drag their broken bodies away. A few had already crossed territorial lines and if there was one thing this particular Clan hated more than howling wolves . . . it was human men.
“You’ll do what I tell you,” Charles insisted.
“But—”
“While you’re under my roof, Max MacKilligan—”
“Oh, God.” Brown eyes rolled dramatically. “Not the speech.”
“Move your asses,” he ordered the girls, before adding, “or I can go get your sister and she can—”
Four of the girls abruptly sprinted off toward the Pack house before Charles had the chance to finish his threat, but Max stood there, smirking at him.
“That was beneath you,” she told him.
“Was it, though?”
Max laughed and started off. But before she could disappear into the surrounding woods, Charles told her, “The new Alpha female has been making some noise about you and your sisters.”
Max stopped, but didn’t turn around. But he could see her shoulders tighten. Just a bit, but enough.
“I don’t want Charlie to hear about it,” he went on. “She’s got enough on her plate right now. There’s some bidding war going on between universities that want your baby sister. Charlie is trying to deal with all that without a lawyer. This will just stress her out even—”
“I’ve got it,” Max said, but she wasn’t standing where she had been. She’d already disappeared into the trees.
* * *
“Hi, Betsey.”
Betsey froze; that voice whispering in her ear. She hadn’t lived in the Pack house for years. She only came home for major holidays and one week during the summer. Otherwise, she stayed as far away from the Pack as possible. Not because they were cruel to her. They really hadn’t been. But as a hybrid, she hadn’t really been accepted either. Tolerated? Yes. Accepted? No.
So she only came when necessary. Like this weekend. It was her mother’s birthday on Sunday. And Betsey did what she always did when she came here . . . stayed out of everyone’s way; kept to the shadows. It wasn’t hard. No one was ever looking for her except her mother, and no one would care when she left Monday morning.
Yet things had been different since she’d arrived Friday night. She knew why, too. It was them. The MacKilligan sisters. She remembered when they’d first arrived. Alone and dirty, they’d managed to secure a spot at the house despite the strong Alpha who always made it clear that he loathed hybrids of any kind. But they’d gotten him out and Betsey had never seen the man again. She used to think that had been down to their grandfather. He’d been so angry that day . . .
But a few years later, out of nowhere, their ex-Alpha had reappeared, very much alive. According to her mother, he’d immediately started making noises, causing problems, had rounded up some lone wolves to create a makeshift Pack in the hope of reclaiming what he still thought was his. It had gotten so bad that Charles and his Beta had traveled to Milwaukee to meet with the Smith Pack to ask them to help back up the much smaller Pack, something he did not want to do. But Charles had always been willing to make sacrifices to protect his Pack; especially with his two adopted granddaughters still under eighteen.
Betsey happened to be back the weekend he’d headed off for that meeting and, about thirty minutes after Charles left, his eldest and middle granddaughters had walked out the front door without a word to anyone. They returned the next day; bruised, bloody, and carrying an actual dog puppy they’d found on the road. They didn’t say a word to anyone, simply went upstairs, took showers, and spent the rest of the day training their new puppy. They’d weirdly named him Karris, which she didn’t find out until much later was after a character from the movie The Exorcist.
At the ages of sixteen and fifteen, it wasn’t really strange that kids with their only guardian out of the house would disappear overnight. One would assume they’d been off drinking beers with their friends. But Betsey suspected otherwise and was then certain when she’d found out that their ex-Alpha and his small Pack of wolves had suddenly disappeared. No one had any idea where they were or when they’d be back, but Betsey knew they’d never “be back.” Whatever Charlie and Max had done, they’d made sure that their ex-Alpha would never return again to bother their grandfather. The disappearance didn’t disturb Betsey as much as the girls’ lack of concern about it. Shouldn’t they be showing signs of PTSD or remorse for what they’d been forced to do? But nope. They’d instead focused on their adorable, disturbingly named puppy and went on with their lives as if nothing had happened. Thereby proving what Betsey had known since the girls first arrived at the Pack house: they were killers. Not simply predators. All shifters were predators. But at least the first two were hard-core killers. Shifters who could do what needed to be done without losing sleep or needing recovery time.
So hearing Max, of all people, whisper in her ear nearly made Betsey wet herself. She didn’t but almost.
Even worse, Betsey had been caught eavesdropping as she liked to do when she came home. Since no one paid any attention to her, it was easy enough.
Max leaned over a bit, looking into the sunken living room. Betsey was going to slink away, but Max had put her hand on Betsey’s nearby forearm. It seemed innocent. As if she’d just reached out for balance. But Betsey knew better about that, too. Knew that the badger was just keeping her in place so she couldn’t warn anyone.
“If we try to force them out now,” the Beta female explained to the Pack’s new Alpha female in that sunken living room, “you are definitely going to have a problem with the oldest.”
“That’s Charlie, right? Charles’s granddaughter.”
“Charles thinks of all three as his granddaughters.”
“Sure, sure. I understand that.”
The new Alpha female wasn’t Charles’s mate. He’d lost his mate a long time ago and had never replaced her. But the females still needed someone to lead them and this one had come in from Ohio less than three months ago. She was tolerable, Betsey supposed, but she was making the same mistake as all the other Alpha females who’d come to the Pack in the last few years: trying to push out the MacKilligan girls.
Not that Betsey blamed her, but still. These three were not like Betsey and her hybrid friends. Half wolf and half black bear, Betsey entertained herself with soccer balls and tough rubber toys that were used for pit bulls; she made sure that all her meat-and-vegetable meals were smothered in quality honey; and, if she wasn’t paying attention, she tended to howl along with ambulance sirens. Normally not a big problem . . . except she’d just started medical school and would eventually be doing her residency at a hospital. With ambulances. That had sirens.
Awkward.
But the MacKilligan girls? They were different from everything. Even the middle one, whose parents were both honey badgers.
Like now. Instead of glaring into that room the way Charlie would, pissed off and annoyed that these females were having this discussion without them, Max glanced at Betsey with that freakish grin of hers. Betsey never knew how to read that smile. Was it happiness? Delusion? A neurological tic? She didn’t know. She just wanted it far away from her.
The conversation in the living room faded away and Betsey heard the Alpha tell the other females to get something to eat. Charlie was cooking breakfast and everything smelled delicious. But Betsey wasn’t about to make any sudden moves.
Not yet.
“Come in, Max,” the Alpha said from the other room.
Still smiling, Max winked at Betsey before she stepped in front of the big opening that led to the living room. With her hands behind her back and one sneakered foot resting on the other, she stood on the top step. She looked adorable. Innocent even. But again . . . Betsey knew better.
“Come, come,” the Alpha said. Her voice sounded friendly. Not the fake friendly either, but truly friendly. That didn’t really mean anything, though. Betsey had been pummeled by a librarian once. A six-four grizzly female that she’d accidentally startled in the stacks. So “friendly” didn’t mean the same to their kind as it did to the full-humans.
“I guess you heard, huh, Max?”
“I heard a little. Yes.”
Unable to help herself—curiosity being her main weakness, damn her bear genes!—Betsey leaned over so she could peek around the corner. Max now stood in front of the imposing Alpha female. Big shouldered and slim-hipped, with gray and brown hair, she towered over the tiny badger.
“You understand, don’t you? Why you can’t stay? It’s nothing personal, I swear. We just have to protect our pups, and your younger sister, with her recent mood swings, puts our pups in danger. You understand that, right?”
“I understand,” Max replied . . . still smiling.
The Alpha leaned over, patted Max’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell Charlie myself. And I promise, we will not just send you out into the world alone. We’ll arrange something for you. Something safe. Okay?” With a soft, sincere smile, she turned to go, but Max’s voice stopped her.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I wasn’t giving you permission to tell my big sister that our baby sister is too much of a freak to stay here among your boring, useless, stable pups.” Max was still smiling and Betsey knew that wasn’t a good sign. Not a good sign at all. “She’s under enough stress and I don’t want to add to it. And other than snarling at your pups every once in a while, Stevie isn’t a threat to anyone here. She just needs quiet sometimes. The howling wears on her nerves, which isn’t exactly surprising when you understand that she is almost positive that she knows when the world will end—during our lifetime due to climate change and a coalition of dictators turning on each other.”
The Alpha faced her again, attempted to remain calm. “I don’t see how that’s our—”
“Both my sisters need to be here right now. It keeps them calm. It keeps them . . . I won’t say ‘happy’ since neither is what you’d call happy. But they’re not hysterical either, which is great. I mean, the reality is that the three of us won’t be here much longer. Any day now I’m expecting Stevie to get a call from one of these big universities with an invitation to work at some fancy lab where she can get some more degrees and hopefully prevent the end of the earth as we know it. You just have to wait a little longer.”
“I’m sorry, Max”—and the Alpha did seem truly sad—“but that’s just not going to work for our Pack. I’m sure you and Charlie will understand that.”
Still smiling and with a sweet laugh, Max said, “Oh, you misunderstand again. This isn’t a discussion. I’m actually telling you that if you upset either or both of my sisters, I’ll kill you and, possibly, anything you might remotely love.”
And still she smiled.
As with most wolves under threat, the Alpha’s softness disappeared in a blink, replaced by hard, animalistic rage. “What . . . what the fuck did you say to me?”
“I know I was clear and concise. Because I don’t have to beat around the bush. You see, I’m trained. Trained to kill. Not maim. Not harm. Not disable enough to give me time to get away. But to kill. And, quite honestly . . . I’m really fucking good at it. I have to be, because it’s up to me and Charlie to protect Stevie. She has great work to do. She has a world to save and she can’t do that if she’s making meth for a Peruvian drug lord. And Charlie . . .” Max let out a long sigh before her smile returned. “She has the weight of the world on her shoulders. All she cares about is keeping Stevie from being captured and used by the government or drug lords or whoever else my father has tried to sell her to. She has had so much stress in her young life that it shocks me she has not gotten an ulcer. Yet. So we trained, Charlie and me. To protect our sister—our family. Because the three of us and our grandfather are all we’ve got. Which is why, of course, we couldn’t join the military. Great training but a little too limited and restrictive for our needs. And me getting up at five a.m. every day with some dude yelling at me? Yeah. That wouldn’t last long. So our neighbor . . . a few farms over . . . former Marine, former Navy SEAL, former Black Ops. He taught us everything he knows. All we had to do was take care of his cats when he did mercenary jobs. And I fucking hate cats. But I did it.” She stepped closer to the Alpha female and, based on the expression the wolf shifter now wore, she finally understood what she was truly facing. Not some poor girls with no one to care for them. No, she was dealing with something else. Something brutal and untamed, with no feeling for anyone they didn’t consider “family.”
“So let me be clear that when I say I’ll kill you . . . I mean it.” Her grin widened. “I’ll kill you and have you buried before the sun rises. It’ll be like you never existed,” she added with a laugh. “So, yeahhhhh. You’re going to let us stay here. You’re not going to bother Charlie. You’re definitely not going to say anything to Stevie. And if you even hint to my baby sister that she’s in any way unstable or mentally unwell . . . I’ll dismember you while you’re still breathing. And, in case you’re concerned, because it seems like you’d be concerned—you’re clearly very caring—I won’t miss a lick of sleep or have any PTSD over it. Your screams will mean nothing to me, because I won’t give a fuck. Why? Because I’m a cunt. I’m a raving, raging cunt. At least that’s how my last boyfriend described me as the EMT guys were shoving him into that ambulance.” She clapped her hands together. “So we understand each other, right? We never have to have this conversation again?”
Without meeting Max’s eyes, the Alpha shook her head. “No. We won’t have to discuss this again.”
Max let out a relieved sigh. “That’s great. Really. But don’t worry. I promise you, we’re going to be out of here in another month or two. As soon as we hear from one of the many universities trying to woo Stevie to their campus but definitely after I graduate since Charlie’s made it a personal goal for herself that I get my high school diploma. The things she worries about, I swear!”
Betsey scrambled back to her spot against the wall. She couldn’t hear Max moving, but her scent became stronger as she neared the stairs that led to the hallway.
Max came up the stairs, entered the hallway, and headed down toward the kitchen. But when she was right in front of Betsey, she stopped. Slowly Max turned her head toward Betsey, then raised her forefinger to her lips. “Shhhhh,” she said, as she had the first time Betsey had met her.
“Max!” Charlie barked, coming down the hallway toward them. “If you want to eat, you better get to the kitchen. That ravening horde of yours is devouring everything I made.”
“Do you mean my basketball team?”
“Whatever,” Charlie tossed over her shoulder as she headed up the main stairs toward the second floor.
Smiling, Max walked off, leaving Betsey to slide down to the floor, resting her chin on her raised knees and staring blindly ahead at the wall in front of her.
After a few minutes, her mother stepped in front of her. “Honey? Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she lied. “I’m fine.” She licked her lips and added, “But your next birthday . . . you’re coming to Chicago to visit me.”
