chapter TEN

chapter TENFinn made his way down to the gambling hall, which was underground. Mads had gone into the walls, which he found weird but was grateful she could do. He could never hide her scent from an entire population of hungry tigers.And tigers were always hungry.This whole establishment was owned and run by tigers. He’d heard about places like this but had never been because Finn didn’t gamble. He didn’t like to lose. He was a poor loser when he played football. Yelling at the defense if they didn’t protect the quarterback. Threatening the offense if they didn’t take down the other team’s running back. His asshole-ness was beaten out by only one other: Keane. So he couldn’t even imagine how shitty he’d be if he lost fifty grand at a stupid card game.Staying in his tiger form, he would probably be ignored if they didn’t pay too much attention to his black coat or his size. Even by Siberian tiger standards, he and his brothers were on the enormous side in their cat form. Although compared to the rest of the tigers on the premises, he and his brothers were definitely on the big side. Even by Siberian tiger standards. That was because of their tribe. The Zaya-Sarnai wanted to make sure they could take down bears when they had to. So they found the biggest males to breed with, made more offerings to their gods, added a few spells before copulation and boom! You had giant cats roaming the steppes.The Malone blood decreased their size a bit but still . . . the Malone brothers towered over the others standing in the room. The gamblers had formed a big circle around an empty space in the center. So Finn and Keane stayed near the back walls and kept their heads down, hoping to find the rest of the badgers alive.Finn thought the prayers to his ancestors had been answered when a well-dressed She-tiger dragged in the badger they called Nelle. She must have been their scout. She was dressed in designer everything, it seemed, and had her hair done up. She looked stunning except for the bruise on the right side of her face where someone had punched her. Her hands were cuffed behind her back but she was disturbingly calm. To the point of having no reaction at all. She didn’t appear psychotically angry as most honey badgers would be in this situation. Yet she didn’t seem weirdly entertained like Max MacKilligan either.Maybe she was simply waiting for her friends to rescue her. Although that was not how honey badgers usually handled . . . well . . . anything. Ever. In the entirety of their existence on the planet.Another She-tiger entered and stalked across the room. Finn knew this one. Or, at least, knew of her. Vicky Yun. Her family had been running gambling parlors in New York, Las Vegas, and San Francisco for decades. Full-human law enforcement thought of them as an organized crime family that they’d unsuccessfully been trying to bring down with RICO laws for years. But shifters knew them as an “ambush” of tigers that didn’t simply break your legs if you lost money at their gambling tables and didn’t pay up. Instead they’d peel off your pelt. It was said the patriarch of the family had hats and coats made for his favorite children and girlfriends from the fur of his enemies. It was also rumored that his eldest daughter had a Louis Vuitton bag made of actual tiger skin! Something most shifters would never, ever do, much less fellow cats.So seeing an actual Yun here had Finn looking across the room to seek out his big brother’s gaze. Their eyes locked and they knew that when they moved, they’d have to move very fast. They’d already figured out all the exits and come up with a hasty escape plan but still . . .Still.Yun was on the phone as she stomped her way across the room in ridiculously high heels she didn’t need considering her height, loudly speaking to someone in a Bronx accent that set Finn’s teeth on edge. He knew that his Long Island accent wasn’t a pleasure for a lot of people—as he’d been informed by a slow-drawling Texan teammate once—but wow. This female.“I got your girl, Zhao. Ya hear me? I got her and if you don’t give me what I want, I’m gonna start sending pieces of her back to you in small boxes. Would ya like that? Because I’ll do it.” She huffed over to Nelle and her guard and held the phone to Nelle’s face. “Say hello to your daddy, princess.”“Hi, Daddy,” Nelle said to her father in Cantonese. “Everything’s fine.”“You sure?” Finn heard Nelle’s father calmly reply through the phone’s speaker.“Uh-huh.”Yun lowered the phone and stared at Nelle. “You told him everything’s fine?” she asked in English. “Seriously? What? You think your little badger friends are going to save you? Because they’re not. I helped drag their corpses to the incinerator myself.” She stepped closer to Nelle. “As we speak they are nothing but ashes. Not even worth skinning for their pelts. So beg your father to do what I tell him”—she held the phone up—“or we start finding out what it takes to make a little badger scream.”* * *Shay diligently searched the lower levels of the building while his two brothers went to the main gambling hall to see what the rest of these tigers were up to. He was hoping to find some of the badgers. He knew Finn had tracked down Mads. She was currently in the walls somewhere. But the rest . . . ? He and his brothers didn’t have a clue.Luckily, he didn’t have to skulk in the shadows to do what he had to do like his brothers. Although a black-furred tiger like Keane and Finn, Shay was also a chameleon. With a little effort and a good, all-over shake, he could bring out some orange stripes when necessary. He couldn’t change his fur completely, but he could change his look enough to temporarily blend in.At the very least, he wasn’t worried anyone was going to immediately point at him and scream, “A Black Malone! Get him!” So that was somewhat comforting.So far, all he’d gotten was everyone simply nodding at him in greeting, ordering him to do something in Mandarin or English, or ignoring him completely. It was great. Usually, when he had to skulk around full-human buildings, he had a much harder time. It was hard to skulk when six-seven, nearly four hundred pounds, and half-Asian. Just calmly walking through an open door made people react as if he’d busted through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man.Shay was about to go left down a corridor when he heard several men talking about baseball and their girlfriends. But it was the smell of fire that caught his attention. He turned right and followed the chatter until he reached another hallway. The males had a medium-sized door open to a chute and were shoving the lifeless body of Tock into it. They gave her a good push, made sure she fell, then slammed the door closed. The smell of fire was coming from that area. It was an incinerator. It was designed like an apartment building’s garbage chute but in this instance, the tigers had made it into a not-at-all legal incinerator!He charged down the hall, coming to a stop when one of the cats pushed a red button and he could now hear flames from below roaring up, decimating whatever was in the incinerator below.The tigers didn’t flinch when Shay ran at them. They simply glanced his way and one of them said in English, “Sorry, dude. We’re done. Maybe next time, though.”Maybe next time? Maybe next time he could burn female bodies like they were trash? What was happening? And what was he going to tell his brothers? And Nat? What was he going to tell Nat about her half-sister? The Malones might not believe the MacKilligan sisters were in any way associated with their beautiful baby sister but she sure did. She liked Max, for some unknown reason. This would devastate her!Shay sat back on his haunches, unable to think of what to do next.“You need something, bud?” another tiger asked. “Forget all this. Let’s go get a drink. You look like you had a hard day.”A hard day? A hard day? Shay narrowed his eyes on the males. He had just decided he was going to bite their heads off when one of them suddenly stepped closer to the incinerator door.“Did you guys hear that?” he asked.“Hear what?” another responded.The incinerator was shut off and the cat stepped closer, his ear next to it.“What are you doing?”“I hear scratching.”“It’s probably rats. We have rats all over this building.”“I’m telling you . . . I hear—”The fist punched out of the wall next to Shay, forcing him to scramble back while the other cats began to roar in panic and surprise.“What the fuck?” one demanded as Max MacKilligan shoved her half-burned head out of the wall and hissed, baring all those tiny but deadly sharp fangs.Feet smashed through the wall next to Shay’s new spot, so he skittered away from there and down the hall. Tock landed on the ground, her entire back burned. She unleashed fangs and claws, caging in the tigers who’d shoved her down the incinerator chute.Streep barreled her way through the wall above the chute, screaming, “Look at my hair!” before she flung herself at the first male she saw. In a full-blown rage, she wrapped her legs around his chest and buried her claws deep into his throat, ripping his jugular out before he could even think to shift into his bigger, stronger form.“My hairrrrrrrrr!” she hysterically screamed as the cat crumpled to the ground with Streep still on top of him.Tock buried her claws into the spine of the cat attempting to run from her. His legs just seemed to give up on him as she severed the nerves that traveled through his body.The third male had a chance to shift to his tiger form as Max pulled herself from the wall. By the time she had her feet on the ground, he was facing her and had reared up on his hind legs, ready to swat her with one of his giant paws. He was a Siberian. Shay knew just one of his paw swipes could crush her head or chest. That alone could put down even a honey badger. Shay was rearing back so he could leap between the two when Max unleashed her claws and tore them across the other tiger’s gut.Oh . . . wait.No.It wasn’t his gut.The stunned look on the cat’s face. The way he blinked and staggered back, blood pouring across the floor with no signs of stopping.The way Max held up her hand in gory triumph . . .No. It wasn’t his gut she’d torn her claw across. It was his groin. Well, his inside thighs and groin.She’d not only opened up his main arteries, but she’d ripped off his cock. Just out of spite.Even worse . . . she’d done all that with a smile on her half-burned face.The tiger continued to stagger back until he hit the opposite wall. Then he slid down to the floor and died.Max shook the blood—and whatever else—off her hand and, as if on cue, the three badgers abruptly turned to look at Shay. In that moment, he forgot that he was a shifter. That he could turn back into human and tell them he was Shay Malone and was there to help. He even forgot that he could easily shake any orange out of his fur! All he could do was sit there, on his haunches, gawking at them. His mind had literally gone blank except for the one thing he knew . . . he was going to die.Because Max and Streep were coming toward him.Until Tock stopped them with two words: “Not him.”“Why not him?” Max asked calmly.“Yeah. Why not him?” Streep also asked, not remotely calm. She was still hysterical. “They should all die!”Tock put her hand over Streep’s face and pushed her away, speaking directly to Max.“This is one of the Malones.”Max studied him.“Are you sure? I see orange. I thought Black Malones didn’t have orange.”“Trust me. It’s him.”“Why doesn’t he shift them?”“You tore a man’s dick off. I think he’s freaked out.”“He deserved it!” Streep screamed, fighting to get Tock’s hand off her face. “They all deserve it! Look at my hair!”“Would you calm down!”“Just look at it!”“Which Malone?” Max asked, ignoring Streep.Tock glanced at him. “The one that always smells like dog.”Annoyed now, Shay remembered who he was, where he was, and why he was there. He immediately shifted back to human simply so he could snarl, “There is nothing wrong with being nice to dogs!”Gawking at him, Tock replied, “Never said there was.”“I heard tone.”“That sounds like a personal issue. Ewww! She licked my hand!”“You wouldn’t get off my face!” Streep accused.“We need weapons,” Max announced. “We’re totally outnumbered. You. Rude brother number three.”“I said I liked the Danish.”“Whatever. Do you know where they keep the weapons?”“No idea.”“We need to grab somebody, then.”Tock gestured toward the end of the hallway. “What about him?”It was Tock’s victim. She’d only severed his spine. She hadn’t killed him. And he was desperately dragging himself down the hall, attempting to get away from the crazy badgers, while leaving a trail of blood and piss in his wake.Not that Shay could blame him.* * *Deng debated again whether this was the life for him. He’d had two choices after making his way to America: working here with his cousin in the gambling hall, or in the restaurant with his uncle. His cousin was from his mother’s side of the family and, to be blunt, those relatives were a little more comfortable with the criminal way of life. Especially when it involved full-humans. But the money from working here was so much better. If he worked at his uncle’s restaurant, he’d have to work harder and longer before he could ever earn as much as he was earning now.He still had responsibilities back home. Family members relying on him. He had to think about . . .Deng stopped as he saw one of the lieutenants of the in-house gang attempting to crawl out of the hallway that led to the incinerator. He was sobbing, which was just strange, because one didn’t become a lieutenant among the Yuns if one cried over anything. Only the strongest and meanest tigers ever made it that far up the ladder.Suddenly the lieutenant looked over his shoulder, and whatever he saw must have horrified him because his sobbing became worse and he began begging.“No, please! Noooooo!”Something dragged the male away and Deng stood there, too shocked to move. A few seconds later a tiny mixed-Asian female stepped into the hallway. Shrewd eyes looked up and down the other hallways but when she saw Deng, she quickly sized him up, then grinned. That’s when he realized that she was burned. From the incinerator? No one who went into the incinerator ever came out again. Mostly because when they went into the incinerator they were already dead. But even if someone was into torturing and threw a live human inside the incinerator, there was no way they could get out of it. It was made of metal to contain the flames so that it didn’t set the building on fire and was something even strong tigers couldn’t dig their way out of. So then how did she . . . ?Still smiling, she waved at him and he . . . well . . . he waved back.With that, she returned to the hallway with the lieutenant, and Deng turned and made the final decision that restaurant life was the life for him. His uncle would be happy.And Deng would be alive.* * *Nelle glanced at the phone, then at Yun.The badger’s heels were even more ridiculously high than Yun’s, so she looked directly into the She-tiger’s eyes.“Tell your daddy to send that twenty-five million to the account I give him, princess,” Yun pushed. “Or I’ll make this really ugly for you.”Finn and Keane weaved their way through the crowd of cats surrounding the three females. They moved slowly and carefully, making sure not to draw attention to themselves.“Fine,” Nelle said on a long sigh. She held her hand out, wiggled her fingers. “Give me the phone.”Yun began to comply but abruptly stopped, staring at Nelle’s hand in confusion.“Hel-lo?” Nelle pushed.“Your . . . your hand . . . ? Weren’t you cuffed?”“You mean these?” Nelle held up the handcuffs that she’d somehow slipped out of.“What the fuck?”“Want them back?” she asked, tossing the metal cuffs at the She-tiger who was supposed to be guarding her before she turned and head-butted Yun.Yun dropped the phone so she could grab her bleeding forehead and scream curses at Nelle in very Bronx-tainted English.The guard grabbed Nelle’s shoulder and Nelle responded by punching the She-tiger in the throat, grabbing her arm, and flipping her over her hip. Once she had her on the ground, she buried the tip of her right heel in the female’s eye.Brutal but effective.When Nelle looked up from the damage she’d done, she had a room full of Yun-related tigers and tigers employed by the Yuns glaring at her.And that’s when she threw her arms out in challenge and snarled, “What?”* * *They found the weapons easy enough and Shay watched in fascination as the badgers silently pulled out what they needed, quickly and efficiently checked the equipment, then proceeded to ready themselves for war. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear they all had military experience, but he was positive they had none. From what he knew, they’d been playing pro basketball since they graduated high school. So where these military-like skills came from, he had no idea.Once they had the weapons and ammo they wanted, they found clothes to replace the ones that had been damaged by their time in the incinerator. They were just finishing tugging on the boots that were so small, they were probably for any visiting Yun cubs, when a sound at the front of the room had the females all turning, weapons locked and loaded, and Shay plastering himself against the wall in the hopes of not getting accidentally shot.But thanks to what had to be some kind of training, not one of the badgers fired a shot at Charlie MacKilligan as she stood in the doorway with a shaking white male Shay didn’t recognize.Max lowered her weapon. “What are you doing here?” she asked her sister with a tone of annoyance that seemed unwarranted considering the situation they were in.Instead of answering that question, Charlie nodded toward the shaking male. “This is Balinski. Dad owes him money.”“Dad owes everybody money.”“The Yuns used him to lure you here.”“Why me? What did I ever do to the Yuns?”“Nothing. From what I can tell. I think they’re working for someone else. We need to find out who.”Max jerked her chin at Balinski. “What about him?”Charlie barely glanced at the man she was holding by the arm. After a moment, she released him and ordered, “Go away.”He did, sprinting from their small group. Shay had no idea what had happened between Balinski and Charlie but the way the man ran from her . . .“You need to be more careful,” Charlie told Max.“Are we really going to do this now?”“Stop being so reactionary.”“Really? This coming from you?”Charlie studied the badgers for a few seconds before asking, “Why are you all burned like that?”“The Yuns broke our necks and tossed us down the incinerator.”Tock cringed and glanced at Shay, giving him a little head shake. He just didn’t know why.“Where’s Nelle?” Charlie asked.“They kept her,” Max replied. “We can only assume they’re trying to sell her back to her father. You know her family is very wealthy. They’re going to try and milk that.”“And Mads?”“The people who tried to murder us told us she got ambushed, stabbed, and thrown off the roof.”After a disturbing grunt, Charlie walked off and Tock slammed her fist into Max’s shoulder.“Oww! What was that for?”“Why would you tell your terrifying sister any of that?”“Because she gets madder when I lie.”“She should know,” Streep snarled. “Let her kill ’em all.”“If this is still about your hair—”“Look at it!” Streep practically screeched, pointing at her head. “Look at what they’ve done! They should all burn!”Tock faced Shay. “If I were you . . . I’d warn your brothers.”“Warn them about what?”“That Charlie may not be able to tell one tiger from another.”“Especially if her allergies are acting up.” Max suddenly smiled. It was not friendly. It was mean. Really mean. “She won’t be able to smell a thing.”* * *Keane leaped from where he stood until he was in front of Nelle and roared. Some of the others shifted to their cat form and roared back. But others pulled out guns and knives. Ready for a more human way of fighting.Out of any other option, Finn charged through the crowd toward his eldest brother and Nelle but he saw Shay coming through the double doors, heading right for them. It wasn’t just his brother running into the room that caught Finn’s attention. It was the way his brother was moving. It was a full-blown panic run. But this was not the first time Shay had seen a shitload of guns pointed at one or both of his siblings. He knew better than to panic.Panic led to shooting. Shay knew that as well as anyone. So the sight of him sprinting across the room had Finn bringing all four paws forward to stop his momentum as Shay tackled Keane out of the way. Nelle didn’t budge. She simply stood there. Even when the shooting started.The badgers came into the hall like they had military training and with enough weapons and ammunition strapped to their bodies to take down an entire village.Max burst in through the open double doors and Tock through a side door that led from the kitchen. Streep announced herself by kicking a ceiling panel out and unleashing a volley of shots that cleared space between the cats and a still-unmoving Nelle.That’s when Yun finally entered the fray. Calmly, Finn had to admit, but still with that fucking accent.“All right, all right!” Yun called out. “Y’all calm the fuck down! Before everybody does somethin’ stupid.”The growling and snarling simmered down but the weapons and claws weren’t put away; the fangs weren’t retracted.Yun continued to rub her forehead where Nelle had head-butted her; a nice lump was already expanding across that smooth skin. Nelle’s forehead, however, appeared perfectly fine. Not even a red spot.“I know you think,” Yun continued on, “that you have some kind of winning position here. What with our guns”—she gestured to the weapons the badgers now held—“and the fact that you somehow managed to survive our incinerator. It’s my fault, really. I underestimated the warning when they told me your kind was hard to kill. But you have to see”—she gestured around the room—“that you’re outnumbered. No matter how many guns you have. Or additional badgers,” she said after Mads pushed her way out of a wall panel, desperately brushing herself off and yelping, “Don’t eat anything out of this place’s kitchen. There’re rats everywhere!”“Or how many bears you may have,” Yun added when the Dunn triplets entered through the fire exit, still in their human form, but with their guns drawn.Yun continued on, although she clearly saw the potential problem, “But I’m sure we can come to some less dramatic approach than an all-out war.”Finn glanced at his brothers and the three of them almost laughed. Because not for a second did they believe that Yun really planned on letting any of them out of here alive. But she was strategic enough to know that losing a bunch of her people in the process of killing her enemies wouldn’t do her any good with the rest of her family or her employees, so she was being calm and rational.Smart. And, if she were up against other cat shifters, this would be a hell of a chess match to see who’d get that checkmate.But Yun wasn’t up against cats. Or dogs. Or even bears that could drop their guns and shift to ten-foot, thousand-pound killing machines at any moment.She wasn’t even up against badgers. Not really.Because what she was really up against were MacKilligans and the friends of MacKilligans. And who the hell knew what that would lead to? Finn certainly didn’t know.Especially now, with Charlie coming through the double doors, seven cats behind her. One tried to grab her arm as she got close to Yun, but Charlie did something that had the tiger yelping. He snatched his hand back and cradled it against his chest, snarling at the badger as she stood before Yun.“You must be Charlie MacKilligan,” Yun said, smirking. She sized up the smaller but larger-shouldered female and appeared completely unimpressed.Mads stepped closer to Finn, her face grimacing a bit as he and his brothers shifted back to human.“Uh-oh,” Mads said in a whisper. “Don’t smirk, woman. Please don’t smirk.”“I was just telling your sister Max,” Yun continued, oblivious, “that I was sure we could work this out without further bloodshed.”Charlie gazed at the big cat with a blank, unfriendly expression. After a moment, she asked, “So you’re saying we can just walk away?”“Well—”“We can just turn our backs and you’ll let us go.”“Uhhhh—”“Let’s test that theory.”Charlie turned away from Yun and began to walk away.“What is she doing?” Keane asked, shocked.“Testing that theory,” Mads replied.“She has to know,” Finn gasped, horrified, “you never turn your back on a tiger. Never.”Tigers ambushed from behind. It was instinctual. Especially when they were already planning to ambush their prey.So Charlie was only a few feet away when Yun moved on her; arms outstretched, going for Charlie’s shoulders or neck. But Charlie turned fast and caught Yun by both her wrists.They locked gazes. Yun was still wearing that smirk, Charlie continuing to appear blank and unfriendly. But as they remained stuck in position, Charlie holding Yun away from her, they kept looking at each other. Both refusing to look away. Like a lethal staring contest.Eventually, Yun became frustrated. Finn could see that she tried to push forward, but she couldn’t get Charlie to budge. Next she tried to pull away, but Charlie wouldn’t release her.As seconds moved on to minutes and her team watched her closely to see what her next move would be, Yun’s nose began to twitch and her eyes narrowed dangerously before changing colors. Then, within seconds, she shifted. From stunningly beautiful woman to stunningly beautiful She-tiger. Seven feet long and six hundred pounds, standing on her hind legs and towering over Charlie MacKilligan, her forelegs still held by Charlie’s hands.A Charlie MacKilligan who couldn’t shift.Yet she didn’t back off. She didn’t release Yun. She didn’t do anything but stand there, holding onto those thick tiger legs that were now too big for Charlie to get her hands around.The situation grew increasingly tense, especially when Charlie didn’t let Yun go and didn’t show any signs of fear or weakness. She simply kept her grip and held on. Eventually Yun put her full strength into resisting and so did Charlie, muscles beginning to pop under her black T-shirt.Finn didn’t like this. All Yun had to do was lower her head and she could bite Charlie’s face off. So he started to move forward, but Mads’s arm shot out and blocked him.“Don’t.”“Yeah, but—”“Don’t.”There was something in Mads’s voice. The way she said that one word.He took a step back and waited.Then he saw it. Shockingly, Yun’s hind claws were forced back as Charlie shoved the bigger, heavier shifter across the hardwood floor of the gambling hall. Yun tried to stop her. Tried to fight her off. Tried to yank her forelegs away from the hybrid holding onto her, but Charlie refused to let go. The worst part now, though, was that Charlie was the one who was smirking. Which made it seem as if holding onto a snarling, snapping She-cat was no strain on her.How was that even possible?Finn had known hybrids before. His baby sister was a hybrid. He’d seen her struggle to open a jar of pickles. He’d never known any hybrids with superstrength. Instead, they’d all been . . . quirky. They all chased lights only they could see. The wolf hybrids didn’t always know how to howl properly. Bear hybrids could be so easily distracted by butterflies that the Malone brothers made a game of how many in a day or week they could entice into walking face-first into walls, doors, or windows. The cat hybrids sometimes tore up a friend’s new wood flooring because they were convinced they heard a mouse underneath—when they didn’t. Hybrid antics were always hilarious—especially when they happened to one’s teammates—but not remotely terrifying.Yet watching a non-shifting hybrid shove a She-tiger that was five times bigger across the floor like she was moving an empty refrigerator box by herself . . . ? That was terrifying.Livid and frustrated, Yun leaned forward and snapped her massive jaws at Charlie’s face, again and again. But Charlie managed to dodge and weave out of the way without ever losing her grip on Yun’s forelegs. She also managed to keep the two of them moving around the floor.Yun tried to rear farther up and take Charlie with her, but Charlie held her down. No matter how much the She-tiger pulled and heaved.Then, at some point, Yun seemed to get her right paw free from Charlie’s grasp. It shouldn’t have surprised Finn, but there was a part of him that felt Charlie had let her go; he just didn’t believe the hybrid had run out of steam.Free, Yun reared back her paw and unleashed a devastating blow to Charlie’s head that spun her several feet away. She fell to her knees, her hands covering her face.Finn and his brothers jerked forward, about to jump in once again, when Mads barked out a sharp, “No!”They all stopped. Even Keane, which was surprising. He usually only stopped so quickly for their mother or Nat. But maybe it was something in the way Mads had warned them off. In her tone. In the way her entire body was rigid and her claws started easing out of her fingertips.Charlie remained on her knees, her hands still covering her face. Only now blood poured from between her fingers and she seemed afraid to move her hands. Probably afraid that most of her face would go with it.A blow like the one she’d received from Yun should have crushed her skull. It should have killed her. But Charlie just remained kneeling, cradling her destroyed face.With Charlie’s back to Yun, she didn’t see the tiger lowering her head, opening her maw, and charging right toward her.The room remained silent as they all watched. Not even Charlie’s sister called out a warning. And Yun made no sound as she launched herself from about twenty feet away toward Charlie’s back. Ears flat against her head. Forelegs spread wide. Lips pulled back over white fangs. Jaws opened wide so she could wrap her fangs around the back of Charlie’s neck and crush it on first—Yun was a hairbreadth away when Charlie spun around to face her, going up on one knee for balance before slamming her fist into the She-tiger’s open mouth. With her free hand, she grabbed the back of Yun’s head, pulling her forward, closer and closer, which meant that she was sticking more and more of her arm inside the tiger’s mouth and down her throat.Coughing and struggling, Yun tried to unwedge the hybrid’s arm. When that didn’t work, she tried biting down on it. That brought some blood and some light damage to Charlie’s tough badger skin, but the bones . . . the bones didn’t break. They didn’t bend. They weren’t crushed under the strength of desperate tiger jaws. Something Finn had never seen or experienced before. He’d taken down water buffalo that crushed easier than Charlie MacKilligan.And the entire time that Charlie had her arm down Yun’s throat and her hand gripped the back of the She-tiger’s head, she stared Victoria Yun directly in the eyes. And she smirked. Just like Vicky Yun had smirked.Then something happened. Something that had Yun’s eyes growing impossibly wide and Charlie’s smirk intensifying.Yun began to fight harder. Her front and back claws slashed at Charlie as Yun struggled to get away from the hybrid with everything she had. But nothing, it seemed, could stop Charlie. Nothing.Something cracked and Yun’s entire body buckled. She fought a little more but it wasn’t like before. There was no real determination behind it. Instead, it simply seemed like instinct. The last struggle. Death throes. Something else cracked and air rushed out of Yun seconds before her entire body deflated to the ground.Charlie still had her arm stuck between Yun’s jaws. She tugged once. Then again. With the third, she dragged her arm out and with it, Yun’s heart and lungs.“Holy shit,” Shay whispered. He might have said it, but they were all thinking it. Even the badgers in the room. Even Mads, who moved closer to Finn, pressing her arm against his. He understood why, too. They all needed to feel grounded in reality. Because this didn’t feel real. A hybrid wolf–honey badger shouldn’t be able to do . . . that. It wasn’t a simple matter of not being normal. It was insane.He knew just how insane when, in the deafening silence of that room, Max MacKilligan burst out laughing. She was no less shocked than the rest of them, but while they all stood around dazed and disturbed and, quite honestly, freaked the fuck out, Max MacKilligan laughed. Hysterically. Barely able to get out her “Damn, Charlie!” before she started laughing again.See? That was insane. The MacKilligans were insane.* * *Mads pressed her arm against Finn’s. She knew she shouldn’t. They weren’t that kind of friends. Or even friendly. But she felt a little dizzy. A little off-center. How could she not with Charlie standing there, holding the major organs of a tiger in her hand?There was so much blood. Not just from the cat and its torn-out organs. But from Charlie. Where the cat had struck her with its paw . . . well, that should have crushed her face in. As a honey badger, she probably would have survived anyway, but it would have taken a good week or two for those facial bones to knit themselves back together again. They should have had to carry her out. Instead, Charlie’s face wasn’t crushed. The skin was torn a bit on the lower jaw. Her nose appeared broken. That wasn’t the first time, though . . . and it wouldn’t be the last. And she had claw marks across her forehead through part of her scalp. Strangely, they reminded Mads of a stone skipped across a lake. But she’d seen how Yun had hit Charlie. That was one full, powerful strike. She hadn’t held back. Yet Charlie was barely injured. That was fucking weird!Charlie held up the cat’s insides.“It’s like some kind of new blood eagle,” she whispered to Finn.“Should I ask what that is?” he whispered back.“No, you shouldn’t.” If he didn’t already know about the ancient ways Vikings tortured and executed their enemies, it was best he continued not to know.“If you come after my family,” Charlie told the cats gawking at her, “this is what happens to you. All of you. I don’t stop. I don’t ever stop.”With that, Charlie tossed the cat’s remains across the ground, shaking the blood and gore off her hand.One of the male tigers looked around the room and, apparently shocked no one was doing anything to this one crazy woman, took a step forward. He had his gun out, maybe with armor-piercing rounds in the clip. And Charlie was still trying to get the blood off her hands. Maybe he thought he had a shot. He forgot something, though. He forgot Max.She climbed his back and slammed two blades into his neck before he could even get his finger on the trigger of his gun. She opened up the cat’s arteries and scrambled over his head, burying the blades into his chest.Mads didn’t know why Max was stabbing him in the chest. She’d opened up the arteries in his neck while he was human. He would be dead before he hit the ground. But there Max was . . . stabbing away.Charlie walked past the pair, the roomful of tigers separating so she and the badgers could leave without any problem. Max was still going, though. Kind of lost in the moment until Charlie yelled, “Max!”Max yanked her blades out of her prey’s chest and jumped down from the cat, allowing him to fall dead to the floor.“Coming!” Max cheerfully called out to her sister before following her.“Is she . . . is she skipping?” Finn asked Mads about Max.Mads blew out a breath. “Yeah.”“Why?”“You know, it’s best you don’t ask those questions. You will never like the answers.”