chapter SEVENTEEN

chapter SEVENTEEN“What am I going to do?”Finn ducked. “First, maybe you should put the sword down.”Instead of putting it down, she shook it at him. “I should not have this in the house!”“Why are you whispering? And give it to me!” He grabbed hold of it and they began to struggle over the Viking sword until Mads suddenly released it and Finn slapped himself in the face.“That’s what I get for head-butting a woman. That was karma.”“Karma? She was a demon hyena happy to beat the crap outta me. And I’m her cousin! You shouldn’t feel guilty about anything.” She stared at the sword before sadly announcing, “I’m going to send this back to them before this whole thing gets out of hand.”“Your face tells me they don’t deserve this sword back.”“What does that mean?”“You look abused. By your own family. At least mine only ignores me and my brothers.”He reached for her cheek, and she slapped his hand away.“My face is fine.”“You’re dripping blood on your hardwood floors. And what’s wrong with your side?”“Nothing.”“Then why are you standing weird?”“Why are you asking so many questions?”“Because you’re bleeding all over your floor! That coyote is going to eat you while you’re sleeping!”“You have it in for that coyote!”“Because he’s going to eat you while you’re sleeping!”They glared at each other until Mads softly growled, “Would you feel better if you could clean my wounds?”“Yes, as a matter of fact, I would.”“Fine.”“Fine.”She gestured toward the stairs with a sweep of her hand, but he barked, “Just go!” Annoyed at how difficult she was being about all this.Finn watched her walk up the stairs and he could tell she was definitely walking as if something was wrong. It wasn’t her legs that were the problem, though. They seemed fine.She led him to the bedroom and, sure enough, the coyote was stretched out in the middle of her bed. He didn’t even lift his head when he saw them. Just watched them with one eye open as they went to the master bathroom.Finn placed the sword on the dresser. “I can’t believe you let him sleep on your bed.”“Stop complaining.”Finn froze outside the bathroom door and sniffed the air. “Do I smell shampoo?”“I asked Stevie to wash him if she had time and if he let her. I guess he let her.”“You had a wild animal bathed?”“You had me worried about ticks on my bed! She gave him a flea and tick bath! And stop yelling at me!”Mads flicked on the bathroom lights and immediately grimaced at the sight of herself in the sink mirror.“See?” he said.“Shut up.”“Let me look at your side and back.”“It’s fine.”“It’s not fine. Let me look.”Mads sighed and lifted her shirt just enough so he could easily see. Now Finn grimaced, moving in and crouching so he could examine it closely. They’d pummeled her kidneys.“You need ice.”“I do not need ice.”“Why are you arguing with me about everything?”“Because you’re making a big deal out of nothing.” She faced him. “This is not the first time I’ve been beaten up by my cousins. This is not the first time I’ve been hit in the kidney. This is not the first time I’ve had a wild animal on my bed.”“Your poisonous snakes do not count since they were most likely dinner.”“I had to eat something.”“That kidney looks bad. What if it bursts?”“It’ll heal.”“You don’t know that.”“It has before.”Finn gawked at her. “Your cousins burst your kidney before?”“It had nothing to do with my cousins.”“Max?”“No. It was Streep that time. We were in Rome. Actually, Vatican City and—”“Did you rob the Pope?”“I would never! Besides, any Pope-robbing Streep does is with her parents. This was something completely different and it—”“Just got out of hand?”“I don’t like your tone.”Finn shook his head. “I’ll get you some ice.”“Stop sounding so put upon. I didn’t ask you to help!”* * *The pushy tiger had walked out, but then he’d suddenly popped back into her bathroom.“‘Put upon’?” he asked.“What? I read. British stuff.”“Do you?”“Fine. I watch British movies and TV miniseries because Streep has a hard-on for Jane Austen. Which means I stand behind my ‘put upon.’”He rolled his eyes and again disappeared from her bathroom.Once Mads had a few seconds alone, she dropped her hands on the sink and lowered her head. Only her family could ruin what had been an amazing evening. Her team had easily won the game, putting them firmly into the championships. And although she hadn’t liked how her teammates had gone about it, she’d had a date with Finn. A really nice date. Something she hadn’t done in a long time. Her last date had been with a full-human who, within the first thirty minutes of coffeehouse conversation, had asked her if she liked anal sex. After she’d headed back to Tock’s cabinet for the night, he’d bombarded her with text after text of his dick pics. She’d been so disgusted she’d decided to take a break from dating for a little bit . . . and had sworn off full-human males forever.This date, though, had given her hope. Maybe she actually had a chance at a long-term thing. But after seeing her fucked up by her own family . . .Who would want any part of that?She’d dropped at least two boyfriends over the years who had insisted on meeting her family. She couldn’t understand why that was so important. One kept complaining that he felt he “didn’t know the real Mads.” Of course he didn’t! Because the real Mads could shift into a very large honey badger and strip his skin off!She really should have stopped dating full-human males ages ago.“Stop looking so sorry for yourself,” Finn said from behind her.“I don’t.” But when she lifted her head and saw herself in the mirror, all hunched over the sink like that, she did look pretty miserable.“Face me,” he ordered.Mads turned and lifted her shirt enough so he could view the injured area. Finn leaned over at the waist and slowly swiveled her around so he could easily see where to place the ice pack.“You found an ice pack?”“There were a bunch in your freezer. Right next to the frozen food. Lots of frozen meat pies.”“Oh, come on.”He straightened up. “What?”“Nothing.”“Do I need to get you to the hospital?”“No, no. Nothing like that.” Mads briefly glanced off before admitting, “I love meat pies.”“Holy shit. Is this still about Nelle getting your house set up for you?”“It’s weird!”He started to say something, but shook his head instead and returned to applying the ice pack.“You don’t think it’s weird?”“I’m not getting in the middle of this.” He took her hand and held it against the ice pack. “Hold this a second.”Crouching down, he went into the cabinet under the bathroom sink and immediately came out with a big first-aid kit. He placed it on the countertop and pulled out medical tape. Using two strips from the roll, he secured the ice pack against Mads’s wound.“Is that too cold for you?”“Nope.”“You sure?”“Honey badger skin.”“Don’t know what that means.”“Can stand up to almost anything. That’s why my teammates survived being tossed in an incinerator.”“I still think that’s weird.”“Would you rather they’d burned to death so I could be really sad?”“That’s not what I—” Finn’s next words were cut off by his own growl of frustration. He carefully grabbed her around the waist and lifted her up on the bathroom countertop.He used alcohol wipes from the first-aid kit to clean off the wounds on her face.“Should I worry about you getting the fever?” he asked, discussing the way shifter bodies sometimes healed themselves when gravely wounded.“I never have,” she replied. “Some hybrids do, some don’t. MacKilligans don’t. But not a lot of honey badgers get the fever anyway.”“Because you’re all just so badass?”“No. I think it’s just the way our bodies deal with trauma. Like when we’re poisoned. We just pass out for a while. And either we wake up . . . or we don’t.”Finn gawked at her for a few moments before throwing the last wipe away and remarking, “Fascinating.”“You asked.”“Sorry I did.” He carefully lifted her off the counter and stood her on the tiled floor. “To bed with you.”“I’m not tired.”“Then we’ll turn on the TV Nelle wisely put in your bedroom. But you’re getting in bed, so you don’t randomly pass out, fall down the stairs, crack your hard head open, and—I know it’s rare—possibly kill yourself.”“You’re worried about me falling down a flight of stairs after I fell off a building and nearly destroyed your brother’s car with the impact?”“And some tough guys get killed by one punch. Strange things happen. Just go to bed. At least until I’m sure your kidney doesn’t explode and you start bleeding out.”“Fine. I’ve gotta pee first.”“Okay. I’ll go wait for you out—are you peeing in front of me?”Mads looked up at him from the toilet she was now sitting on. And, yes, peeing into.“Yeah. Why?”“You couldn’t wait until I got out of here and closed the door?”“You saw me beaten up by my own family. We are beyond the bullshit games that people play with each other, like pretending we have no bodily functions. Besides . . . it’s just pee.”Again, he started to say something but instead simply threw his hands up and stormed out of the room, making sure to slam the bathroom door behind him.Kind of enjoying his dramatic reaction to her casual Viking ways, Mads finished using the toilet, washed her hands, and walked out into the bedroom. That’s where she found him trying to get the coyote off the bed. Much to Mads’s growing delight, the coyote seemed determined to stay right where he was.“It’s not moving!” he complained.“Maybe because you call him ‘it.’”“I’m not giving this animal more respect than I give my own baby brother.”Deciding not to argue that disturbing point, Mads knew she didn’t want to go to bed in tight black jeans and shirt. Even a sleeveless one. So she sat on a cushioned bench by the window and began to tug off her boots, gritting her teeth when she had to bend over a bit and her kidney screamed at her to stop. Once she had her boots and socks off, she took a moment to get her breath back and for the pain to stop shooting through her system. She noticed that Finn was now in a tug-of-war with the coyote over the comforter.Shaking her head, Mads got up and went to the dresser. She opened one of the drawers and, sure enough, she found several pairs of the loose shorts and cotton camisoles she loved to wear to bed.Damn, Nelle! Why did she constantly have to prove how well she knew them all? That was something Mads would have to figure out later, after she got some sleep.She pulled out dark blue shorts and a cami and plopped them on the dresser. She was in the middle of changing clothes when she heard Finn yell, “Why are you naked?”“I’m changing for bed.”“Why didn’t you ask me to leave the room?”“Well, I’ve already seen you naked.”“When I shifted from animal to human. That’s different!”“Is it?”Finn snarled, turned away from her, dragged the comforter forward and the coyote along with it until he could wrap the material around the coyote and remove all three of them from the room entirely.“That seemed overly dramatic!” she called after him.“Shut up!”* * *Finn dropped the coyote in the backyard, and when it tried to shoot past him back into the house, Finn’s roar seemed to scare it off. At least for the moment.“Shut up the damn cat noise!” one of Mads’s new neighbors complained.“I will burn your hives to the ground!” Finn bellowed in warning before going into the house and slamming the door.He knew he shouldn’t take it out on the bears—the coyote was getting exactly what he deserved! Just as seeing a bruised and damaged Mads should have made him feel simple pity for her. But instead, finding her standing there, completely naked, made him horny and hard despite all those bruises. What kind of human being was he?Maybe his mother’s family was right. Their side of the family was more tiger than human. They didn’t let things like bruises and kidney damage get in the way of what their heart and loins wanted. The females of their kin were as demanding as the males.He should leave. Right now. He shouldn’t even go back upstairs. He should call Charlie, give her a heads-up about what had happened, and speed away in shame. That’s what he should do. He knew it. The coyote knew it. The bear that he could hear next door desperately checking his hives knew it.He had his keys in his pocket. He had absolutely no logical reason to stay!“Hey, Finn!” Mads called from her bedroom. “Could you grab a bottled water for me? And ajar of honey-covered nuts, too? Please?”It was the “please” that did him in. Why did she have to say “please”? And so nicely. Not mocking nice, or manipulative nice, but just . . . nice.“Fuck!” he growled. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”He stomped to the kitchen. Got her a big bottled water from the refrigerator. Dug around in the cabinets until he found a whole cupboard filled with cans and jars of honey-covered peanuts and almonds and cashews. He grabbed the peanuts. Then he took all of it upstairs for her.Finn found her tucked into the middle of the bed with the TV on. A Taiwanese action movie was playing. He’d thought she would be watching ESPN, but was glad she wasn’t. He didn’t need any more sports tonight. Especially full-human sports.She was stretched out on top of the sheets, several pillows behind her back. She took the water and peanuts from him and dropped them next to her on the bed. Then she turned those big blue eyes on him.“Get comfortable,” she said, and tapped the bed with her hand. “Sit. You ever see this movie? The fight scenes are awesome.”“Uh . . . I was thinking . . .”Again, she looked at him with those blue eyes.“You were thinking what?” she pushed when he didn’t finish his thought.“I should take my shoes off.”“Okay.”He kicked his shoes off and got on the bed, stretching his long legs out.They watched the movie in silence for a while until she asked, “Water?”She held the big water bottle in front of his face. “Oh. Thanks.” He took it from her and gulped some water down, handed it back. She re-capped it and put it aside.“What did you do to the coyote?”“Just put it outside. It’s fine. Probably under the house again.”“Poor thing.”“You and my brother.”“Keane?”“Shay. He’s a dog lover, too.”“I could not care less about dogs. But I do appreciate a wild animal that is smart enough to get in and out of a home without messing it up. When you have a racoon in your home . . . you know you have a racoon in your home.”Finn put an arm behind his head. “So I guess you’re going to tell your teammates about your cousins being in town.”“No, I am not.”Confused, he studied Mads, noticed how serious she suddenly looked.“Why not?”“Are you kidding? That’s a nightmare I can’t wake up from. I’m not saying a word and neither are you. Not a word.”“Wait a minute—”“No. I’m serious.”Finn let his elbows prop him up. “I don’t understand.”“You don’t need to understand.”“Explain it to me or I start dialing. Because I think your friends would want to know. At least Tock would.”“I’m trying to protect them.”“Are you kidding?” he asked with a harsh laugh. “You’re trying to protect those broads? Seriously? There’s not one of them that I worry about. Not one!”“But they have families. I can’t put their families at risk.”“Isn’t most of Tock’s family in Mossad? And Nelle’s father has bodyguards and I think close to a billion dollars. And Max, oh . . . Max.”“What about her grandfather?”“He’s in a wolf pack, right?”“Living right next to my much bigger hyena family! They will destroy him! And Streep’s family has no protection at all.” Mads shook her head and swiped her hands across each other. “No. We’re not telling them anything. We’re not getting them involved.”“So what are you going to do with that idiotic sword?”“We’ll just send it back through the mail or something.”“After what they did to you, you’re really going to give it back to them?”“What do you think I should do?”“I don’t know. Throw it out. Or hide it under the house with the coyote.”“So we can put the coyote in danger when they come here looking for that stupid sword? Because they’ll eventually find out where I live.”Finn sat up straight and rested his arms on his knees, focusing his full attention directly on Mads.“Are you telling me that not only are you worrying about your friends, and the families of your friends, but you’re also worried about the safety of a random coyote that just happens to be living under the house you just bought a day ago? Is that what you’re telling me?”Mads shrugged. “Yes.”“Wow.” Finn pressed the palms of his hands to his eyes and lay back on the bed. “Wow.”“It doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”“Just . . . no.”“But—”“No.”“If you’d only—”“No.”“Well . . . do you want a honey-covered nut?”“I’m already sitting next to a honey-covered nut.”