chapter FIVE
Berg helped his brother up off the floor.
“I’m so glad Britta wasn’t here,” Dag said, one arm around Berg’s shoulders, his other hand cradling his balls through his jeans. “She’d have kicked our asses for getting in the middle of a honey badger fight.”
“We weren’t thinking, that’s all. Next time we’ll know better.”
“Agreed.”
Berg’s phone sailed past Dag’s head. As it hit the wall and broke into pieces, Livy stalked back into the living room.
“I hate everyone,” she announced to . . . well . . . everyone.
“Went that well with your mother?” Vic asked.
So upset she couldn’t even respond, Livy walked out of the room again. When she returned a minute later, she held a bandage. She tore off the backing and without any preamble, slapped it against the wound on Berg’s neck.
“Ow!”
“Don’t whine,” she snarled.
Hands on her hips, Livy said to Max without even looking at her cousin, “Now I guess I’ll go talk to Charlie since she’s the only one among you three that has any sense.”
“You should go talk to her,” Max agreed with a smile. “And make sure you keep that great attitude when you do. She’ll love it!”
“No,” Berg said quickly, seeing exactly where Max was attempting to lead her cousin. “I’ll talk to her.”
“You?” Max asked. “She doesn’t even remember you.”
“That was hurtful.” Berg pushed his brother toward Vic. “Could you help Dag for me? I think he needs some ice.”
“Or a new penis.”
They all turned to stare at the other honey badger and Livy shrugged those massive shoulders and admitted, “I know, I know. I should stop talking.”
Berg headed deep into the apartment until he found the bathroom Charlie was in. She’d put on jeans and was bent over at the waist, finger-combing her wet hair. Not wanting to startle her, he quietly waited. But Berg was having a hard time not staring. She looked really good in those jeans.
Then Charlie abruptly stood and Berg realized she wasn’t wearing a shirt. Just a sheer, lacy bra. He was so surprised, he tried to turn away but rammed into the doorway instead, nearly knocking himself out.
* * *
Charlie was reaching for a comb when she heard that thud, followed by a “Dammit!”
She looked toward the bathroom doorway, but all she saw was a blur.
“Sorry,” a voice said. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
“No problem.” She combed her hair off her face.
“And I thought you were more . . . dressed.”
Charlie squinted down at herself. “The nips are hidden.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing, nothing.” She looked at herself in the mirror, trying to figure out what to do with her hair. “So what do you need?”
There was a pause, then . . . “Do you know who I am?”
There was a room full of big guys in Livy’s apartment and she still wasn’t wearing her glasses. She was lucky to recognize Livy. So she took a guess.
“Deuteronomy?”
“That is not my name.”
She didn’t have time to worry about some sensitive guy’s issues. She had so much on her mind at the moment that she really couldn’t be bothered. Still, she didn’t want to be completely rude. “How about you give me a hint,” she suggested.
“Okay, I gave you a very nice, very expensive Ruger.”
Shocked by that response, Charlie turned from the mirror and really studied the blur standing in front of her.
“You gave me a Ruger?” she asked, “No one has ever given me a . . .” She took a small step back. “Oh, my God.”
Charlie couldn’t help but smile. “It’s you,” she cheered. “My giant, helpful blur!”
“The name is Berg. Berg Dunn.”
“I can’t believe it.” She really couldn’t. “What are you doing here?”
“I live here.”
She frowned. “With Livy?”
“No.” He suddenly chuckled, shook his head. “No. Not with Livy. I live here in New York. Queens.”
Rubbing her hands on her jeans, Charlie moved closer to the blur. “I am so sorry I didn’t know who you were earlier. No wonder you were hurt. But I am really glad to see you again because I didn’t have a chance to thank you—”
“It’s not necessary.”
“It is. Other than my sisters, no one ever helps me. Especially not strangers. You could have easily locked you and that smaller, paler blur in the bathroom and let me fight my own battles. You didn’t. So I owe you big. I just . . .” Charlie briefly closed her eyes. “Well, right now, I have some other . . . issues to deal with. And your Ruger was dismantled and dispersed across a large swath of Italy.” Charlie stood straight, refusing to let the shame of her life bow her. “But I promise. I will pay you back.”
The blur leaned against the doorway. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about paying my debts.”
“For what? You were being hunted. What was I supposed to do? Not help?”
“Most people wouldn’t.”
“We look out for each other. We’re shifters.”
“Oh. Okay. Sure.”
“Wow,” he suddenly said. “You really didn’t recognize me until I mentioned the Ruger, did you?”
“Not really.”
“How is that possible? You’re definitely a shifter. I saw your claws. You should at least know my scent by now.”
“Allergies,” Charlie admitted, pointing at her nose. “Can’t smell anything right now. From May until at least October—sometimes December—I am living on decongestants and Benadryl. And, after making that mad dash out of my room and falling into your life, I don’t have prescription strength anything, including my nasal spray, which I can’t tell you how much I miss.” She rubbed her nose. “It’s so itchy right now.”
“So you can barely see and you can’t smell anything . . . but you can clothesline your sister?”
“I’ve been clotheslining my sister for a very long time now. And trust me when I say she deserved it.”
Charlie turned back to the mirror and decided to put her hair in a high ponytail since she didn’t have access to a blow dryer with a diffuser.
“I’ve never met a shifter your age who has eye problems that weren’t caused by some kind of strange work accident.”
“I believe that.” Charlie began pulling her hair into a ponytail. “But ya know . . . it’s my father’s fault.”
“Your father’s fault?”
“He has the most fucked-up genes . . . ever.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that the majority of my flaws and my sisters’ flaws are due to our sperm donor. He is absolutely and unequivocally the reason that we’re all freaks.”
“I wouldn’t say you’re freaks,” the blur said on a chuckle, placing her hairband in her palm.
“Oh, trust me,” Charlie admitted. “We are such freaks.”
* * *
“They are such freaks,” Livy explained, dumping a tray of ice cubes into a plastic bag. She moved across the kitchen and was about to give the bag to Dag when Vic wrestled it from her hands.
“I think you’ve touched his balls enough today, don’t you?” Vic asked before handing the ice to Dag, who appeared extremely relieved. Livy just didn’t know why.
“Don’t blame me for that.”
“Then who do I blame?”
“Who gets in the middle of a honey badger fight?”
“I thought I was helping,” Dag muttered as he gingerly placed the ice over his groin.
“Badgers don’t need your help.”
“It’s not that I’m surprised you were fighting your own cousin,” Vic said, resting his ass against the kitchen counter. “Because that happens so often. But this one didn’t actually do anything.”
“We have a past.”
“Shocking.”
“Why do you call them freaks?” Dag asked.
“Because they are.” She lowered her voice a bit. “Can’t you see that?”
“They’re hybrids,” Shen replied. “All hybrids are a little freaky.”
Livy shook her head. “For every other honey badger mix, from the beginning of time, it never mattered what else a honey badger was mixed with. Our vicious DNA has always destroyed everything else, leaving only the honey badger and some human.” She lowered her voice again to a whisper. “Except for those two. Charlie and Stevie are the only honey badgers I know who are not all honey badger. But they’re not the problem.”
“They’re not?”
“No. I actually like them. Well . . . I like Charlie. I don’t know what the fuck to say about Stevie. But my cousin who is all honey badger . . . still a freak.” She motioned the males over with a wave of her hand. Vic and Shen stood next to her by the doorway while Dag kept his place at the kitchen table, nursing his balls.
“Just look at her out there,” Livy said, pointing at her cousin, who was standing in the living room by the younger sister. “What do you see?”
“A woman quietly standing by her still-unconscious sister?” Shen asked.
“Vic, do you see what’s wrong with her?”
“Yes,” he said with an eye roll. “But it’s stupid.”
“Tell him,” Livy pushed.
Vic sighed. “She’s smiling.”
“Exactly. And what the fuck does she have to smile about?” Livy moved back into the center of the kitchen. “That’s not normal behavior.”
Shen shrugged. “Maybe she’s just happy.”
“What honey badger do you know who’s fucking happy?”
“Well—”
“None! That’s who. Not unless liquor and snake poison’s involved. But her . . . ?” Livy finally admitted what everyone in the Yang family already knew. “She’s completely sober right now, which tells me one thing.”
Vic gazed down at her. “Which is?”
“She’s a serial killer.”
“Because she . . . smiles?”
“Yes.”
* * *
With her hair in a top knot and the ends scrunched a few times to help the curls form, Charlie washed her hands, dried them, and groped for her glasses. She knew she’d left them on the counter, but now she wasn’t quite sure where they were.
The blur placed them into her hand and she put them on. Then she faced the blur and . . .
“Oh . . . my.”
A brow arched. “Something wrong?”
Nope. Nothing was wrong. Everything was kind of... perfect.
He was so pretty.
Square jaw. Brown hair with gold highlights. And dark brown eyes. And that perfect head sat comfortably on a thick neck attached to giant shoulders that were joined to a frighteningly large body.
Not a fat body. An overwhelmingly muscular body. How did he find clothes for that physique? The dark blue T-shirt he currently had on seemed to barely contain all those muscles.
Charlie realized she was staring . . . she might even be drooling.
“What was the question?” she asked.
“Is something wrong?”
“Wrong? What could be wrong?”
“People are trying to kill you?”
“Well, yeah, there’s that,” she admitted. “That’s definitely a problem. But, ya know . . . sadly not the first time.”
“So all three of you are on the run?”
Charlie sighed. “Very. I thought we could at least stay here a couple of days but now . . .”
“I think I can help.” He pointed a finger at her. “I might know a place you can stay. You’ll be safe. Really safe.”
Dropping her hands on her waist, Charlie said, “Dude—”
“Berg.”
“Whatever. I can’t ask you to do any more than you’ve already done. I mean, you’ve been amazing. I owe my life to you. I already can’t pay that back.”
“You don’t have to pay back anything, and you’re still not safe.”
“That’s not your problem. That’s my problem because being the daughter of Freddy MacKilligan means safety and security are just not part of my vocabulary.”
“You need a place to re-group. Figure out what you’re going to do next. And I think we both know you can’t do that here. I don’t know Livy well, but she makes it clear when she doesn’t like someone. And she does not like your sister. But I think I can get you a place where you’ll have a little time to breathe.”
Charlie hated bothering this man again. But, as always, her father had put her in a situation where she was left with few—if any—options.
How could anyone be that big a fuck up? How could one man cause so much damage to so many without putting in that much effort to begin with? He was known for ridiculous schemes that managed to destroy entire banking systems. Deals that went so bad, his partners either ended up in prison or dead. Poorly planned plots and cons that blew up, but somehow didn’t affect Freddy MacKilligan at all, yet had his daughters running for their lives . . . again.
Her father, as always, was the king of the fuck up.
Until now, though. Because, finally, he was sitting in cold storage, and Charlie couldn’t wait to bury him. To be done with him. To pretend someone so idiotic had never existed.
“Want me to make the call?” her handsome savior asked when her silence went on and on.
“I . . .”
“I really don’t mind. In fact, I want to do this for you.”
“Why? I mean . . . are you really that good a person?”
He shrugged and said, “Yes. I am. But I’m a bear, so we’re naturally loving and giving.”
“Really? Because when I hear about bears, they’re either going through people’s garbage or attacking people in Alaska who were out on a jog.”
“Because we were startled. Don’t startle us, we don’t attack.”
“Unless you’re really hungry.”
He gave an excruciatingly sweet grin. “Unless we’re really hungry.”
Charlie laughed and decided to bite the bullet. “Okay. Your help would be greatly appreciated.” She glanced at the front of her phone and checked the time. “Uh . . .”
“What?”
“I’m just wondering if Livy would let us stash our stuff here for a couple more hours before we bail.”
“Securing the place shouldn’t take that long.”
“Oh, it’s not that. We’re just here in the City to identify our father’s body and we were supposed to be at the morgue, like, an hour ago.”
“Wait a minute.” He held up his hand, palm out, his head cocking to the side before he asked, “Your father’s dead?”
Crossing the middle and forefingers on both hands, Charlie raised them and said with a big smile she truly felt, “Here’s hoping!”