“What setup?” Imani asked.
“Oh.” Max faced her again. “When we got to the island, there was no trafficked prey, but their guys were waiting.” She frowned. “They wanted the tigers, not us. But something about the whole thing set my teeth on edge. I don’t like it.”
“I’ll make sure to look into that. You guys go home and get some sleep.”
“We can’t. We’re going to get Danish.”
Tock frowned. “We are?”
“Yes.” Max smiled. “For once, we’re going to do something nice for someone. To say thank you for not deserting us, unlike these bitches on the floor!”
Mads frowned. “Not sure the yelling is necessary.”
“According to Charlie,” Max went on, “that’s what you do. You say thank-you for that sort of thing.”
“With Danish?”
“Everybody loves Danish.”
“Yeahhhh,” Imani felt the need to point out, “but if you’re talking about thanking the alley cats, especially this early in the morning, and after a long night, no less, I’d probably just shoot ’em an email. Or maybe even a text.”
Max shrugged. “But everybody loves Danish.”
* * *
It wasn’t until the hand persistently tapping him on his bare back turned into a paw and swiped him across the spine that Finn Malone knew for sure it was his mother attempting to wake him up. That’s when he grudgingly turned over and glared at her.
“What, Ma?”
“We have vermin in our home,” she informed him.
“ ‘Our’?” he asked.
Finn knew it had been a mistake, inviting his family to move into his house all those years ago when he’d gotten his first payout after being drafted. Sure, the NFL draft got all the ESPN coverage but in his mind the shifter football league was a much bigger deal. He’d been up against guys who’d been born in Alaska and had nothing to do all day but grow big and ram into stuff with their giant bodies. One time he’d rammed into the side of a bodega and the next thing he knew, his mother had to come down to the police station and talk them out of charging him for property damage. They kept insisting he must have done the damage with a car or something, but nope. Shay had just bet him ten bucks he wouldn’t run directly into the side of the building and . . . ya know . . . he did. Left a real healthy indent in the brick there, too.
Those full-human kids couldn’t do that. Not sober anyway. And not without breaking a bone or two.
All fourteen-year-old Finn did was knock himself out for a few minutes.
It was good to get the new house, though. His family needed a fresh start and the old house held too many memories. But everybody thought they had some kind of financial stake in his house and it was annoying. Sure, Keane and Shay paid part of the mortgage and had tossed in part of the down payment, and according to his grumpy wolf lawyer, because his brothers had their names on the deed, they actually owned the house along with him, but he wasn’t sure he agreed with that.
“It’s the law,” his lawyer had insisted.
“You have proof of that?” Finn had asked.
His lawyer had done that thing dogs do when asked a question that seems to confuse them: the head tilt to the side, eyes staring, expression quizzical. The dog’s confusion at such a straightforward query made Finn wonder if the man really had graduated from Columbia Law as he had said.
And his mother also thought she had some investment in his home because, according to her, “I gave your ass life. That’s why.”
But was that reason enough to allow her to stay here when she insisted on waking him up every time there was the slightest issue in his home?
“If there’s rats, Ma,” he grumbled into his pillow, “let those dogs you insisted on buying take care of them. Isn’t that their job?”
“They’re hiding in the backyard.”
Finn finally opened his eyes and rolled onto his back again. He stared up at his mother. “By our blessed ancestors . . . the aunts are here, aren’t they?”
“Yes. My sisters are here to visit for a few days.”
“How many months does ‘a few days’ translate into this time?”
His mother’s eyes narrowed a bit and he could almost see the wheels turning inside her head as she debated how to handle her son. She finally went with guilt.
“The pain and suffering I went through to have you children. . . and this is how you treat me. Like garbage. On the street! What did I do to deserve such awful children?”
“Guilt them whenever you want something?”
She began slapping at him, forcing Finn to cover his head with his arms while he laughed.
“All right! All right! I’ll deal with it!”
“Thank you!” She headed toward his bedroom door. “My sisters already think I’m weak for letting all of you boys still live in my house.”
“It’s not your house!” But his mother was already gone.
Growling, Finn tossed off the covers and got out of bed. He already had on loose long shorts but grabbed a T-shirt to cover any bruises or scratches left over from the previous night. He wasn’t in the mood to field questions from his mother and her sisters. His mother worried enough about her three oldest.
Walking barefoot, he stomped out of his room and past his brothers’ rooms, not caring if he woke them up.
“You better be studying,” he snarled at the closed bedroom door of his baby brother.
“Stop harassing me!” the kid yelled back.
“You don’t know harassment yet,” he warned.
They had plans for their baby brother and his future didn’t involve guns or tracking down scumbags or being involved in shoot-outs. It involved him being a respectable Malone. There weren’t a lot of those. A few priests, maybe a nun or two, and there was at least one librarian who still lived in Ireland, but that was it. The rest of them were . . . well . . . Malones.
Dale Malone would do better even if it meant Finn, Keane, and Shay had to ride him like a pony straight through until he got his PhD and a respectable job.
Finn continued down the stairs to the first floor and, assuming the vermin was in the kitchen, headed down the hallway toward the large room necessary to feed a family of this size and a family of their size. They were Amur tigers, after all. A bucket of chicken from the local KFC was not going to feed them. It would barely feed Dale, and that poor kid was skinny and weak. He was barely even six-one. Not even two hundred pounds. Among some other cat families, he would have been abandoned to the elements as a runt and left to die.
The rest of them, though—Finn, Keane, and Shay—all played pro ball on shifter teams. They were constantly eating. Their kitchen had three refrigerators and two standing freezers, and in their garage were three chest freezers. All to supply their weekly and monthly food needs. Because their kind ate a lot. Even the females. Finn was always hungry. He traveled with a lot of treats. He wasn’t really an omnivore but it was less terrifying to fellow passengers to break out the nuts on a subway than it was to break out the big chunks of freshly roasted meats.
He didn’t know why he got such stares. It wasn’t as if the meat was raw. They were shifters, not barbarians!
As Finn neared his kitchen, he heard music coming from the TV and . . . chatter.