“You know, this is all your fault.”
“How is this my fault?” Stevie wanted to know.
“Because you insist on feeding this thing! Now we can’t get rid of it.”
“Do you want her to starve?”
“Yes!”
Stevie, without thinking, leaned over and pushed Max. Max, of course, pushed her back. It was something they’d been doing since . . . let’s see . . . oh, yes! The day they’d met.
Poor Carlie. She’d welcomed Stevie into her home for what was supposed to be a day-long playdate with her unknown half-sisters. Instantly, Stevie had hit it off with Carlie’s eldest, Charlie. But then she’d met Max and was immediately left alone with her while mother and daughter had gone to the kitchen for cookies and milk. In that moment, Max hadn’t actually done anything to Stevie. She hadn’t touched her or said anything or even stuck her tongue out at her. But Stevie just hadn’t liked the way her new half-sister had stared at her. She hadn’t liked it at all. So she’d reached up and pushed Max’s shoulders. Max had responded by pushing her back. And that’s when Stevie had snapped. She’d pulled back her tiny fist, filled with fingers that were currently insured for half-a-million dollars because of her musical career, and punched the older, taller, meaner girl in the nose. When all Stevie got back was a grin . . . she knew she was dead.
Seconds later, Carlie and Charlie had found the pair rolling around the tiny backyard of their Connecticut mobile home. It had rained earlier in the day so they were both covered in mud and blood. Stevie had only been six at the time, had already been deemed a musical prodigy, performing solo piano and violin concerts at the Met in New York City to sold-out audiences. She’d already learned that all those feelings she had roiling around her gut were to be repressed. They were to be beaten down, ignored, kept away from the light of day. Being around Max, however, had brought out everything Stevie’s family had, up to that day, told her to keep under wraps. Carlie—dear, sweet, loving Carlie—had tried everything to stop the girls from fighting, but she was too nice. A sweet, motherly wolf who had immediately come to adore the Siberian tiger–honey badger hybrid prodigy who was in a nasty fistfight with the other girl who’d been dumped on her for no other reason than that Carlie was just too damn nice. Unable to get the two girls under control herself, Carlie had left it up to her daughter. Charlie, always up for a challenge, had gotten Stevie and Max to stop fighting by grabbing them by the extra skin at the back of their necks and twisting with all the strength she had.
The pain had been so horrible, Stevie and Max had immediately separated, but Charlie still took a moment to lift both girls in the air—one hand on each—and shake them. So that they “understood” that what they had done was not okay.
They hadn’t learned that, though. Instead, they’d learned to keep their fights away from the watchful gaze of their big sister.
Like now. In this kitchen with just the two of them, a possibly dead male, and a feral cat. It was the perfect time for them to get a good fight on. But before Stevie could make a solid move, that feral cat charged across the table and launched her seven-pound body at Max’s face.
Stevie gasped, horrified, watching the pair hit the floor, stunned by all the snarling and hissing for several seconds before she realized she should do something.
“No, no, no!” she yelped, attempting to pull the pair apart. But there was so much resentment and hatred between the two, neither was willing to give up.
The feral cat had her front claws dug deep in Max’s face. As if she was hoping to rip the skin off completely. Max struggled to her feet with the cat still attached. She gripped the angry beast with both hands and pulled and pulled.
Stevie cringed, watching as her sister’s skin was stretched by the deeply imbedded claws.
Terrified about how this would end, she reached in between the pair, ready to separate them with a hard push. But Max abruptly pulled the cat off her face and slammed it down on the table. Angry beyond reason, Max kept the animal pinned to the table with one hand and lifted the other, unleashing her claws.
“Max!” Stevie screamed. “Noooo!”
Max, ignoring her as usual, brought her claws down toward the hissing animal she had trapped on the table. But a black paw slammed into her arm, holding it in place.
The black jaguar that had replaced the possibly dead man who had been sitting unconscious at the table glared at Max with bright gold eyes. Then it bared its fangs and let out a roar that had Stevie doing the only thing she could think of . . .
* * *
Max gazed into the gold eyes of the big cat glaring at her. He had his back paws in the chair his human form had been sitting in and the front paw not warding off her unleashed claws was on the kitchen table.
Shocked that the dude she’d thought was dead was quite alive and had just shifted into a very big jaguar, Max didn’t know what to say or do . . . until she realized that her sister was no longer standing behind her.
Looking over her shoulder . . . and up, Max let out a little growl.
Max pulled her hands away from both cats and turned. “Get out of the ceiling!” she ordered, using that phrasing because her sister was hanging by her claws.
“Nope.”
“Stevie!”
Stevie crawled into the closest cabinet over the refrigerator, slamming the door behind her.
Satisfied that at least her sister wouldn’t come crashing to the ground—Charlie got really bitchy when their rental house was damaged—Max turned back to the table to find only the feral cat standing there, glaring at her. The jaguar . . .
“Shit!”
Max ran toward the front of the house.
“What’s wrong?” Stevie yelled from the cabinet, but Max didn’t have time to answer her. Not when she scented that the big cat had gone out the front door. Someone had left it open, probably the triplets since they would most likely head back this way from their house across the street at any time.
Max ran out on the porch and stood at the top of the stairs, gaze searching the street.
“Max?” Dutch came around the side of the house, still rubbing his side from where Charlie had hit him with the basketball. “What’s wrong?”
“He’s out. He’s out.”
“Who’s out?”
They heard screaming from down the street. A kid screaming, “Dad! Dad! Daaaaaaaad!”
Running down the steps and through several neighbors’ yards, Max stumbled to a stop, and Dutch crashed into her.
“Oh, shit!” they both gasped at the same time.
The cat had grabbed a grizzly cub lounging in his own yard and was dragging the poor screeching kid to a nearby tree.
* * *
The Ako Pride had ruled the Tanzania cats long before the Chinese had their first emperor. But it wasn’t until the late 1800s that Imani’s great grandmother, her great aunts, and their males had traveled to the American shores. They’d lived in Harlem in those days, but that’s when shifters of other breeds and species had been scattered throughout the country.
If one wanted to find shifter-only towns on the East Coast, one had to go to parts of the South that seemed to be filled with nothing but dogs from the Smith Pack. Not a lot of cats wanted to deal with Smiths in any town or city, but the southern soil seemed to strengthen the Smiths in ways that had made Imani’s kin more than a little uncomfortable. When several houses became available on a Queens street a couple of decades back, the Ako Pride had purchased them and moved in. Finding out there were bears a street or two over and wolves in the other direction with their annoying howling every goddamn full moon had almost sent them running back to Harlem. But their cubs had loved having yards, a couple with in-ground pools. Who could willingly leave that? So they stayed and did what all lions did: expanded their territory.