“Well, Leary’s never been a chatty black bear.”

As if that excused the man somehow. Because it wasn’t just about Livy going into cat territory that was the problem. It was that she was going into cat territory after she’d just kicked their asses at yesterday’s joust.

Vic’s boxers began to rip apart as he shifted to his hybrid form. Mike backed away from him, hands raised. “Now come on, Barinov. We don’t need a whole heap of problems from those cats, now do we? And you . . . going over there looking like . . . like . . . that . . .”

But how this turned out was up to the felines. And what those felines were currently doing to Livy.

Livy had been climbing up a tree, trying to get to the hive of Africanized bees, when she was yanked down by a leopard.

She landed hard on her back, but quickly flipped over. There were about twelve of them. All big cats. Two leopards, a cougar, three She-lions, two cheetahs, a jaguar, a Bengal tiger, and two male lions.

And at least four of these cats were ones that Livy had defeated at yesterday’s joust, which was probably making them pretty cranky about Livy being here.

She’d known exactly when she’d crossed over into cat territory, but she hadn’t cared. She’d spotted some Africanized bees and had followed them back to their hive because African honey was one of her favorite raw honeys.

In retrospect, though, this was probably not one of her better ideas. But here she was. On her own. Facing down a bunch of angry cats.

So Livy charged the biggest one. One of the male lions, who was a few pounds heavier than the tiger. And much bigger than a honey badger,

Livy was able to launch herself at the lion’s face, attaching herself to his skull with her claws and fangs.

Roaring, the lion swung his head and tried to use his paw to knock her off. Livy held on, digging in deeper with her fangs while tearing at the cat’s flesh with her front paws.

One of the She-lions grabbed Livy from behind with her mouth and yanked her off. She swung Livy around, shaking her. She tossed Livy in the air and managed to catch her on the way down. But Livy’s body had flipped around in midair so that she was able to clamp her front claws onto the She-lion’s muzzle, lacerating the fur and flesh on both sides. The She-lion began her own attempt to shake Livy off, but she was smarter than the male, waiting until Livy lifted her paws so she could start raking them again through the cat’s muzzle.

A good shake and Livy was again flying. She hit a tree, bounced forward, and landed on her paws. She hissed and moved away from the tree so she didn’t have anything blocking her back. She sized up her opponents, deciding to go for that tiger next. But the cougar charged first, coming right at her. That’s when Livy saw a shadow fall over her. She looked up but all she could see was a mass of shaggy, black-striped brown and orangefur.

A paw the size of two platters swung out, and the cougar went flipping off into the trees. Livy didn’t even see where he landed.

All that fur over her head moved forward, the body so tall, she didn’t even have to scrunch down for it to pass. It just walked right over her like she wasn’t there.

The cats backed up, and Livy scrambled around so she could get a good look at what she now scented was Vic.

She’d never seen him in his shifted form and she understood why. He kind of resembled a woolly mammoth in a way, but that could have been all the fur. There was just so much of it! He didn’t have tusks like a woolly, but his front fangs extended past his lower jaw a bit. Still, that was nothing compared to the size of Vic’s paws. They were just so . . . big. Giant paws attached to giant legs, which were attached to a giant . . . beast.

One of the lion males charged and Vic turned slightly so the cat ran right into his side. Vic didn’t budge from the force, but the lion flew back and landed unconscious a few feet away. It was as if he’d run into a brick building. The other lion male roared and charged; Vic brought the cat down with one blow against the shoulder. Livy heard a crack as Vic and the cat made contact, and screaming, the lion went down. But it wasn’t just his shoulder. It was his shoulder and chest. They appeared . . . concave. He was even having trouble breathing.

Vic looked over the other cats, waiting to see if they would challenge him.

For some unknown reason, the tiger raised his front paw, suggesting he was about to walk toward Vic. In response to the tentative move, Vic took in a breath. When he released it, the breath came out as a roar. A roar that shook the ground beneath Livy’s paws, tossed the smaller cats back, and had the tiger carefully putting his paw back down on the ground.

When the roar finally ended, everything was silent. The birds. The Africanized bees in the hive above Livy’s head. Everything was silent. Except Livy. Who gave out a hissing laugh that her full-human friends often called “Livy’s evil laugh.” And it was even more evil-sounding when she laughed like that in her honey badger form.

Vic chuffed at her and Livy walked around to his back leg. Using her claws, she climbed up onto his back until she realized that her paw was tangled in his mass of fur. She tried to get it free, but she was getting to the point where she was afraid she’d have to cut her way out.

That was when Vic’s tail swung around. Compared to the rest of him, it was a very unimpressive tail. Barely any fur on it and extremely thin considering his overall size. But long like a tiger’s tail. So, yeah, unimpressive. At least that was how Livy felt until that unimpressive tail dug into the fur around her paw and untangled the mess. That was when she realized that Vic had a prehensile tail.