How cool was that!

She’d always heard that shifter grizzlies, polars, and black bears had prehensile lips just like the full-bloods, but because Vic was a hybrid, it seemed that prehensile addition had landed elsewhere.

When Livy was comfortably secure on Vic’s back, he turned his nearly fifteen-foot-long body around and slowly made his way back into bear territory. He didn’t seem to have much speed at what was nearly two thousand pounds, but then, he didn’t really need it.

They made it back to the rental property without any problems and Livy quickly shifted to human.

“Don’t shift,” she ordered Vic. “Not yet.”

She jumped off his back, shocked at how long it took her feet to touch the ground. She walked around until she faced Barinov. She studied him closely, then walked up to him and pushed a mass of stringy fur off his face. That was when she finally saw his eyes. And they were human eyes staring back at her. The one physical part of him that didn’t change.

Livy grinned and stepped back. She walked all the way around him, and when she was right in front of him again, she finally announced, “You look . . . so . . . cool!”

No. That wasn’t what he’d expected her to say. Not that he minded. It was nice to hear someone say something other than, “Uh . . . oh . . . my . . . um . . .” upon seeing Vic’s shifted form. Or screaming and running away at the sight of him.

Livy didn’t do that or react as anyone else had when he was in this form. Instead, Livy stepped close and ran her hands down the fur on his muzzle. Vic lowered his head and she pressed her face against his snout. He felt the sigh she let out to his very bones.

When she moved away from him, Vic knew something was very wrong. Something that had absolutely nothing to do with the bitter cats in the next county or his shifted form.

Vic shifted back to human and waited. After nearly a minute, Livy said, “I’m hungry. Are you hungry?”

“Yeah. I’m hungry.”

Livy nodded and walked into the house through the back door. Vic followed and found her looking into the refrigerator. There was a little Chinese food left, but neither of them wanted that. So they called in an order to the local diner and had it delivered.

Vic had showered and put his jeans on by the time the food arrived. He was setting it out on the table when Livy came downstairs.

She carried a cell phone and wore a bathrobe that was several sizes too big for her. She finger-combed her wet hair off her face and sat down at the kitchen table.

“Looks good,” she stated.

With all the food out, Vic sat catty-corner from Livy and reached for the bacon.

“My father’s dead,” she suddenly announced.

Vic pulled his hand back, focused on Livy. “I know. And I am sorry.”

“No,” she said softly. “You don’t know.” She rested her arms on the table, hands clasped together over the plate he’d put out for her. “I just assumed his funeral was probably one of my parents’ schemes. Another way for them to somehow make money. That in four or five years Damon Kowalski would suddenly pop up and say, ‘Why do you get so upset, troch rage. Always sensitive . . . like your mother.’ ”

“ ‘Troch rage’?” Vic repeated, with a small laugh. “Your father called you Little Rage?”

“Since I smacked him right across the mouth when I was six months old.”

Vic leaned down a bit so he could look in her eyes. “But now you’re sure your father’s gone. Why?”

Livy let out a big breath before looking directly at him and replying, “Because I found his stuffed carcass in Allison Whitlan’s apartment.”

Vic blinked those gold eyes at her, his entire body jolting in surprise. “Wait . . . what?”

“She had him by her fireplace. Someone went to a good taxidermist. You could barely tell he’d been shot in the back of the head.”

“Livy . . . I . . . um . . .”

“Please don’t say you’re sorry. I don’t want to hear sorry.”

“What do you need from me?”

“You gave me what I needed. Time. I needed time to figure out what I should do.”

“You don’t have to do anything. Now we know that Allison Whitlan must be in some kind of contact with her father. Dee and Cella can take it from there.”

“It’s not that easy, Vic.”

“It’s not?”

“Not for me. It’ll never be that easy for me.”

Vic placed his hand over her forearm, his fingers warm and dry. Comforting. “I can’t even imagine how hard all this must be for you. I really can’t. But what I do know is that you need to let the people paid to protect our kind do their jobs.”

“They may be paid to protect your kind but not mine. The honey badgers have always been on our own. We always will be.”

Vic leaned back in his chair. “What’s your plan, Livy? Track down Whitlan by yourself? Take him down by yourself?”

“Honey badgers are a lot of things. We’re mean. We’re rough. We’re mostly felons. We take shit from no one. But the one thing we’re not . . . is stupid. I have no intention of going after Whitlan by myself.”

“Then what are you planning?”

“The only thing I can.” Livy picked up her cell phone, pulled up an important number she’d never used before, and sent out a quick text before she focused back on Vic and said, “Vengeance.”