August 2026 Newsletter
HOT AND BADGERED
Available NOW!
Unedited/Unproofed
“What do you mean, you can’t skate?” Oriana demanded. “Why didn’t you tell us that when we were at the derby tryouts?”
“Two different types of skating.”
“Can you do either?”
“No.”
Oriana pushed a lock of hair off her face. “I’m so confused right now. Why did you agree to this?”
“Because I can learn to skate.”
“Anyone can learn to skate.”
“No. I mean, I can learn to skate faster than most people.”
Oriana rolled her eyes. “Honey—”
“No,” Stevie interrupted. “Really.”
“And how do you do that?”
“Physics.”
“Physics?”
“Yes. Physics. Once you understand physics, you can do pretty much anything.”
“Really?” Oriana smirked. “So you can do what I can do?”
“Yes. But I’m lacking your musculature and body type; both of which would be necessary for me to do what you do for any length of time.”
Kyle leaned forward and loudly whispered to his sister, “That’s a really nice way of calling you a genetic freak.”
Oriana unleashed her claws and nearly had them buried in her brother’s face, but, to Shen’s surprise and approval, Kyle jerked his head back out of clawing range.
“I also like my toes,” Stevie suddenly announced . . . for no obvious reason.
“What?” Oriana asked.
“I like my toes. You can’t be a dancer and have pretty toes. And from what Kyle has told me . . . you have some fucked-up hooves.”
Shen cringed as the She-jackal’s eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. But instead of trying to bury her claws into Stevie’s face as she had her brother’s, Oriana gestured to the ice they were standing on.
“Please,” she said with a cold smile, “show us physics.”
“Actually,” Shen quickly cut in, “how about we take off the skates and find something else for you to do.”
“No, no, no.” Oriana glared at him before flashing that fake smile at Stevie. “Please, show us what physics does for you.”
With a shrug, Stevie placed her left hand on Shen’s shoulder for balance, bent her left leg at the knee, and rested her right foot on her left thigh. She leaned down, still holding onto Shen, and studied the bottom of her skate.
When she was finished doing that, she crouched down and pressed both her hands against the stadium ice.
She straightened, continued to study the ice for another minute. Then, without warning, she started skating.
At first, it was an awkward, wobbly performance that had Oriana grimacing along with Shen. She opened her mouth to call Stevie back, maybe afraid that Stevie would only hurt herself on those skates. But Oriana didn’t get a word out before Stevie abruptly took off. Like an Olympic speed skater, she moved fast from one end of the rink to the other and back again until she reached their small group and slammed to a stop, a burst of ice hitting them all in the face.
“See?” Stevie said. “Physics! Isn’t physics great?”
The sound of disgust Kyle made was definitive, but Stevie chose to ignore it. She faced Shen, smiling wide.
“So, what did you—”
“You here to try out for the team?” a male voice boomed behind Stevie.
Stevie jerked and her body twisted, flying into the air. But the stadium ceiling was much too high for her to reach, so she wrapped herself around Shen instead.
“You really have to stop doing this,” Shen reminded her.
“Does this mean your meds are no longer working?” Oriana asked.
“If they weren’t working,” Stevie growled out, “I would be way worse by now.”
“That’s terrifying.”
“Don’t blame me,” Stevie argued. “Look at the size of him!”
Novikov was more than a foot taller than Shen and nearly as wide. He was also a trained hockey player who enjoyed hurting his enemies on the ice. Even worse . . . Stevie had just tried to kill his wife, Blayne, the day before. An event that made Novikov more dangerous than he was normally.
Shen decided to end this before it got out of hand.
“Look, Novikov, I understand you’re—”
The hybrid put his hand over Shen’s face. Shen assumed it was to stop him from talking.
“You trying out for the team?” Novikov asked Stevie.
Stevie, who was hanging off Shen’s left side, her legs wrapped around his waist, leaned forward.
“No,” Stevie said firmly.
Novikov frowned and it was horrifying. How did anyone risk going up against this guy in a hockey game? “Why not?”
“Don’t want to,” Stevie snipped back.
Shen pulled away from Novikov hand and leaned close to Stevie, whispering, “How about not pissing off the psychotic whose wife you just tried to kill?”
“I was not trying to kill her,” she whispered back. “I was playing with her.”
“You two do know I can hear you . . . right?” Novikov asked.
“I don’t want to play hockey,” Stevie insisted.
“Why not?”
“It’s boring.”
Novikov’s eyes widened and he moved back a bit on his skates as if he’d been struck. “It is not boring.”
“It is to me. But, then again, I’m brilliant and it takes a lot to keep me interested. Especially in the kind of thing that average people enjoy. Of course . . . I doubt you’d understand.”
Shen bit his tongue to prevent himself from laughing. He had to. The look on Novikov’s face . . .
He was just so devastated.
Giving a low, vicious growl that rolled past them, Novikov skated off.
“The dogs make that noise sometimes,” Stevie noted. “I wonder what it means.”
“I can’t believe you told him no.”
“He was rude to you,” she said. “He put his gigantor hand over your face. Who does that?”
“Novikov,” Shen and the siblings said together.
“Well, it’s rude. Even for prodigies, there are rules. He needs to learn that.”
Shen put his arm around Stevie’s waist and hiked her up a little higher on his hip. “Look, I don’t want you not to play simply to piss off Novikov.”
“That’s not what I’m doing. I don’t want to play because I don’t want to have to put all this crap on every time. All this padding. And my shirt is huge. It’s like a dress.”
“We thought this would be a good alternative,” Oriana pointed out, “after your reaction to the derby outfit.”
“I’m looking for a little . . .” Stevie glanced down at herself. “Something between those two options.”
Kyle, who’d been pretty quiet this entire time, offered, “How about softball?”
***
Stevie snatched the softball out of the air with one hand, tossed away the bat she had in her other hand, and stalked over to Kyle and the others.
She held the ball under his nose. “You suggested a game that has a ball coming at my head at—” Stevie looked off and Kyle knew she was calculating something. “—seventy-three point five miles per hour? Does that really seem like a good thing to you?”
Kyle stared at his friend for a bit before replying, “I don’t know what the right answer is here.”
“Do you know how important my brain is?” Stevie asked. “Not just to the world but to the entire universe? Two years ago,” she ranted on, “I stopped this entire planet from being sucked into a black hole. Do you think I could have done that if I had brain damage to my head from this?” She shoved the ball closer to his nose. “Well . . . do you?”
Shen scratched his big bear head. “Wait . . . we were almost sucked into a black hole?”
Kyle and Stevie ignored Shen, and Kyle asked, “So I’m guessing softball’s out?”
Snarling, Stevie threw the ball down, hitting Kyle’s foot in the process.
“Owwww! Viper!”
“How fucking soft is that, Kyle?” she barked, heading back to the locker room. “How fucking soft is it?”
***
“I should just go home,” Stevie sighed once she was back in her shorts and T-shirt. It seemed she’d looked at all the team sports and none of them worked for her. They’d even stopped in at the football stadium, but she’d left three minutes later when she saw that most of the team was made up of gigantic bears who didn’t seem as worried as Stevie about traumatic brain injury.
“I’ve got a suggestion for you,” Shen said around the bamboo in his mouth.
“I think we should just end it,” she replied. “It’s . . . it’s just too hard.”
“One more,” he said, taking her hand.
He walked off, pulling her behind him. Kyle and Oriana brought up the rear.
Together, they took the elevator down a few floors until they arrived at a floor that was completely dedicated to one arena. As they walked down the hall toward the main doors, Stevie examined the framed shirts they passed. Shirts with claw marks, blood stains, and last names.
“Are these . . . memorials?”
“Don’t be silly,” Shen said as he kept walking, continuing to pull her along. “Memorials for game deaths are in the basement.”
Stevie tried to pull away at that point, but he kept walking, tossing over his shoulder, “Just kidding. Lighten up.”
They arrived at the big double doors, one of which was already open. He pulled her inside and she quickly realized they were in a soccer stadium.
A group was playing but she doubted they were pro players. Not when she saw Kyle’s oldest brother out in the middle of it all.
“Soccer?” she asked, looking up at Shen.
“Yes. Soccer. It’s perfect for you. Short bursts of running, which is great for your tiger side. But still competitive, which is good for your child prodigy side. Your hands aren’t at any major risk, and the ball is big and soft so your head is safe.”
“Except that a kicked soccer ball can reach eighty miles per hour.”
“Why do you even know that?” Oriana asked.
“That’s true,” Shen said, ignoring Oriana, “but you have a honey badger skull. A .38 wouldn’t even get past the stone-like strength of your bone structure.”
Deciding to ignore what could easily be seen as an insult, Stevie asked, “What made you think of this? For me, I mean.”
“Soccer is a great sport. Takes skill, dexterity, and physics. Not only that . . . pandas love soccer!” he cheered, pointing to a group of sturdy-looking giant panda bears. One had hold of a soccer ball and the others were trying to take it from her. While she giggled and laughed, the others rolled her around, taking turns trying to get the ball. It seemed like a waste of time and energy, but Stevie couldn’t ignore the fact that they all seemed to be having a great time.
“Do you play soccer?”
“Used to. Played through high school on local shifter teams. Always had fun.”
“Hey,” Oriana cut in, “Kyle . . . is that our brother?”
“No way,” Kyle snorted. “He’d never . . . oh, my God! That is him!”
The siblings looked at each other for a brief moment before they yelled out together, “Coop!”
The world-renowned pianist turned around, which was when he was hit in the back of the head with a soccer ball that had just been kicked at him.
He didn’t move, but he looked annoyed, jaws clenching.
“Sor-ryyy!” someone called out before Coop jogged over to the stands.
“What are you guys doing here?” he asked.
“Shouldn’t we be asking that?” Kyle wanted to know. “What else have you not told us? How much are you hiding from us? Are you even our brother?”
“You act like you found me in a drug den. It’s soccer.”
Kyle’s lip curled in disgust and Oriana scrunched up her nose. She just looked confused. But Stevie didn’t know why. A lot of great artists did things on the side to relax, which was exactly what Stevie was looking for. Something she could enjoy that had no real consequences.
Coop stared at his siblings for a few extra seconds before shaking his head, seemingly dismissing them, and faced Stevie and Shen.
“So why are you here?” he asked again.
“Stevie is looking for a way to work out her stress without using Blayne Thorpe as a cat toy.”
Coop gave a little smile. “That’s probably a good idea.”
“So I was thinking,” Shen went on, “soccer might be a good option for her.”
Coop nodded. “We have a lot of the smaller cats on the team. Some jackals and foxes. Not a lot of tigers but that’s because they like American football better. All that hitting and running bears down from behind.” He gestured to the people still playing. “These guys aren’t pro. Strictly for fun, exercise, and good times. We get to practice here in the afternoons before the pro players come in. Then we play the occasional weekend game every month or so with non-pro shifters from other boroughs, Philly and Jersey. It works out pretty well, even with my hell-on-earth schedule.” He dipped his head down a little so that he could look Stevie in the eyes. “You want to try it? We’re always looking for new players.”
Stevie wasn’t sure she wanted to do this, but she’d already failed at everything else. Might as well make it a clean sweep of failure.
“Okay.”
“Great.” Coop held his hand out so he could help her over the railing. “Let’s get you geared up.”
***
“Does it bother you that my very handsome brother is chatting up Stevie?”
Shen heard the question but didn’t realize anyone was talking to him until he raised his head from staring at his phone and saw that Oriana was smiling at him.
“Huh?”
“Do I actually need to repeat the question?”
“I’m just surprised you asked me a question. Didn’t you once call me ‘the help’?”
“I probably did.” She gestured toward the middle of the pitch, where Coop and Stevie continued to talk, “Everyone says how charming Cooper is. How friendly. Not like the rest of us at all.”
“I don’t know why you’re telling me this.”
“And they have a lot in common,” she went on, studying her brother and Stevie for a few seconds. “Music and all that.”
Shen looked over her head at her taller brother. “Why is she telling me this?”
“I think it’s her attempt to find out if you have any interest in Stevie.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she hopes you don’t so that she’ll be able to tempt you with her raw and unappetizing sexuality.”
Oriana glared at her brother. “I loathe you.”
“Because of my brutal honesty or because you have no friends and are forced to hang out with us?”
Shen snorted. “Throwing stones from that glass house, aren’t ya, kid?”
Insulted, Kyle looked around his sister. “What does that mean?”
“You don’t have any friends either.”
“I do too.” He pointed at the pitch. “Her. Stevie. She likes me.”
“I think she feels sorry for you. But what I mean is, you don’t have any friends your own age.”
“People my own age are beneath me. They consider stupid things fun. They don’t understand life and art and true beauty.”
“Plus, they keep hitting him,” Oriana tossed in. “That’s why my sister hired you.”
“Maybe if you stopped saying they were beneath you,” he pointed out to Kyle, “they wouldn’t beat the crap out of you.”
“I don’t say it to them. I merely point out how inadequate—”
“Nope,” Shen cut in. “Just nope.”
“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”
“Are you going to say that the school system lets down this nation’s children?”
“No.”
“Then stop talking.”
“Don’t blame him,” Oriana said, looking at her own phone, and quickly typing a response to someone. “When Kyle was ten, he went through a very strange Ayn Rand period. It was not pretty. My father has been trying to pull him back from the edge ever since.”
“Oh, please,” Kyle huffed. “That phase only lasted six months. And at least I didn’t go through that weird Russian literature phase like you. She wore black for a year and kept saying everyone’s entire name when she talked to them or about them.”
“You weren’t even born yet,” Oriana shot back.
“Mom told me all about it.”
Shen knew that Kyle and Oriana were only four years apart . . .
“You went through a Russian literature phase when you were four?”
The siblings gazed at him.
“What age were you when you started reading Russian literature?” Oriana asked.
“That would be the age of never. I have never read Russian . . . anything. And, before you pity me, I am totally okay with that. Not having read Russian anything.”
“So you’re more into great Chinese literature?”
Shen shrugged. “I like Run Run Shaw movies.”
“Run Run Shaw?”
“The Shaw Brothers. They made my favorite martial arts movies. From the seventies.” The siblings stared at him but didn’t say anything, so Shen added, “And I read the Tao of Pooh.”
“When you were four?” Kyle asked.
“No, last year.”
Oriana’s head dipped low and she muttered, “Oh, wow.”
Fed up, Shen informed the pair, “You do understand that most children don’t read ancient philosophies when they’re four. In fact . . . most adults don’t read ancient philosophies. That’s just your family. You are, to be quite blunt, a bunch of freaks. Good freaks,” he added. “Talented freaks. But freaks nonetheless.”
Oriana placed her hand on Shen’s forearm and he had no idea why.
“I’m just concerned,” she slowly explained to him, “that you won’t be interesting enough for Stevie.”
“Why would I need to be?”
“Because you’re dating her.”
Shen closed his eyes. “What is happening?”
“That’s what Max told me last night.”
“Your first mistake is you’re talking to Max.”
“Don’t you want to date Stevie? Is it her lack of muscle tone?”
“Look, Stevie is really sweet, but she’s . . . young.”
“Oh, my God,” Oriana whispered. “Are you really old? Like . . . are you ninety?”
Shen growled a little and looked off.
“I’m just kidding.” Oriana pushed her shoulder against Shen’s arm. “I know you’re way younger than that. Like forty, right?”
“I am not—” Shen stopped when he realized he was yelling.
“What you need to understand about us—prodigies, I mean; at least the women—is that guys our age do not usually work out for us. They’re usually stupid, grabby, and you have to forcefully tell them what no means. To the point where some permanent damage might be caused and their mother calls you a vile bitch beast. So, if you’re a few years older than her, it’s not a big deal. In fact, you could wisely use these early days when you’re rolling around in the sheets to read a book . . . or two.”
“I read books. I read!”
Oriana raised an eyebrow. “What are you reading right now?”
Shen cleared his throat. “A book about the Pittsburgh Steelers.”
Her raised eyebrow turned down with the other one into a dramatic frown. “Is that about the steel industry in Pittsburgh?”
Kyle burst out laughing and Shen twisted his mouth so that he didn’t follow suit.
“Something like that,” Shen finally managed to get out.
Stevie, now in matching shorts and jersey and wearing black and white cleats, walked over to them. “What do you guys think? Do I look stupid?”
“Not at all,” Oriana replied. “You just look weak . . . and very thin. Like you’ve been trapped on a boat at sea.”
Shen pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes. “What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing. Why?”
He dropped his hands into his lap. “Why would you say that to her?”
“Because I’m being honest.” Oriana looked at Stevie. “Do you not want me to be honest? I can be one of those girls who lies to you. I’m not good at it, but I can do it.”
“No,” Stevie said lightly. “I prefer honesty. I mean, I’d feel bad if I’d been working on my body for years . . . but I haven’t. So, yeah, honesty’s fine.”
“Excellent. Now, I was also screening this one”—she motioned to Shen with a wave of her hand—“to be your boyfriend but I don’t think that’s going to work out.”
“No,” Stevie replied, gaze gliding over to his. “He’s working out just fine.”
Shen wanted to know why he wouldn’t work out as a boyfriend, but he became immediately distracted by the fact that Stevie seemed to think he was already her boyfriend.
Seriously . . . what is happening?
“I’m not your boyfriend!”
Stevie’s smile was small but very powerful. “Do you want to be?”
Shen’s entire body became tight and he was having very dangerous thoughts at the moment. Extremely dangerous.
He decided to focus on something else . . . anything else
Shen turned to Oriana. “Why couldn’t I be a boyfriend?”
“Not a boyfriend,” Oriana clarified. “Stevie’s boyfriend specifically. You could absolutely be”—she looked around the stadium, finally pointing at a long-legged cheetah, sitting on the barrier and reading a magazine—“her boyfriend.”
“Why her?”
“Look at her. She’s attractive. She’s a cheetah, so I’m sure she’s astounding in bed. Plus, she’s reading Vogue magazine.”
“So?”
“She’s probably more your speed. Intellectually.”
Kyle threw his head back, his laughter ringing out over the stadium.
Shen guessed, “You think I’m too stupid.”
Stevie’s eyes grew wide. “What? Why would you think that, Oriana?”
“Because I’ve never read Russian literature,” Shen told her.
“What does that have to do with anything? My sisters have never read any literature ever, and if you think you’re smarter than either of them,” she said directly to Oriana, “you’re only going to get your feelings hurt. Unless we’re talking about Max. Then you’ll just get hurt physically.”
Oriana rolled her eyes. “I’m just trying to find you someone a little more up to your . . .” she glanced at Shen and back at Stevie before whispering, “level.”
“I can hear you,” Shen reminded her. “I’m sitting right next to you.”
“As a fellow former child prodigy, all I have to say to you, Oriana Jean-Louis Parker,” Stevie said as she reached across the barrier and grabbed Shen’s hand, “is it’s wrong to look down on and mock normal people. There’s nothing wrong with average. With the every day. With the common.”
Kyle, at that point, was down on the floor, on his back, laughing hysterically. Shen couldn’t even be mad. He didn’t blame him at all. But if either female noticed him, they didn’t show it.
“It’s average, everyday people,” Stevie proudly continued, “with no special skills or the ability to change the world that make this country great.”
Then with a good yank, she pulled Shen out of the seat and over the barrier so that she could drag him across the field to the team bench.
“I’m so sorry about that,” she said when they were near the other players. “I hate when people are snobby like that.”
Shen nodded. “Snobby people are the worst, right?”
“Oh, my God, Shen . . . I know!”
