“Look, don’t worry. I’ll tell my superior I only arrested Mason to get him to calm down. There won’t be any repercussions, okay?”
A cute little crease settled on her forehead. “You’d do that for him?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I’d do it for you.”
She smiled at him and Ramon’s heart stuttered.
“Thank you.”
“Look, can we—”
“Saffy?” a man’s voice called.
Ramon’s mate gasped, then turned to look over her shoulder. “Father.”
Ramon looked across at the intruder, annoyed at having his first conversation with his mate interrupted, only to find himself face to face with Owen Brown, the dominant male leader of the lion pride.
“What’s going on?” Owen asked. “Where’s your brother? And why ishehere?”
Ramon hadn’t had what he might call a run in with Owen in the past, but he’d been forced to speak to the man about members of his pride when he was on official FBI business and the man had treated him with contempt, even though Ramon had been nothing but civil to him. Well, mostly.
“I’d better go,” Ramon said.
He leaned closer to…Saffy, was that her name? He liked it. It was fiery, yet beautiful. Like her.
“Do you know where the FBI headquarters are in the city?”
“Yes.”
“Come there in an hour and I’ll have Mason released. You can pick him up. Okay?”
She smiled gratefully. “I will. Thank you.”
He nodded. “My name’s Ramon, by the way. See you soon.”
He could hardly wait.
Chapter Four
Saffy
Saffy’s heart thudded as she maneuvered her convertible Mercedes down the into the bowels of the FBI’s underground parking lot. She couldn’t believe she was about to see her mate again. The last hour had been the longest of her life.
It had taken every bit of persuasion that she possessed to prevent her father from coming to pick Mason up himself. He wanted to give Ramon a piece of his mind and talk to his superiors to see if he could get the man arrested for trespassing on private property. If it was up to her father, he’d have got Ramon fired from his job, too. Saffy had heard the pride in his voice when he’d spoken about being SWAT, and she wasn’t about to let her father try to take that from him. Or anything else.
Her father hadn’t believed that Ramon had just been there to pick up the three young hawk shifters. He maintained that Ramon had brought them there himself, just to cause trouble and so that he could arrest Mason. Apparently he thought that Ramon was as incapable of letting go of old grudges as Mason was himself. She frowned. Maybe it was true. She didn’t know anything about him.
No. Itwasn’ttrue, she was sure of it. He’d tried to calm things down, and besides, there was no way he’d jeopardize his job just because they’d had a couple of scraps a few years ago. Just because her family—well, and his, apparently—were incapable of letting go of old grudges, didn’t mean Ramon was.
Saffy had tried to reassure her father that he was mistaken, that Ramon had been furious at the three young shifters, but he hadn’t wanted to hear it. He’d said Ramon was a good liar and that she was naïve to fall for it. And she’d heard the disappointment in his voice when he’d said it, like believing anything a hawk said made her less. Weak. And he’d never had any time for weakness.
She’d wanted to tell her father that Ramon was her mate, but it hadn’t been the right time. Her father was already furious at the man—she would only have made things worse, so she stayed silent. But now she was thinking that she should have just told him and gotten it over with. She was pretty sure there wasn’t ever going to be a good time to tell him her mate was a hawk shifter. And not just any hawk shifter, but the son of the leader of the flock, or so her father said. Still, it was hard to imagine there being aworsetime, so maybe it was for the best.
She sighed and stared up at the roof of her car. When a shifter found their mate, it was supposed to be a happy occasion, one that all their friends and family supported and congratulated them on. Hell would freeze over before her father ever congratulated her on mating with a Miguel. He’d see it as the hawks taking something from them, stealing something—like a woman was something that could be stolen. Or a heart.
But she wouldn’t have changed who her mate was, even if she could. She wasn’t prejudiced against the Miguel family like her father and brother were. Why did species matter? No-one even seemed to know for sure how it had begun, and when a family of shifters with abnormally long lives couldn’t trace its origin, maybe it was time to let it die.
Right. She was pretty sure the sun would die before that damn grudge.
