Maria sucked in an angry breath. “You are some piece of work, you know that? What the hell is wrong with you, Mason?”
“Those fucking Miguels had it coming,” he spat.
“Did you know there was a human in the store with a young child? Your brick nearly hit him. But that’s entirely beside the point. What you did was wrong.”
Mason jumped to his feet. “You didn’t answer me,sis. How do you know all that?”
She glared at him.
“Are you screwing thatwetback?” he shouted at her.
Saffy saw red. She drew her arm back and slapped him across the face so hard the palm of her hand smarted and Mason stumbled, the beer in his bottle sloshing over his fingers.
“Don’t you dare call him that!” she shouted back at him. “He’s worth ten of you.”
“What the hell is going on in here?” their father asked, striding into the room and staring at each of them in turn.
“She’s fucking Miguel,” Mason spat.
Her father froze, standing stock still for a moment before he turned to her, his lip curled in distaste.
“Is that true?” he asked, his voice as cold as ice.
Saffy opened her mouth to reply, but when she didn’t answer her father quickly enough, anger crept into every line on his face.
“Is it goddamntrue?” he shouted. “Are you seeing the hawk shifter?”
“He’s my mate!” she shouted back.
She waited for more shouting. None came.
Saffy had seen her brother and father angry before. But this was something else. Something that scared her. Rage poured out of her brother in waves.
“It’s not true,” Mason said. “It can’t be.”
“You’re to stop seeing him,” her father commanded. “Immediately.”
She looked at each of them in turn, her mouth popping open in disbelief. She zeroed in on her father.
“He’s my mate. You can’t forbid me from seeing him.” It was physically painful to imagine not seeing him again. She shook her head. “You just…can’t.”
“I can,” her father said coldly, “and I have. I am your dominant. Disobey me, and you will not only be thrown out of this house, you will no longer have a place in this pride.”
“Then I guess there’s nothing left to say.”
She grabbed her purse from the coffee table then turned and walked out of the living room and then right out of the house. Outside, she retrieved her cellphone then dialed Ramon’s number.
“Saffy?” he answered. “What happened? Are you okay?”
“They know,” she said, as she crossed the front lawn, fighting the urge to look back over her shoulder. Were they watching from the windows? She drew in a shaking breath. “I had to tell them. And my father… well, let’s just say he didn’t take it well. At all.”
“Hang tight,” Ramon said. “I’ll be there in ten. You’re moving in with me.”
She closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. He’d said it without even hesitating, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world that he would take her in. As if it was perfectly normal to move in with someone a day after you’d met them. It wasn’t, of course, not even in shifter circles between soul mates, but that didn’t seem to bother Ramon in the slightest and if she was being honest, it didn’t bother her, either. A fated mate was pretty much a done deal, anyway, right? Hearts and flowers, and true love…the stuff of fairy tales. Something she’d spent her whole life alternately dreading and wishing for.
Sure, it would have been nice to spend some more time getting to know Ramon before she moved in with him, but this just felt…right.
She was only sorry that her family couldn’t accept Ramon as easily and whole-heartedly as she could.
