“Carlos! Put your cousin down!” Rosa shouted before striding across the lawn to break up what looked like a competition between the two ten-year-olds to see who was the strongest.
“I walked right into that one, didn’t I?” Ramon groused.
Gabriel grinned. “Fell for it hook, line, and sinker.”
“When is she going to stop setting me up on dates?”
“You know she’s hoping that one of them is your mate.”
Ramon rolled his eyes. “Louisa’s daughter has been coming around here since she was in diapers. Does mom think if we were mates that we wouldn’t have realized it by now?”
“She lives in hope. Perhaps she thinks you just need another sniff of each other. You know she’s a hopeless romantic. She wants to see you settled.”
“She wants more grandbabies is what she wants.”
Gabriel snorted. “Like she hasn’t got enough kids to shout at.”
Ramon nodded to Gabriel’s son. “Wereweever like that?”
“Christ, I hope not.”
Ramon laughed.
“You know, I ran into Mason Brown the other day.”
Ramon felt the feathers around his neck ruffle just at the name. Their family had been at war with the Browns for as long as either side could remember. Big cat shifters and bird shifters were never going to get along, but it was more than just species. The animosity passed down through the family as readily as brown eyes and black hair. He narrowed his eyes and felt the tension rippling along his broad shoulders.
“Yeah? What did the reprobate have to say for himself?”
Gabriel chuckled. “He warned me to stay out of their territory.”
Ramon’s eyebrows rose. “You were in their corner of the city?”
There was a fragile peace, and it held because the two families avoided each other like the plague. Staying out of each other’s breathing space kept the animosity from spilling over into open war. Most of the time.
Gabriel rolled his eyes. “I work right around the corner from the boundary line and my boss asked me to pick something up for him on my lunch break. What was I supposed to do? Tell him no because, ‘Surprise! I’m a hawk shifter whose family has been in a long-standing feud with a lion pride, and I’m not supposed to enter their territory?’” Gabriel blew out an exasperated breath and gesticulated with his hands, carving through the air in frustration. “He’s human, he’d have laughed me out of the office and that would be after he called the men in white coats. There are only so many times I can refuse to do things for him before he, you know, fires me.”
“Fair enough. And that was it, Mason just warned you? He didn’t try to start anything?”
“No, unbelievably.”
“Huh.”
“Perhaps he was in a hurry.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
Ramon and Mason had come to blows on more than one occasion, their arguments often escalating into full-blown fist fights. His own flock, even his own father, had warned him to keep his distance, and he’d tried. Really, he had. It was just that the idiot had kept crossing his path like a bad penny. Mason was the son of the pride’s dominant male, and the way he swaggered around, anyone would think that it wasMasonwho led the pride. Ramon didn’t have the time of day for his ego. His own father was the leader of their flock, but Ramon wouldn’t have been caught dead throwing his weight around the way Mason did. But he wasn’t about to back down from him, either. Besides, he figured they were equally matched in size, strength, and rank, if not in intellect. Mason was about five IQ points above an ignoramus. On a good day.
It had been a few years since Ramon had last seen Mason, which could only be considered a good thing, not least by his mom who still seemed to think he was a little kid who needed to be kept out of trouble. When he’d been younger, Ramon had been hot-tempered and had thought nothing about getting into a fight with Mason or any of the males in the pride, but despite what his family thought, hehadgrown up. He worked for the FBI now, a member of their elite SWAT team, and he’d worked hard to get to there. Had enough that he wasn’t about to throw it all away by getting involved in stupid scuffles—his job meant everything to him. Hawk, as he was known to his teammates, was the sharpshooter, and he loved what he did with a passion. There was nothing he would rather have been doing. Not even taking Mason Brown down a peg or two.
“Are you talking about Mason Brown?” Felipe, Ramon’s cousin, asked as he joined them at the tail end of their conversation.
Ramon nodded. “You know him?”
“Yeah, unfortunately. Guy’s a real piece of work.”
Gabriel snorted. “You got that right.”
