Page 1 of Rumble of the Crumble

Chapter One

Leonidis

Ricky gave me a sloppy grin over the rim of his mojito glass. “Had a few cocktails.” He hiccupped and clapped his hand over his mouth.

The rhubarb surrounding him giggled, too. They appeared to be as drunk as him.

Cocktails? Now? Was the stalk high? “Why aren’t you at home with your mate and your babies?” I was not pleased to be sent on a mission to the bar to find the errant father.

“He told me to go away.” Ricky stared mournfully into his glass. “He said I was annoying the babies.”

I gave him a skeptical look. “Your mini-bull, who wants to spend all his time climbing you like a pole, even when he’s the size of a small house, and could squash you like a bug–”

“Are you going to get to the end of this sentence?” Ricky was so drunk, it surprised me he was even keeping up. “And my Burke is not that large.”

“Man, I love Burke like my brother, and he can cook like an angel, but he’s a bull.” That was more diplomatic than what I’d been about to say. “And he was screaming for you to get your ass home. I’m here to make sure you do that.”

Ricky flapped his hand like it was unimportant. He had to be drunk because I could never see him dismissing Burke like that. “Your mane is all floofy.”

I resisted the urge to tamp down my hair. I was in my human form, not my lion. No matter what he said, it wasn’t floofy, no way. My hand still crept up to check, though. I sighed. He might be drunk, but he wasn’t blind.

“It gets all floofy when you seeyoursheriff.”

I glared at him. The last thing I needed was him talking about Sheriff Butch and he absolutely wasn’tmyanything. “You’re talking out of your drunk ass. Drink up. You’ve got a passel to cuddle, though I’d suggest you don’t breathe on them.”

Ricky obliged by falling off his seat.

I groaned in complaint and bent down to haul him off the floor. I held him as his legs decided to do some sort of weird dance while working to hold him up. It would have been funny if I wasn’t the one getting booted. “How can you be so graceful on the pole and a total klutz now?”

He turned to look at me, but his eyes went in opposite directions. “You wanna learn to pole dance? I can teach you.”

His breath hit me and I was convinced another hit would get me as pissed as him. I made a scoffing noise in the back of my throat. “I’m a lion. We don’t climb poles like a panther.”

“You just want to climb our local law enforcement,” Ricky mumbled, failing at side eye.

I ignored him as I gripped his bicep and steered him to the door. “This is not about me. This is about you evading your baby daddy duties.”

Ricky tripped over his feet. I caught him before he face-planted the asphalt. “I love my babies and my ballsy-bull.”

Dear gods, I don’t need to hear him loving on Burke’s balls. It was bad enough having to listen to it every night, or in the day when they couldn’t seem to figure when to stop.

I shoved him into the pride’s van. “Come on.”

Then he started singing. My ears rang with the god awful racket.

“Oh, hell no,” I muttered crossly, grabbing for my noise-canceling headphones, because I went nowhere without them these days. A lion couldn’t be safe anywhere. I ignored the wannabe Tim in the back of the van. One yodeling stalk was definitely enough.

Not ten minutes later, I opened the kitchen door and pushed Ricky into Burke’s arms, leaving him to be scolded and loved at the same time, their stalks squashed between them.

The pride house kitchen had turned into a creche. Tim nursed his lion cub, and Maximus, the pride alpha, sat next to him at the kitchen table cuddling their stalks to his chest. The mini-bull calf was currently fast asleep in Apollo’s arms, resting on his slight bump.

Apollo had just gotten over his morning sickness, to everyone’s relief. Constant hurling had been miserable for all of us with how he liked to project the sound, bouncing it around the whole damn house. Pregnancy was not fun!

Maximus looked over at me. “The sheriff’s looking for you.”

Every hair on my body stood erect at his words.

“See, I told you,” Ricky crowed and slurred. “Any mention of the sheriff and you go floofy.”

---