“Shut up, Dev, before I come out there and make myself a triplet.”

As if. Remi had obviously forgotten who’d taught him how to fight. “Bring it, punk. I got a new pair of boots itching to head up someone’s—”

“Would you two stop fighting over the open channel?…And grow up while you’re at it. I swear I’m going to make bear stew out of both of you tonight if you don’t stop.” Aimee broke off into a round of French, their native language, so that she could continue insulting and emasculating them.

Dev bit back a smart-ass response to his sister’s hostile tone that was punctuated by several cheers of approval from the rest of the crew, whose headsets allowed them to overhear every word.

To be honest, he and his family didn’t need the headsets to communicate. Part of being shapeshifting bears was that they could project their thoughts so long as they were within a reasonable distance from each other—though some of them were better at that than others. But that tended to raise suspicion among the mundane humans who worked for them and especially the ones who patronized their business. So they wore the sets in an attempt to at least appear normal.

Yeah, right. Normality had waved bye-bye to his family and his species a long time ago. But what the hell?

He rocked the headset look.

Even so, Dev pulled it off his head as his sister’s ranting in French reminded him of his mother’s and an unexpected surge of grief tore through him. How he missed the sound of his mother bitching at him in French….

Who would have ever thought? Of all the things to miss.

I must be sick in the head. And yet his mother’s sharp voice haunted him from the past.

You need to grow up, Devereaux…. You’re not a cub anymore. Haven’t been one in over two hundred years. Why you bait your brothers so and make me lose my mind? Mon Dieu! You are ever my bane when you misbehave. Just once, can’t you counsel your tongue and do as I ask? How can we rely on you if you insist on acting like a boy child? Did you learn nothing? Dev flinched as he saw her face in his mind while she read him his daily riot act.