“That’s so sad.”
I expected the first three responses. Bob’s wasn’t one I thought I’d hear.
“I was on an assignment to terminate a man who had been selling government secrets to a foreign power. Everything in his file checked out as did my reconnaissance.”
I knew from the way Shade, Stryker, and Samson nodded that they knew exactly what I was talking about. I never took an assignment on faith. I always checked out my mark before terminating them. I suspected they did the same.
“I took up a position on the roof across from my mark’s house. The plan was to terminate him, and then call my handler. He would send in some people to make it look like a break-in. I just simply had to eliminate the man.”
“How did you end up shooting Sinclair?” Shade asked.
“I’d like to say it was wrong place, wrong time, but that isn’t the truth. Sinclair was dating the guy.”
“Damn,” Samson whispered. “That had to suck.”
I hadn’t been happy when I found out, that’s for sure.
“I had the guy in my sights. It was going to be an easy shot. He was lounging on his couch. Just as I pulled the trigger, Sinclair stepped in front of him. Once he went down, my mark—the loving, caring guy that he was—ran, leaving Sinclair to bleed out all over his floor.”
“Is that when you met Sinclair?” Bob asked.
I nodded. “I’ll be honest. I went in to see if he was dead, and if not, eliminate him.”
“It’s the only thing you could have done,” Samson said. “Leaving him to bleed out would have been inhumane.”
I wasn’t sure I agreed with Samson’s line of thinking, but it did make sense. I just wasn’t that humane. I hadn’t wanted there to be any witnesses. Besides, I figured a dead body in my mark’s house would have been pretty hard for him to explain.
“When I reached him, he was obviously still alive, but just barely. When I caught his scent, and realized he was my mate…” I shook my head, averting my eyes when tears flooded them. I had been devastated when I realized I had almost killed my mate. “I called my handler and we got Sinclair to a hospital as quickly as we could.”
“What happened to the mark?” Stryker asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t care. I let my old handler deal with it. My concern was Sinclair.”
“How exactly did you shooting him put him in a chair?” Shade asked. “Why didn’t he just shift and heal himself?”
“I use a special type of bullet meant to explode outward once it enters the body, causing maximum damage. The bullet is lodged against his spine. If he shifts, it will move the bullet and it can explode. If they try and take it out, it can explode. I’ve never been able to figure out why it didn’t explode on impact, but I’ll always be grateful that it didn’t. It would have severed his spine, and there is no coming back from that, not even for a shifter.”
“So, he can’t shift?”
I shook my head. “He hasn’t been able to shift since that day.”
It had been a very long time.
Bob might not have understood what the rest of us were feeling, but I imagine he could feel the sudden tension in the air. It was unheard of for a shifter not to shift at least once a month, if not once a week. For someone to go years was as amazing as it was insane.
“Unfortunately, the doctor who treated him hated shifters. I didn’t find that out until later, and by then, it was too late. If he had had surgery in the very beginning, it might have made a difference, but once the wound started to heal, it lodged the bullet against his spine. It would have killed Sinclair if they tried to remove it.”
“Sweet mother of mercy,” Stryker whispered.
“Is he breathing?” Shade asked.
“No,” I answered simply. The man hadn’t lived more than twenty-four hours after I learned of what he had done. Cold? Maybe, but this was my mate we were talking about. “Once I knew Sinclair would live, I made arrangements for him to be transferred to a shifter hospital.”
I drew in a heavy breath and met the eyes of each man in the room. “That’s when I learned he was a hyena shifter.”
Shade didn’t say anything. Neither did Bob, but then, Bob had no idea what that meant.
Samson and Stryker, however, had a lot to say.
