“You swore them to secrecy”
“About you being a hyena, Sin, not our mating.”
I think Sinclair forgot to breathe.
“Sinclair?”
“You told them that I’m a hyena?” he whispered.
“I did.” I felt Sinclair’s hand tremble in mine as he turned to look at the others. “Baby, there’s nothing to be afraid of. They don’t care if you’re a hyena, a panther, or a purple pig. All they care about is the loyalty you have shown each and every one of us over the years. That means more than what animal you can shift into.”
Sinclair’s hand tightened on mine. “Hyenas are by nature loners. That’s why we have such a bad reputation. We don’t answer to the council like other shifters do. But that’s not totally the truth either. We’re loners until we meet our mate. Once we have been claimed, we start a pride with our mates.”
“You’re a hyena,” Stryker said. “Wouldn’t that be a pack and not a pride? Prides are for cats.”
Sinclair shook his head. “Hyenas arefeliform carnivorans. Phylogenetically, they are closer to felines and viverrids.”
“Why have we never heard of this before?” Stryker asked.
Sinclair glanced up at the man. “How many mated hyenas do you know?”
Stryker chuckled. “Good point.”
“Panthers have the reputation for only coming together to create children, and then moving on. That isn’t totally the truth either.” Sinclair drew in a breath, and I knew he was trying to regain control of his emotions.
“I think that a lot of different shifter species have reputations for one thing or another, but it isn’t all they are. You aren’t all just assassins, even if everyone knows that’s what panthers do.” He waved his hand toward Shade and Bob. “You mate, fall in love, and raise Maine Coons. You’re not just mindless killers, but that’s your reputation.”
“I agree,” Shade said, “but what you need to understand, Sinclair, is that none of us cared before you explained things. We all decided what we knew of you as a man was more important than the crap labeled on the hyena species as a whole.”
“And I appreciate that, I do,” Sinclair replied. “I just wanted you to know that it wasn’t true, especially now. Stone has claimed me and we’re a pride now. Stone has my total devotion. I will never stray, never leave him, and never betray him. Now that he belongs to me, he is my sole focus. I would die for him.”
Bob tugged on Shade’s shirt. “I want to be part of a pride.”
No one said a word.
“It’s not that simple, Bob,” Sinclair said a moment later.
“Why not?”
I wanted to smile at Bob’s innocence. He had no concept of shifter life. While shifters might be exposed to the world, most humans did not understand what it meant to be one.
“In order to be a pride,” Sinclair explained, “there has to be an exchange of blood.”
Shade growled and hauled Bob into his lap, letting everyone in the room how he felt about that.
Sinclair chuckled. “It doesn’t have to be much, a drop will work. But the blood exchange isn’t the important part. It’s what the blood exchange does that is.”
“So, what does it do?” Bob asked.
“Once a hyena has mated and created his pride of two, any who do the exchange of blood become part of that pride.”
I would have chimed in, but I knew about as much as Bob did. Before Sinclair told me, I never even knew hyenas could form prides.
“Once you become part of a pride, you can feel it, feel each member of the pride. There’s a…a…sense of being part of something bigger than yourself.”
“So, why can’t we do that? We’re pretty much already a pride.”
“It’s really not that simple.”
