She seemed to stop breathing and he could feel the tension radiating off her.
“Why?” It was barely a whisper.
“He was identified as the man killed in the fire.”
Her anguished sob was quickly cut off and a moment later he felt the trembling of her body next to him.
So she knew this Leonard guy, but how? A friend? A lover? His gut clenched at the latter thought.
“Oh God,” she whispered. “I’ll never forgive myself.”
“We’ll get whoever did this, Sienna,” he promised, pushing the stab of unwanted jealousy aside.
“Retribution after the fact? It won’t bring Leo back.”
Leo. Again his gut kicked. Definite possibility they’d been close.
“I’m sorry.”
She didn’t answer for awhile. Leaving him alone with his own dark thoughts.
“You say ‘we’. Why is this your fight, Warrick?” she finally asked, her voice laden with fatigue now. “This whole shifter thing. Why are you involved? You don’t have a horse in the race, so to speak.”
He opened his eyes and stared at the dark swirls in the wood boards of the ceiling, chewing over how to answer that. “The shifter community can’t exist, Sienna.”
“Only they do.”
“Yes. But the people in today’s world aren’t ready to accept such a controversial and extraordinary race of species.” He sighed. “The P.I.A. is an organization that regulates how many humans can know of their existence. We also help keep order over the shifters and their community.”
“Okay. I guess that makes sense.” She rolled onto her side and placed her hand between her cheek and the pillow. “The whole regulating-humans-knowing-about-them thing, I mean. It would be like telling someone the monsters they grew up fearing really do exist.”
Monsters. Warrick’s lips twisted into a humorless smile.
“They don’t scare you at all?” she asked skeptically.
“No,” he replied without emotion. “They don’t scare me.”
She made a soft harrumph. “No. Of course they don’t. You’re Warrick Donovan. How foolish of me to even ask. I doubt you’re afraid of anything.”
Warrick grunted at the cynicism in her comment. “Fear is a useless emotion that debilitates. So no, I try not to indulge in it.”
“Right, because being afraid is a choice?” She snorted. “I swear, Warrick, you’ve got some kind of superhero complex or something.”
“The last thing I’m trying to do is save the world, Sienna.”
“Just the shifters,” she finished on a sigh.
He turned his head to glance at her and found her brows drawn together, her gaze pensive. It was kind of nice, having a normal—well, as normal as circumstances allowed—conversation with her. It dropped a few years off their history, almost put him mentally back to a time when things were more easygoing and carefree.
Though that wasn’t quite true. Even on a good day, there’d been a dark current running through his life. An anger toward his father that continued to haunt him every damn time he woke up to a new day. But being with Sienna had always been a bit of a balm to his soul. She was like a bloody therapist with her expressive blue gaze and her ability to listen without judgment.
He watched her tongue dart over her lips and his attention slid down to the fullness of her mouth. The blood pounded faster in his veins and he drew in an unsteady breath.
God, he’d swear she did that shit on purpose. That sexy little lip-licking thing. Maybe it was a flirting technique she’d mastered on the boys back in college. It was seductive as hell—
“You said you regulate how many humans are allowed to know about shifter existence.”
“Mmm hmm.”
“How so?”
If you discover them we make sure you never remember it. Shit. How did he explain to Sienna the very thing that was under consideration for her future?
Sienna gave a nervous laugh. “That bad?”
He could lie, or hedge around the question, but this was Sienna and she wasn’t stupid. He probably shouldn’t have let that part slip, but now that he had she deserved to know. To understand what could happen to her.
“If a human discovers the existence of shifters,” he hesitated, clenched his jaw, then plunged on. “Their memories are wiped.”
Dead silence for a moment. Then Sienna let out a high-pitched laugh.
“Seriously, Warrick, I know you’ve always been a sci-fi fan, but come on. That kind of stuff isn’t possible.”
“Just like people who shift from human to wolf aren’t possible, right, Sienna?”
“But, I would’ve heard about something like that,” she argued, her tone uneasy now. “There’s no way the government would let you—”