by Amelia Jade
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Rachel said, shooting glances at both of them. “Why do you both look so stunned at that?”
“It’s…that’s just despicable.”
“An abomination.”
“Dishonorable.”
“Vile.”
“Abhorrent.”
“Wouldn’t happen.”
“Ever.”
“Okay. Okay,” she said, waving her hands to get them to stop.
Hector fell silent.
“You’re telling me shifters don’t operate like that?”
He shook his head while Andrew vocalized his thoughts in the negative.
“Bullshit.”
“It’s not how we operate, Rachel. We confront our problems head-on. We’re not sneaks. We have issues, but something like that is just repulsive to even contemplate.” He shook his head yet again. “Not possible.”
“All right, all right,” she said, throwing up her hands in surrender. “Got it. So what do we do now?”
Hector looked at his boss. “Did we ever hear from the fire department what caused the fire?” He carefully didn’t mention his thoughts about it being deliberately set, and was glad when Rachel didn’t bring it up either. A line had already been crossed by suggesting that Corvin’s death was actually a coverup. No need to do it twice in one day. Not that he believed a shifter could do that to begin with. The whole situation was weird, and he didn’t like it.
“No, not yet,” Andrew replied. “I didn’t think it urgent, but they said they had a report ready. I was going to pick it up in the morning.”
“I’ll do it,” he volunteered.
“Thanks,” Andrew said.
The trio of them looked around at each other, but nothing was said. They’d all spoken their pieces already, so he and Rachel started toward the exit. Before he left, Hector turned back to look at Andrew. “How long?” he asked quietly.
His boss looked up at him. “I’ll try to delay, but not long. Twenty-four, maybe forty-eight hours, tops.”
Andrew pursed his lips in thought. Then he nodded once and left the office, trailing after Rachel, who was headed for the exit.
Chapter Nineteen
Rachel
She hit the double doors at the front of the embassy and pushed one open, emerging into the late afternoon, or maybe early evening sky. It didn’t really matter what she termed it. It was cooling down already, and promising a chilly night ahead.
“So, back to my place then?” she asked, making her way to the stairs and taking the railing.
It hit her when she was halfway down the stairs that there had been no reply. Turning, she realized that Hector was at the doors, holding onto one of them, looking out over the town. Rachel looked at him, taking in his facial expression, his body language and positioning. He was keeping himself closed off to her, half-resting the front of his body on the door itself.
“You’re not coming back with me, are you?” she asked, pitching her voice low.
“You should go on ahead,” he replied.
“Why? Why can’t we go together? When are you coming?”
Hector’s jaw worked, but he didn’t say anything.
“You are coming, aren’t you?”
Hector’s shoulders rose and fell, then he shook his head, still refusing to meet her eyes. “You should go,” he said, his lips barely moving as the words came out. “It would be better that way.”
“Better?” she asked with a bark of laughter. “Better?”
“Yes,” he said solemnly.
“Excuse me? Who the hell are you to decide what’s better for me? I want you to come back with me. I think I know best!”
Hector’s head moved in a negative. “I can’t.”
“Why the fuck not?” she snapped, storming back up the stairs until she was as close to nose-to-nose with him as she could get despite the foot height difference.
Hector opened his mouth but she poked him in the chest first. Hard. “You will look at me when you speak.”
His haunted brown eyes snapped down to focus on her with such force that she rocked back slightly, terrified of the look she saw in them.
“You heard Andrew,” he said softly, the pain in his eyes reflected in his words. “I’m being recalled back to Cadia. That isn’t a temporary thing, Rachel. Once I go, I’m never coming back. Ever. Do you understand that? Perhaps two days, maximum, and then I am gone.”
She felt her eyes well up as he spoke a truth she’d known, but so far refused to completely acknowledge. “I know that,” she snapped. “I’m not stupid. Maybe I want to spend those last forty-eight hours with you. Did your thick head ever consider that possibility? Did it?’
Hector looked away.
“I thought not.”
“It’s inevitable,” he protested. “Why make it even more painful than it already has to be? Just go home, go be with your friends, your groups. Forget about me, and try to start moving on,” he pleaded. “It will be far easier this way, I promise you.”
“Easy?” she shouted, her anger starting to get the better of her. “You think it’s going to be easy to just wave goodbye to you? After the way you came storming into my life, turned it upside down, and made me fall so hard for you? Now you just want to push me away, just like that? Who the hell do you think you are, Hector Gorchan? You have some nerve.”
“Rachel.”
She could hear his voice breaking, but she was so mad she couldn’t feel sorrow for him. It wasn’t fair. He couldn’t just waltz into her life, wait for her to fall in love with him, and then leave. “It’s not fair,” she said quietly.
“What else do you want me to do?” he asked helplessly. “I can’t fight this. If I refuse to go, I become hunted. They’ll send the others after me. When they find me, they’ll be within their rights to kill me. Do you get it? I have to go.”
“Maybe,” she said, slamming her fist into the other door, making the glass shake. “But you have two days before you do. Don’t give up. Fight for yourself. Find a way to fix this.”
Hector snorted. “It doesn’t work that way, Rachel. I’m sorry.”
Her vision became obscured. “Don’t do this, Hector. Please.”
There was a pause. “It’s for the best, Rachel. It really is.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head, tears falling down her cheeks. “I refuse to believe that.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe, maybe this is what I deserve, for letting Corvin die while I was on duty. Maybe this is my fate.”
She continued to shake her head back and forth. “I refuse to believe that, Hector. You’re stronger than this. You have more fight in you. Find it. Then find me.”
Without a second thought she turned and walked away, making her way down the stairs as quickly as she could without overbalancing herself. Every half-step she felt the urge to turn around, to see what he was doing, but Rachel kept her head down and forced herself to keep on walking, ignoring that urge until she was out of sight of him.
Chapter Twenty
Hector
He stood in the doorway until long after Rachel had disappeared down the sidewalk.
It was for the best, he told himself. She would go back to her place, and call up some of her friends, and they would have a cry session or two, but she would move on. It was the nature of humans. They were far more adaptable to change than his kind were. In time she would give birth, and find someone else, a new man to be a part of her life. To give her the partnership, happiness, and love that she so richly deserved.
But it wouldn’t be Hector. He would be back in Cadia, where he would live out his days alone, constantly longing for the mate that he’d had for a brief moment in time, but been unable to keep. A mate who had been torn away from him by an unfortunate set of circumstances far beyond his control.
Eventually Hector sighed in defeat, closed his eyes, and retreated back inside the embassy. There was little purpose of staying there. Rachel wasn’t coming back; he’d
seen to that by forcing her away. She would hate him for a time, but eventually she would come to understand that he’d done what he’d done for her own good. That she would be better off with a clean break. By giving her something to fixate on, a reason to be angry at him, it would come easier than a long, slow goodbye spent in each other’s arms before he had to go away for good.
It just wouldn’t feel like that at first.
His footsteps carried him to the back of the lobby and down the hallway to the left. One of the unused conference rooms had been converted to a makeshift bar and lounge area until the renovations on the ruined one could be complete. Nobody was there now, which wasn’t a surprise. It was evening, and they would be out in Cloud Lake enjoying what parts of their vacation he hadn’t ruined.
Hector plopped himself down at the bar, which he had all to himself, and then reached over and snagged a bottle of amber liquid. He didn’t even look at it, simply ripping the top off and downing a good portion of it. The thick booze burned its way down his throat, causing him to cough and shake his head, caught off guard by the strength of it.
“Wow,” he muttered, looking at the bottle thoughtfully before taking a slightly more restrained gulp the second time. It still burned, but he was ready for it this time, and it didn’t bother him as much.
Nodding in appreciation of the maker, he sat on the bar and proceeded to have a solid mope about his situation and how there was little he could do about it. He was there for an unknown amount of time until he heard footsteps at the doorway. Hector didn’t bother to acknowledge whoever it was, preferring to stay hunched over his bottle, absorbed in his own self-misery. The faceless intruder into his personal time came up and took a seat next to him. Realization slowly made its way through his alcohol-infused brain that whoever it was had come in specifically to talk to him, not for their own reasons.
“Whaddya want?” he asked, surprised at how slurred his words were. Glancing at the bottle he realized with a start that there was perhaps a finger or two of liquid left. “Damn. Gonna need a refill soon.”
At least, that’s what he thought he said.
The newcomer grabbed the bottle from him. “Fireblaze? Ouch. How much of this have you had?”
“It’s mine,” he said. “you can’t have any.”
“You opened it, didn’t you?”
Hector nodded. “Yep.” He didn’t quite have to squint at the newcomer to make out who it is, but it was close. “What do you want, Gray?” he asked, forcing himself out of his drunken state.
That was the downside of being a shifter. His metabolism burned so fast that he needed a constant stream of high-strength booze to both get drunk and stay drunk. A little effort of will to force his body to work extra hard and he could burn off enough to sober up in a double handful of seconds.
“This had better be worth me losing a good buzz,” he half-snarled, though it was mostly devoid of any real anger. Gray was too good of a guy to treat that way.
“I heard.”
Hector wasn’t surprised that Gray had heard, being Andrew’s right-hand man. But it made him realize that word was probably spreading like wildfire amongst all the shifters. If they didn’t already, they would all known soon that he was being sent back. They’ll probably be happy too. I’ve ruined all their vacations. Hopefully it gives them some satisfaction to know my entire life has been ruined.
“I’m sorry,” Gray said. “I don’t think it’s fair.”
“Of course it’s not fair,” he snapped. “But since when has it ever been about being fair? It’s not like it was fair to Corvin either. He paid the ultimate price for my lapse in judgment.”
Gray rolled his eyes, but Hector just ignored him, taking the bottle of Fireblaze back and downing the rest of it in one long swig, coughing as it seared his throat.
“I’ll leave you be then,” Gray said after a minute as Hector reached for another bottle and popped the top, not even bothering to read it. It was similar-looking, but it went down a little smoother.
Good. I can drink it faster then.
Gray got up. He stood next to Hector for a second before giving his shoulder a squeeze. “I’ll be here if you need me for anything. Just let me know.” And then he was gone.
Hector let him go. It would be better if they stopped talking too. It wasn’t like Gray was ever going back to Cadia. He had a mate in Cloud Lake, a house, and was starting a life there. Hector was unlikely to ever see him again, unless things went wrong for him too. It would all be better this way.
He looked around the room, at the dull gray paint on the wall and the terrible layout, old furniture, and all the half-assed effort that had gone into making the room serviceable, but not nice, until the official lounge was finished. He was going to miss it. The room was ugly as sin, but it was part of the embassy, part of the place he’d called home for nearly an entire year.
How was he supposed to just accept going back to Cadia? A place he’d never truly fit in. Just up and move his entire life back there, and for what? He’d probably be drummed out of the Green Bearets, the military arm of the bear shifters. That would leave him jobless, homeless, and without any real upward prospects to succeed. Maybe he’d be able to find work as a contractor or something.
Didn’t that just sound exciting?
There was a noise from his left, at the entrance to the lounge. “I thought you said you were going to leave me alone, Gray,” he said, irritated.
“Pathetic.”
His head snapped around as Martin spoke. “What did you say?”
The third embassy guard gave him a scathing look. “I said this is pathetic. Look at you. Drinking yourself stupid while you mope around, waiting to be recalled. It’s pathetic. At least accept your punishment like a man.”
Hector just stared. “Got anything else to say from way over there?”
Martin’s eyes blazed angrily, but he didn’t come any closer. “I still owe you for the other night.”
“Oh come on, Martin. I barely touched you. If you’d just moved aside like I said, then it wouldn’t have happened. Your devotion to duty is admirable, but sometimes you need to know when to let things slide, man. You’re too serious.”
“Ah,” Martin said with a shake of his head. “Maybe I should take lessons from the Hector school of how to do his job. Because we all saw how well that worked out last time.”
Hector seethed, but he didn’t rise to the bait. Martin was just pissed that he’d been unable to keep Hector at the embassy, and then after he’d reported him, Andrew had effectively sided with Hector. It was tough to blame him for being mad. It was true though; he was a little too uptight. Hector wished he would go out more, maybe find a mate. It would do wonders for him in allowing him to relax.
He almost contemplated saying something to that effect, but then—in a likely very smart move—decided against doing so. Martin was already on edge, and he didn’t need to be reminded of his lack of female companionship just then. It would likely lead to a fight, and Hector wasn’t interested in fighting his friend a second time.
“Goodbye, Martin,” he said dismissively, waving a hand at him.
To emphasize his point he turned away and lifted the bottle to his lips, taking another sip. There was a hiss of frustration from the doorway and then Martin stormed off, leaving Hector to his drinking. But the encounter had ruined the mood and atmosphere of the lounge.
“I need to get out of here,” he said to no one in particular, snagging the bottle of booze and heading toward a door at the back. He shoved it open into a service hallway at the back of the embassy and then took the first non-fire door that led him out back, emerging into darkness.
Looking around in surprise he realized that the evening had passed and it was well into night. He’d been drinking for a lot longer than he thought.
“Oh well.” He took another swig of the booze, enjoying the tingly buzz he had going on in his limbs at the moment. The liquid swished around in the bottle and Hector grimaced at how
little was left. Maybe he should have gone back for more. His head swung back to the embassy in thought.
That’s when something hit him.
Hector spun around, losing his grip on the bottle, which went flying off to smash somewhere in the distance, glass spreading all over the ground.
“You sonofabitch!” Hector roared as he turned on whoever had robbed him of his booze.
The attacker came out of the shadows, hitting with a rapid-fire combination to the stomach that didn’t do him any favors. They followed up with an uppercut that rocked Hector back. He swung wildly, missing on his first two punches but managing to graze his opponent with the third, a left jab.
“Take that!” he chortled and advanced on his foe.
Who promptly laid him out flat on his back with a well-timed haymaker to his temple.
“Ow,” he mumbled as he tried to get up.
A kick to his ribs flipped him over and sent him skidding across the pavement, ripping patches of skin from all over his body.
“Double ow,” he said woozily, getting his left arm under him and starting to rise.
A booted foot snapped his arm in half, and he collapsed on top of it, dislocating the elbow.
Hector screamed in pain.
“Good,” someone said through the haze of agony, and then kicked him hard in the head before walking away as Hector rolled onto his back, cradling his ruined arm close to him.
Hector managed to sit up after several minutes, forcing his alcohol-fused mind into action. He had to set the arm, and soon, or else it would be even worse down the line.
“You know the drill.”
He did. That didn’t make it any easier. Scrunching his eyes closed, he used his good hand to feel out the break and the dislocation. It wasn’t as bad as he’d thought, though it was going to hurt like hell. With a deep breath he wrenched his arm around and popped the elbow back into place. The movement shot agony up and down his broken arm, making him see stars, but Hector had been through this before. Setting broken bones, even his own, was nothing new.