Joe heard a shout from behind him, and he saw one of the unarmed assassins grappling with Red, hands groping for Red’s knife as they struggled. Joe lunged forward, drawing his own knife just as the assassin broke away and stepped back, at the ready. Gunshots rang around them as Red drew his pistol to suppress fire around Joe while Joe and the assassin squared off with knives. He came in for a lunge, but Joe’s reflexes let him move twice as fast, dodging out of the way and returning a slice across the man’s arm. In a quick flourish, he brought the knife down and into the back of the man’s neck, ending him silently.
Just as he caught his breath, though, Joe heard the click of a gun behind him and froze, immediately holding his hands up. “This ends here, you fucking freak of nature,” said the voice behind him. He clenched his jaw, bracing himself. He wasn’t going to give his assassin the dignity of hearing his last words.
In fact, he wasn’t even going to give his assassin the dignity of killing him.
Joe moved swifter than the assassin could react, faster than any human should, ducking and swinging his leg around to sweep the man’s legs out from under him, sending him spiraling to the ground.
The assassin hit the ground, and Joe drew his knife to move in and finish the job, but his pupils dilated as he realized the assassin had held onto the pistol and was aiming at him again even as he dove in. Joe’s life flashed before his eyes as the assassin raised his weapon and his heart skipped a beat as a gunshot rang out.
And the assassin’s arm fell to the ground as he went limp; his neck spurted blood from a gunshot wound. Another bullet whizzed an inch from Joe’s ear.
Sensing an opening, he pounced at the assassin and neutralized him. His attention snapped in the direction of the shooter, and his jaw dropped. Rose was standing in the doorway, her hands trembling as she held the pistol in her grip.
“Rose,” he breathed, but before he could stop her, she stepped into the room and opened her mouth to speak.
Then a figure dressed in all black appeared behind her like a shadow, throwing an arm around her neck and holding a knife to her throat.
Joe saw her eyes clench as she dropped the pistol, her hands going to her captor’s arm, but she restrained herself as the knife’s steel touched her neck.
“Give up,” the assassin growled, “and the civilian doesn’t get hurt.”
“Don’t do it!” she shouted before he put his hand over her mouth, her voice a muffled fury as she glared at the assassin.
But Joe hardly heard them. His blood was boiling at the sight of someone threatening Rose. At that very moment, he realized that she was more than his secretary or a woman he bedded.
He loved her. He wanted her as his, forever.
His feral nature awakened within him.
Joe’s predatory eyes watched with utter relish as he pounced forward, simultaneously letting his true nature breach the surface. His hands became massive claws with golden fur, his legs became powerful paws that propelled him forward, and as his jaws opened, he felt his mane sprout out from around him and his face extend into a muzzle, a fierce lion’s roar breaching the darkness of the building.
There was fear in Rose’s eyes, too, but as the assassin tried to back away, she dove aside, out of the path of destruction Joe was about to carve.
The 450-pound lion landed on the assassin’s body as he let out a shriek, but at the same time as the great cat’s weight shattered his ribs under his weight, Joe’s jaws closed around the man’s neck, and he took the man’s life with a single, sickening crack.
“He’s shifted!” one of the remaining assassin’s shouted, and more gunshots rang out, but Joe had already bolted from the body, darting into the darkness with fast, bounding steps as the sounds of ricocheting bullets rang out in the building. Joe heard Rose running for cover while he ran, but he was only peripherally aware of her at that instant. He was after their blood.
He knew what he did was wrong. He had agreed along with the rest of his fellow shifters that they would never again use the powers the government inflicted upon them to kill. But the sight of Rose in danger triggered something within him even he couldn’t control.
But after he broke that oath, he caught the scent of the other three melting into their feral forms. What happened next was nothing short of a massacre the assassins never could have been prepared for.
Two lions who has been under suppressing fire by some of the assassins pounced into the line of fire, bullet holes stinging them like nothing more than bee stings as they tore forward, and in an instant they were upon the assailants, tearing them apart in a flurry of claws. The lion that had been Red caught one of the assassins fleeing out the back door, ripping into his back mercilessly.
Joe’s vision was blurred with bloodlust. He tore through the building, and felt his jaws getting soaked with blood as he ripped through the remaining assassins, not even certain who or what he was mauling. He heard gunshots and screams around him, but he felt no pain. His muscles tore through flesh, and he pounced on.
Joe bounded towards the last human in the room, and he stopped short as his face was an inch from hers. He smelled his mate, and his eyes regained their focus in time to see her staring right back at him. His heavy breathing washed over her, and slowly, his bloodlust subsided, and he took a step back.
Joe wrestled with his will to regain control, reigning in his body as every muscle was poised to kill. His breath slowed, and he mustered his will to regain human speech.
“Rose?”
“Joe…?” she repeated, standing to her feet carefully. Joe was astounded at what he smelled in the air. There was fear on her, but the stink of panic was absent. She was afraid, but she stood in his presence, fully upright and exposed before him. He heard his fellow beasts circling in the darkness, but he growled at them, keeping them at bay.
“I never meant for you to see me like this,” his deep voice rumbled, his deep golden eyes turning back to Rose, and once he had regained enough of his human will, he shifted back into his human form, tall and dark-haired as ever.
“Joe,” she breathed, “I-I found out you were meeting here from your laptop. I was worried about you. I f-found the gun on the ground and oh god! I shot a person. What… what did you do just now? What did I just see?”
Joe took a deep breath, but he dared not take a step towards her as he was; he was poised for her to recoil from him. “Rose, I haven’t been completely honest with you. I’ve only been a private eye for a few years. My men and I,” he gestured to the lions now drawing closer, sitting in the darkness as their leader spoke, “we were part of an elite special operations unit in the military. We were volunteered for a military genetic research program spearheaded by ArisCorp. The military wanted super soldiers. So we were volunteered for experimental recombinant gene treatment. The results were…” he looked around him at the massacred assassins, he and his men utterly covered in blood, “… effective. So much so that the government panicked. They ordered us terminated after our first mission. So we went into hiding.”