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Without a word, they hopped in and she started driving up the mountain and waited patiently for Noah’s questions.

“Why are the transitions killing us?”

“The short answer; we don’t really know.But Liv, Kai’s mate, has been working on comparing human and immortal DNA to figure out why some humans can make the transition.There have been four so far and Liv has come to the conclusion it’s because their mates have turned them.Humans, while there are some exceptions, will die during the transition without being turned by a mate.”

“Did your mate change you?”

Jade shook her head.“I don’t remember anything about my transition or human life, which is unusual, but none of the immortals from Dark Company were turned by their mate.Well, Reaper met Ara a couple years ago and after she transitioned, she became an assassin.Kai turned Liv, both vampires.Reaper and Ara are wolves.Seth was turned into a vampire by Aubrey, his mate.Xander, a snow leopard, turned his mate Frost and they had a baby, Silas.He’s the cutest thing and Liv suspects why Frost was able to get pregnant, but none of the other women shifters or vampires can.”

“Why did you guys survive being transitioned by someone other than your mate and others don’t?”

“We truly don’t know, but Liv suspects that something in our DNA, something powerful, kept us alive.Ara is a telekinetic and grew stronger after she transitioned.Actually, they grew tenfold after she became a wolf shifter.”

Noah grew silent as he processed what she’d told him.She understood that the world he’d known most of his adult life had changed and he had to process it anew.

“I didn’t know there were vampires.”

“Shifters are more common than vampires.Kai, Kane, Thomas, and Isaac are the only vampire assassins on the team.Seth and Aubrey aren’t with the company and Liv works in her lab.Kane lost his mate several years ago and while he’s thriving now, you can see a bit of sadness from time to time.”

Jade paused.“The group we’re tracking believe the only true immortals are shifters and they look down on vampires.How did you become involved in this situation?”

“My best bud, Sam, and I recently took early retirement from the SEALs.We were thinking about starting our own protection and private security company, but Sam heard of this lucrative deal where they paid ex-soldiers a lot of money, for what, I didn’t know at the time.

“Sam had gone behind my back and signed me up.We were transported to a farm in the middle of the night without any warning.They put us two to a room.I didn’t realize it at the time, but they had bitten Sam before they locked us in a room.I barely understood what was happening through words Sam could barely get out.On the second day, his body rejected whatever was happening inside of him and he died.”

They grew quiet after that.There was nothing Jade could say or do that would make Noah understand that not all immortals were the same.And it wouldn’t be fair for her to defend her kind.They were taking men who had volunteered for combat to defend this country and making them martyrs in a losing cause because they wanted power and money.She knew that both humans and immortals were capable of horrendous acts, but Noah hated immortals because they took the one person who meant the world to him.

She wouldn’t kid herself and believe he came to Ghost for any other purpose than to avenge his friend.It mattered not that Jade had found her mate because he’d deserved better.He deserved his revenge against those responsible for his friends death.Hatred was his motivating factor.Hatred of all immortals.

And that meant he hated her as well.