by Jade Alters
I yanked open the hatch and called them up. Gunner wisely had Jeanine put on a lifejacket, though I would have taken a piece of his hide if he hadn't. He also dragged up the backpacks. That was the good thing about Gunner. He kept an eye on the details.
The downpour drenched her clothes and slicked her hair, so it dripped water in her eyes. I pushed her onto a seat as I lashed her to the raft with one rope and the gunwale with another. Then I tied the line to the rail with a reef knot, which looked like half a bow.
"If the ship tips over, pull this cord." I had to yell at her above the wailing squall.
She nodded, and I hoped to God she heard me above the wind.
Gunner lashed his own harness and tied himself into my contraption. Now all of us circled the life raft that held our slim hope of survival.
Next Gunner gave me two of our backpacks to tie into the raft, and he secured the other two. Then Gunner also lashed himself to the gunwale rails. All we had left to do was stay with the raft, which had the survival supplies.
But we were not catching any breaks here, and all we could do was hold on as if our lives depended on it, which they did.
I was glad we had a full raft, though individual life rafts would have been better. Those things sealed up around you like a cocoon. And while you'd toss like a bitch inside them, you'd stay safe in almost any blow.
We could only hope that the storm rolled over us and left us in calmer seas, but until then we'd have to ride Neptune's anger out.
Gunner sat next to a shivering Jeanine. We might be in the middle of the Caribbean, but it was a cold deluge that hit us. I sat on her other side and tied my anchor line with another reef knot. Damon sat with grim determination at the wheel unwilling to let go.
Water drops danced and spun on the deck like crazy ballerinas while the boat's engine chugged against the force of the heaving sea. Even with the wind's whine rushing over us, I heard the small sounds of distress from Jeanine's throat. She'd been a trooper through this but the overpowering weather and her day so far had to be too much for her. Hell, it was almost too much for me, and I trained and ran ops in waters like these. I put my arm around her to comfort her.
"We will be fine," I said. "You've got the best Navy SEAL team in the world watching out for you."
She stared at me with a defiant expression that told me she didn't believe me.
In considering the events of the day, I had trouble believing it myself.
The boat rocked and spun from an overpowering gust that would have thrown us on the deck or overboard if we hadn't secured our bodies to the vessel. Damon valiantly tried to turn back into the waves, but then a wall of water roared up over us.
I swallowed hard, because though I'm brave, foolhardy, or both, I knew the odds of coming out of this alive.
Damon pushed the engines to the limit, ignoring Kane's earlier warning because we had to get over the crest of that wave before it smashed on us. If we didn't, we'd die.
The tiny boat climbed, its engines strained against the slope but finally broke the crest, and I breathed with relief because we'd cheated death one more time.
But then another, smaller, but still a forceful wave crashed over the bow and swamped us with water. We were going under, no doubt about it.
My team and I locked eyeballs knowing what would happen next. We all pulled our lash cords, and I pulled Jeanine's freeing us from the gunwales. Another wave poured more water into the boat tossing us into the stormy ocean along with the raft.
My plan was a desperate one, based on our superior strength and swimming skills, but trying to pile into a raft during this blow was dangerous too. We could easily tangle in the lines and get pulled under to drown.
But we'd drown if I hadn't attached us to the raft, so as my foster mother used to say, six and one-half dozen of the other.
The raft slammed in the ocean and bobbed up. I held onto my line and Jeanine's to keep them from getting tangled.
I grabbed Jeanine and with the force of my arms tossed her into the bottom of the raft. She flopped on the yellow raft and then turned and spit out a mouthful of water.
"What the hell!" she yelled.
"Hold on to the lines.," I yanked at the rope that circled the raft. "Don't let go." And to the rest, I ordered, "Fucking swim," because I did not want us caught in the undertow of the overturned boat going under. It hadn't yet, but all I saw was a thin sliver of bow pointing toward the darkened sky. It was a good thing I pulled Jeanine and Gunner out of the hold when I did because otherwise, they'd be dining in Davy Jones' locker tonight.
We swam and pulled the raft as it bobbed on the water. Now our goal was different. Instead of trying to head into the waves, we swam in their direction trying to keep on top of the swells. And hope that as quickly as the bad weather had come upon us, it would depart as quickly.
My team were strong swimmers, stronger than usual because they were shifters, but as I looked over my shoulder, I could see them tiring. Each of their eyes glowed with a green light that told me they were calling on their beasts for extra strength.
As we strove against the might of the sea, a shaft of yellowish light broke through the dark clouds. The winds eased, the rain turned to a drizzle, and the waves calmed. The storm had passed us, and now we were at the far edge.
"In the raft," I said. We all needed a break including me, and I wanted to make sure my, I mean, our mate, wasn't worse for wear.
One by one we piled in. Gunner pulled a water bladder from one pack and passed it to Jeanine.
"More water?" she said incredulously. "I've seen enough water to last a lifetime."
"Strange as it may seem, you should keep hydrated," said Gunner. Jeanine took it and winced when she drank the liquid that had sat in the bladder for a couple days. It didn't taste like fresh spring water, but we'd all moved past that during training.
She tried to hand the bladder to Gunner, but he pointed to Damon. Everyone drank, and I assessed our situation. I didn't see land, and I had no idea how far off course we were. We could drift like this for days. Team Shadow could handle it, but Jeanine? I wasn't sure. It's no fun being adrift in the ocean for days on end, so I made an executive decision.
"Hand me the sat phone, Gunner."
"Wait. You have a satellite phone?" said Jeanine in dismay. "Why didn't you use it before?"
"Because anyone can track a sat phone if they are listening and we were trying to get away. But I'm hoping now that Morgan's associates are too busy with the aftermath of the storm to take notice of us."
"Here you go, Chief," said Gunner. He tossed the phone at me, and I almost lost it in the water but caught it at the last second.
"Way to go, Chief," said Damon.
"But who do you call?" said Jeanine.
"Ghostbusters," smirked Gunner.
"Oh, geez," said Jeanine. "Original, Gunner."
Kane laughed. "She got you, Gun."
"Ha," said Gunner. "No, babe. Ryker will switch on the automatic SOS, and hopefully, that will lead our ride to our location."
"Our ride?"
"And who are you calling 'babe,'" said Damon. He glared at Gunner.
Oh boy. Here we go.
"Stand down, Damon. We've something to discuss."
"What would that be?" Kane rumbled in a low growl.
"Not here. Not now.
"Why the hell not?" said Damon.
"Hey, guys," said Jeanine. "How long will it take for a ship to pick us up?"
Gunner
Was Jeanine trying to deflect the rising tension between us with her question? The ocean slapped the sides of the raft as we stared at each other contemplating the unthinkable. In my mind's eye, I saw my brethren in their animal forms with their ears pinned back and their chatoyant eyes glowing green.
Jeanine stared at us wide-eyed, and her hands dug into her thighs as she heard Damon growl.
"Hey," she said too sunnily. "I thought you guys purred instead of growled."
Damon lurched tow
ard Jeanine. His animal's instinct was now in control though he hadn't shifted. Ryker jumped Damon and hauled him backward.
"Stand down."
Damon let loose a loud feral roar as he struggled with our Alpha. Jeanine shrieked and pushed back away from him. Kane joined in, and the two forced Damon on his back.
"Get ahold of yourself, Darkman," said Kane.
Damon stared up into the sky as his breath came out in hard chugs.
"What's wrong with him?"
I scooted to her side and put my arms around her.
"PTSD," I said. "You've heard of it?"
Ryker shot me a warning glance. He was an upfront guy and knowing him like I do, figured he did not like me lying to her. But were we going to expose our true selves to our mate on a raft in the middle of churning seas?
"I know what it is. Does he always have it this bad?"
"Gunner," warned Ryker.
"Not like this," I blurted. I gave him a hard stare trying to communicate with him that we shouldn't scare Jeanine with the revelations of our true form. Ryker chewed his lip but nodded in understanding.
Damon thrashed and growled, and Jeanine watched him with concern on her face.
"Will he be okay?" said Jeanine.
Damon clutched her leg, but she pulled back.
"Won't someone help him?" Jeanine said. She sat with her back to the wall of the raft, and an expression caught between fear and concern on her face. I could tell she wanted to flee. But there was no place to go.
Damon chuffed in deep breaths, and as I leaned forward to remove Damon's hand, Jeanine put hers on mine and shook her head. She stared at Damon as if trying to parse what was happening then slipped to her knees and put her hands on Damon's head.
"Chill, big guy," she said soothingly. "It's okay. We're all here. You'll be fine." We watched in amazement as Damon calmed as she stroked his hair.
This woman had guts to get near a soldier ready to lose his shit. Granted she didn't know he was a shifter, but she had to know that he was dangerous, regardless.
Damon shook his head and then looked into Jeanine's eyes.
"Hey," he said, "what happened?"
Jeanine pulled her hands away.
"Hey, don't stop, doll. That felt good."
"You look better," said Jeanine.
"You flipped out there," said Ryker with a scowl.
"Your PTSD," chimed in Kane.
Damon stared at Kane for a long second until it sunk into his head.
"Yeah, right," he said. "You don't know how to keep your mouth shut, do you, Doc? What about doctor/patient confidentiality?"
"That's for real doctors and real patients," snorted Kane. "Besides, it was Gunner who ratted you out."
"Nothing's sacred." He sat up and looked out over the water and the sinking sun spreading pink on the horizon. "Looks like calm seas tonight."
"How do you get that?" said Jeanine.
"Red in the morning and all," offered Kane.
"Is that true?"
"In middle latitudes, yes," said Kane. "And we are in a middle latitude. Lower latitudes, not so much."
"So what will we do?" asked Jeanine.
"Drift and wait for rescue," said Ryker.
"That doesn't sound like much of a plan."
"If we find an island, we'll land," said Damon.
"We've got water for a few days if we are careful and food," said Ryker.
"And we have each other," said Kane.
Jeanine looked at the water that collected in the raft's bottom. "Is this plastic monstrosity leaking?"
"Nah," I said. "This is usual. Waves splashing over the side—spray."
"Can you get rid of it?"
"Do you see a pail here?"
Jeanine threw her head back to the edge of the raft. "Wonderful. In a wet raft in the open water as night is falling." She shivered.
"You cold, doll?" said Damon.
"Tired," she said.
"Yeah," I said. "It's been a tough day."
"You think?" she said.
"Well, let's do this," said Damon. He slid next to her. "Let's share body heat."
"Damon," growled Kane.
"No, wait," said Ryker. "Kane you take the other side, and, Gunner, get some shut-eye, and I will take the first lookout."
"Hey," I objected.
"Then Damon will take next watch, you help keep Jeanine warm. Then I'll switch out with Kane. By the time morning comes we'll see where the tide is taking us."
I scooted over to Ryker.
"What are you doing?" I said in a low whisper. Damon and Kane's ears were as good as mine, but they were preoccupied in settling next to Jeanine.
"Look," he said in just as low a tone, "are you not getting it? There are four shifters here who think one woman is their mate. There is only one of two ways this goes down. One—we fight each other to the death. Do you want that?"
"No, of course not."
"So there's door number two. We share."
"What! Are you out of your ever-loving mind?"
"Possibly. But I can't see any other way. It's that, or this unit breaks apart. And if your cat is as insistent as mine, there is no way any of us can walk away from her."
"I hate this idea."
"I'm not fond of it myself. Do you have another option?"
I scratched my day's scruff and couldn't come up with a replacement idea. With my glance at Damon and Kane cradling my mate between them, my jaguar growled within. But Damon, Kane, and Ryker were closer than brothers to me. We'd been through hell and back. You could say that I loved them as brothers, and I wanted them to have every good thing possible.
Jeanine was a good thing. Loving Jeanine was better.
"But isn't it strange," I said to Ryker, "that all four of us see her as our mate?"
"Hell, Gunner, what do we know about how we became what we are?"
"Apparently born that way," I said. "At least that is what the Navy researchers said."
"Yeah. I wondered about that too. They didn't seem especially shocked."
Ryker was right. They weren't. The researchers' treatment of us had been routinely clinical as if they'd done all of the work before.
"Do you think there are others like us?"
"I have seen no SEAL units that match us in strength or agility. But when they had us in research, I heard of one of the Navy doctors talk about a group of guys who could be shifters who left the service. No one had seen them since."
"Shifters?"
"Where do you think I got the term?"
Come to think of it, it was Ryker who called us shifters first.
Jeanine's steady breathing told me she'd tumbled into sleep. Kane and Damon's rumbling purrs told me they would sleep soon. The full moon rose in the sky shining like a huge white pearl in the darkness.
"I used to study ancient mythology," said Ryker. "Jaguars feature heavily in pre-Colombian mythology. There is a region in Colombia, around the town of San Agustin where there are tons of jaguar statues, with faces of men, but large eyes and fangs of cats. What we know of jaguar mythology is that the central god is a jaguar god. He is a god of fire who rules the underworld at night and shines his light on the earth during the day. His wife is a jaguar goddess, who rules over midwifery and war."
"So the wife works two jobs, eh?" I said.
Ryker shrugged.
"I guess it keeps her out of trouble," he said with a wry smile.
"There are other depictions of jaguar demi-gods as warriors and protectors. We don't know a lot about their stories, but they were important in different myths. There are plenty of representations of them carved in stone. Maybe they weren't gods, Gunner. Perhaps they were a separate ancient sentient race."
"Come on," I snorted.
"In all the myths of the world, there is always at least one god that's half-beast and half-man. Egypt had Anubis, the jackal-headed god. India has Lord Ganesha, the god with the elephant head. In Mesopotamia, there was Ereshkigal, the winged goddess of t
he underworld who had taloned feet. Greek gods turned into animals at will, like Zeus, who, if he couldn't seduce a woman with his human form, found an animal form that would do the trick. The list goes on, Gunner. Why would humans associate so many deities with beastly features? I suspect at one time shifters like us could have lived in greater numbers before humans populated every corner of the globe."
"I've never thought about it, Ryker. I found out what I was ten years ago when they brought me to the facility to work with you guys."
"I always thought I was different," said Ryker. "I didn't know how different. During my teenage years, I had odd blackouts. My foster parents didn't know what to do with me, but then they were going through their own troubles. They had lots of fights, and I'd get restless and slip out of the house to get away from it. They weren't bad people, just too little money and too many kids in the house. I think it relieved them when I asked to get the state's permission to sign up for the Marines at seventeen."
"I didn't have that experience. My adoptive parents were crazy in love and had more than enough to spoil me rotten. It did not thrill them I wanted to sign up for the Navy. But I wasn't that good of a student and couldn't see myself going to college, and I wanted to see the world, so the Navy it was. So you could say that I mostly had a stress-free life until I signed up."
Ryker chuckled.
"So back to the myths," I said. "All the animal-formed gods and goddess live in the underworld?"
"Not all, but it's a theme."
"But they are warriors and protectors?"
"Yes and tied to the medical arts."
He nodded toward our medic Kane who moved to snuggle closer to Jeanine.
"But what's Jeanine's part in all this?" I said. "Why would one woman be the mate for four shifters?"
"I do not know. When we get out of this mess, we should try to find some other shifters."
"I don't know, Ryker. If the government knows about them and hasn't told us, there must be a good reason."
"There you go again, trusting the brass. How many times did I tell you to keep one eye open around those guys?"
"They haven't done wrong by us."
"Not yet," said Ryker. "It's possible they haven't figured out what to do with us. Or they might have other plans that we might not approve."