Colby (BBW Western Bear Shifter Romance) (Rodeo Bears Book 3)

by Becca Fanning

  Out of everyone who brought her food, the only one who stayed to talk was Custer, who seemed to have brushed off the conversation about Strathmore. He sat with her, telling her bad jokes and detailing ludicrous jobs they’d had, not seeming to mind when she didn’t provide information about her own life. He filled in the silences and after a few days, Delphine was horrified to realize that she’d grown ridiculously fond of him.

  He was prattling on about something to do with engine failures when she realized she was smiling a little helplessly, no trace of irritation in her mind. It was more than not minding if he was there. She actively didn’t want him to go.

  Her blood froze. She had been so sure she had recovered from Ramirez’s faulty methods of raising her cluster, but here she was. Swallowing down bile, she tried to force the feeling away through sheer willpower. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work.

  “You okay?” he asked, his voice cutting through her reverie. His eyes were uncharacteristically earnest and despite her impending panic it made something warm in her stomach bloom.

  “Absolutely fine,” she said. “Go on.”

  He gave her a suspicious look but continued his story. He stayed for what Delphine estimated to be another hour and the whole time she sat beside him, smiling and nodding at the right places and settling into the realization she was attached.

  She was as glad as she was disappointed when he left. The time alone was helpful for getting her mind back in order but cut too short when Heathcoat and Kane walked in. Delphine raised an eyebrow. She’d seen neither hide nor hair of them since the first day.

  “Hello,” Heathcoat said. “I’m Annie, this is Zosha. Custer says you know what all of our real names are. I advise you not use them. Come with us.”

  “Why?” Delphine asked, standing up. She was a few inches taller than Kane—Zosha—and Heathcoat—Annie.

  “You need a shower. Custer’s managed to convince the rest of the crew that you should eat dinner with us. Apparently, the problem is that we haven’t gotten to know you and not that you nearly killed Zosha.”

  “I’m willing to forgive and forget as long as you don’t try it again,” Zosha said, dark eyes wide. The bruise had faded to a sickly yellow color.

  “And I’m willing to see how this plays out. Now, are you going to try and kill us the second we turn our backs?” Annie asked.

  “No. It would, I think, go poorly. Anyways, Mason will send a team as soon as they find you, so I would be wasting my effort for nothing,” she told them honestly.

  “Well, that wasn’t as reassuring as I’d hoped,” Annie said. “Alright, come on.”

  Delphine followed the other two women down a corridor and into one of the rooms. It was a bedroom, clean except for the desk.

  “Bathroom’s through there,” Annie said, gesturing. “I’ll have another change of clothes laid out for you when you’re done.”

  Delphine considered, for a moment, attacking. She dismissed the idea almost immediately. Neither of them struck her as stupid enough to let her in the room with them if they didn’t think they could stop her from attacking, and Delphine had no desire to find out what the collar felt like when it was activated. A quiet, traitorous part of her mind added that if she hurt either of them, Custer would be upset.

  She stepped into the bathroom, stripped, and showered with a learned efficiency. The sonics felt good as they wiped away the remaining sweat and grit of the previous days. She scraped her nails through her close-cropped hair and behind her ears, rolling her shoulders to feel the muscles relax. Satisfied, she stepped out and wrapped a towel around her torso before exiting the bathroom.

  Sure enough, Annie had laid a new outfit on the bed. Delphine dropped the towel and pulled it on, the others politely looking away. The clothing was a bit tight—she was slightly taller than Annie and had more muscle—but she was hardly in a position to complain.

  “Alright, let’s go,” Zosha said. “I think we’re having miso tonight and if we don’t get there on time Dom will steal it all.”

  As they walked into the hallway, Annie turned to Delphine. “Alright. Leo, you can call Leo, Ingram, Captain Ingram, or Captain. He really doesn’t care. Other than that, the others are Hyde, Dominic, and Rick. That is what they like to be called. Please remember that. It’ll make dinner less awkward.”

  “Well, I’m glad my intent to murder your entire crew isn’t the most awkward thing about dinner,” Delphine said.

  “Also, please don’t try to kill anyone,” Zosha added helpfully. “But if you do, go for Hyde. He’s being an asshole and making me do all the boring codes.”

  “Life’s hard,” Annie said.

  “I still don’t know why this is happening in the first place,” Delphine told them.

  Annie sighed. “Custer vouched for you, and that’s not nothing. The boys have all had to get used to being able to rely on each other’s judgment to survive. They probably won’t be nice about it, but they trust him enough that they’re willing to give this a chance.”

  “I see,” Delphine said, trying to figure out how that web of trust must work.

  “You get used to it,” Zosha told her as they entered the kitchen. The shifters were already seated, Dominic already working his way through a bowl of soup as promised. They looked up when Delphine, Annie, and Zosha entered, faces ranging from distaste to indifference with Custer’s huge smile being the outlier.

  “Alright, no one start shit,” Annie said, taking her seat next to the captain. “Someone serve.”

  Rick leaned in and began pouring the soup into bowls, leaning in and pressing a kiss to Zosha’s cheek as he handed one to her. Custer snagged two and gave one to Delphine, who had dropped into the seat beside him.

  “So, Delphine,” Hyde said conversationally, “how goes it on the ‘psychopathic assassin’ front?”

  “Hyde, what did I just say?” Annie asked sweetly.

  “What? We’re all going to pretend she didn’t try to kill us now?”

  “No,” Annie replied through gritted teeth, “we are attempting to work with her to avoid the second wave. Now, be. Civil.”

  “And as the only person here who she actually got close to killing, I say we focus on what Annie just said,” Zosha added. “You guys have all tried to kill each other at some point, and you’re all fine now.”

  “We’re being open and accepting,” Custer said, his smile only mildly threatening.

  Hyde snorted and said nothing else. No one else seemed inclined to start a conversational thread, and the quiet loomed for a moment.

  “So, Delphine,” Zosha said awkwardly, filling the silence, “where are you from?”

  “Mason,” Delphine answered, poking at her soup with the spoon. It seemed safe.

  “No, I mean, where did you live before you started working for Mason?” Zosha clarified.

  “I was raised in one of the Mason buildings,” she said. “What did you say this was again?”

  “Seaweed, tofu, and soy paste. So your parents worked for them?” Zosha scrunched her nose.

  Delphine frowned, trying to calculate the nutritional gain from the soup. “If by parents, you mean the people who donated their genetic material to my existence, then yes.”

  Annie snorted. “Not close, I take it.”

  “I never met our ‘father,’ and our ‘mother’ was removed when it was decided she had an inappropriate emotional connection to us.” Delphine took a bite of the soup. It was salty, but decent for space food.

  “Wait, I’m sorry,” Hyde said, leaning in. “‘Emotional connection?’ Also, if you weren’t raised by your parents, how did you grow up at a Mason center and not, like, an orphanage?”

  “Mason sank too much time and money into my cluster’s creation, even after some executives raised concerns about how our ‘mother’ raised us. She got upset when we felt pain,” Delphine explained. “And the prospect of us dying alarmed her. Our training suffered, and when our results were significantly lower than other clusters an i
nvestigation was launched and we were reassigned to a trainer who was capable of completing the required curriculum.” Delphine forced her mind to shut out the memory of trainer Ramirez’s warm brown eyes, the ghostly pressure of arms around her and a voice telling her someone loved her, the way she’d screamed when the guards dragged her out of the dormitory. She’d called them her children. How foolish.

  “Okay, so when you say ‘creation…’” Zosha trailed off. Everyone at the table was staring at Delphine, food forgotten.

  “Mason decided it wanted to branch out from making prosthetics to making entire beings. You must have noticed my irregular biology,” Delphine said. “Do you have the nutritional information for this by any chance?”

  “What you’re saying sounds a lot like creating artificial life,” Annie said slowly, “which is very, very illegal.”

  Delphine shrugged. “You came to blows with them over U4 trade. They obviously aren’t very concerned with legality. They needed loyal, skilled, combat-trained guards to protect their interests. The most efficient way to get them was to make them. I don’t consider my life to be artificial, if that makes a difference to you.”

  “What are you, exactly?” Dominic asked, eyes narrow.

  “Human, mostly. My cluster was from the round of experimentation with wolf splices. I’m told there were high hopes for us. We were promising until trainer Ramirez failed to follow protocol.”

  “So they made you, and they trained you to kill people, and they just send you out whenever they want?” Zosha asked, eyes wide. “That’s horrible!”

  “Not particularly,” Delphine said. “It just…is.”

  “What happened to the rest of you cluster?” Zosha demanded, her eyes shining.

  “I am the last one,” Delphine told her, a familiar cold sweeping through her. “The others were flawed.”

  “And you aren’t flawed,” Hyde said softly.

  “Of course not,” Delphine bit out. “I overcame my upbringing. My record is impeccable.”

  There was a moment of horrified silence. Delphine sat perfectly still, every nerve on edge. Custer’s smile was still on his face, but barely, and his eyes were distant.

  “Leo,” Annie said in a low, controlled voice, “I think this needs to become a discussion.”

  “What do you mean, a discussion?” Zosha burst out. “We can’t let them get her back!”

  “Agreed,” Hyde said, “but we also can’t take any chances. She’s flawless, you heard her, and she’s still on the job.”

  “She just gave us evidence that could shut down Mason permanently,” Rick pointed out quietly.

  “Because she doesn’t think we’ll live long enough to do anything about it,” Dominic shot back.

  “I currently think trying to kill you would be a waste of time and energy,” Delphine volunteered. “Currently, I’m just waiting until Mason finds us and sends a squadron to kill us all.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Hyde muttered. “Wait, all of us?”

  “Like you said, I’m evidence. Once the squadron kills you, the assignment will be completed and I will have failed it. This will mean I have a no longer flawless record and will have spent a significant amount of time with the enemy, none of whom I have managed to harm in any significant way. Combined with my history, a case will be made that I do not have the emotional capability to complete my job, and I can’t be allowed to live.”

  “And you’re just waiting for this to happen?” Annie asked.

  “What else can I do? I can’t run, and if I could, what would I do? I have a specific set of skills and that’s all.”

  “If you could get away from Mason, would you run?” Custer asked, never looking away from the patch of wall he was staring at.

  What a silly question. If she could get away from Mason, she would fly.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Delphine said. “I can’t get away. Neither can you.”

  “Historically speaking, we’re very good at doing what people say we can’t,” the captain said, entering the conversation. His fingers were steepled, his eyes serious. Suddenly, he was someone that commanded respect. “I see no reason this should be an exception.”

  “Oh, good,” Hyde sighed. “Congratulations. You just became one of Leo’s hopeless cases. I’ll go ahead and put her on the crew roster, shall I?”

  “Not just yet,” Ingram said. “We have to see if we survive first. I’ll assume that we universally agree that we should try and find a way to stop Mason from killing us. Any of us.”

  A murmur of assent rippled around the table.

  “Can we threaten them with Delphine?” Annie asked. “I mean, like she said, she’s evidence that they’re doing way more than smuggling. Creating artificial life, especially for combat, gets the death sentence.”

  “They’d still come after us. It’s basically the exact situation we’re in now, except now we have more information. It’s in their best interest to kill us either way,” Rick pointed out.

  “What about the other smugglers? Delphine, do you know what happened to the smugglers Mason used to get U4 to Lytos before we took over?”

  “Some,” Delphine said, wracking her memory. “The ship employed was the ITC Rabblerouser. After losing the U4 deal with Lytos, Mason tried to employ them to run a more dangerous quadrant. They refused and ended up cutting ties with the company. I’m not sure how they’re currently employed.”

  “What if we can get them to say they smuggled the U4 into quadrants that ban us? Would they back off if we came at them from two fronts?” Annie asked.

  “Rabblerouser’s based out of Saltos,” Hyde said. “Or they were. I worked with them for a few months. It’s two days from here, easy.”

  Delphine shook her head. “They’ll just deny the claims and keep coming after us.”

  “They won’t be able to,” Zosha said. “Sylas will back it up, and people listen when he talks. And Da—and my friend will help us.”

  Delphine had a pretty good idea who Zosha’s friend was. She very carefully avoided thinking about it.

  “Saltos, you said. We’ll plot a course now,” the captain said, rising to his feet. “Zosha, talk to your friend. I’m going to call Sylas. Rick, you and Annie are in the cockpit. Everyone else, do whatever makes you feel useful.”

  The group split apart, everyone going to their designated place. Only Delphine and Custer remained still. She looked around, dazed, and realized that these people really thought this would work.

  “Do you remember what you said to me the first time we met?” Custer asked quietly. “You were drugged to the gills and also tied to a chair, so I won’t hold it against you if you don’t.”

  “I suppose you mean the rant about you not doing anything, followed by you doing something?”

  “That’s the one. Just remember, I excel at changing destinies. I’ll get you through this,” he said, finally looking at her. She could have drowned in the look in his eyes.

  “As long as I don’t have to change my name,” she said in an attempt to force the conversation back onto more comfortable ground. “Tell me, were you a Civil War enthusiast or were you just a fan of Strathmore?”

  Custer groaned, the corner of his mouth quirking up. “Neither, I promise. It was a very, very old song my mom used to sing to me as a kid. I don’t know why, it was incredibly depressing. It’s about a man who doesn’t want to die. After she died, I was tired of being Anthony and it was the first name I could think of when I was getting fake papers. I didn’t even know who he was until people started making jokes.”