“I said breathe,” he said. “They’re not going to blame you. You’re going to be fine.”
Aurie swallowed. “Thank you.” Then, “you have excellent bedside manner, do you know that?”
Dom chuckled softly. “Thank you. I assume you do as well, when you haven’t been recently kidnapped.”
“Oh, no, I’m about this bad all the time,” Aurie replied.
In front of them, Thalia snorted.
“If you want Custer to ever stop making fun of you, you might want to stop flirting before we get in earshot.”
Aurie felt her cheeks heat. She needed to lay off the rom vids—there was a very, very low chance that her kidnappers were going to secretly all have hearts of gold, and that she and Dominic would fall madly in love and she’d go off gallivanting in the stars with them forever. That just wasn’t the way her life was laid out.
Dominic sighed. “Don’t be like that, Tali, I’d hate to have to ask you to pull another double shift.”
“Ooooh, you asshole,” Thalia hissed at him, though Aurie could see that she was smiling. She looked like she was about to say something else, but they reached the kitchen first.
Despite Dom’s assurance that she would be fine, she instinctively curled in on herself as they entered the room. The crew of the Breakwater, other than Zosha, had never seemed particularly cheerful, but with the anticipation of receiving bad news they seemed sinister.
“So what seems to be the problem, Aurelia?” the captain asked.
Aurie swallowed. “The chip? That you wanted me to remove? He’s grown around it. If I tried to take it out, especially without the right equipment, I’d paralyze him. If you want it out, you need to take him to a specialist.”
“Think she’s lying?” Hyde asked, eyes narrow.
“Well, I don’t exactly have a wealth of medical training,” Thalia replied, dry as a desert, “but I’d say she realizes she’d be more expendable if she couldn’t do it, so no, I don’t think she’s lying.”
“So where can we get this done?” Annie asked, eyes like needles.
Aurie hesitated. She wasn’t one to play hero, but at the same time, she knew she’d never forgive herself if she handed someone else to them.
“Look,” a blond man she hadn’t met yet drawled, “it’s like this. If you don’t tell us where we can get someone to do the operation, we have to do this all over again and, for obvious reasons, we can’t let you go until we’re done. Now, maybe this next person is good for the operation. But maybe not. Maybe we have to do this a whole bunch of times. Or, you can give us a name, and it all ends with no one getting hurt and no one disturbed that doesn’t need to be.”
“Custer’s right,” Annie said, not unkindly. “We don’t want to hurt anyone we don’t have to, but this has to happen.”
Aurie chewed it over for a moment. “I… my advisor. Former advisor. She’s the best bet. If I call and ask her to set up a time to operate on a friend who can’t answer any questions, she’ll do it. She used to work in a clinic that catered specifically to people who couldn’t go to a hospital until it got shut down and since she’s an otorhinolaryngologist she’s the best choice.”
The entire crew stared at her.
“A what now?” Thalia asked.
“An otorhinolaryngologist. It’s a medical professional specializing in the head and neck region,” Aurie explained.
“You’re fucking with us,” Zosha said accusatorily.
“They’re also called ENT surgeons, if that’s easier to remember,” Delphine said quietly. Aurie nodded.
“Huh.” The captain leaned back in his chair. “You learn something new every day. And this Ottoman-whatever friend of yours, she can get the chip?”
“If anyone can, she can,” Aurie told him. “Otorhinolaryngologists are sort of the most trained for this, and she’s the best I’ve ever met.”
“Why is that even a specialty you need?” Rick asked.
“Grand View is the hospital of choice for about fifteen different full-contact sports teams,” Aurie answered wearily.
“We’re off track,” Annie said. “Aurelia, you contact your ENT friend. Set it up. Other than that, I’m putting you in charge of giving Dom the sedatives he needs to keep stable. That’s a daily thing for now, so I hope you two get along. Thalia, Zosha, one of you needs to be monitoring her when you’re not on shift. If neither of you can do it, find Delphine. Everyone, get where you need to be.”
“I guess we’re sticking together for a little longer,” Thalia said to Aurie as the others took their leave. “Believe it or not, you won’t hate it here.”
It took three days, but Aurie found she was right.
It was strange that her life on a smuggler’s ship she was being held on against her will was better than the one she’d had before. She felt guilty thinking it, but it was true. True to Dom’s word, no one so much as looked vaguely threatening in Aurie’s direction and with the fear for her safety gone she could see that these flawed people had created a family for themselves. It didn’t help that after a few days of talking with Dom, Aurie could understand all too well the urge to do whatever it took to protect him. It had been a gradual thing—at first, she’d been resentful and still a bit afraid and he had been respectful of her boundaries. But soon the emotional exhaustion wore down on Aurie and she tentatively opened up a little to Dom, only for him to do the same. On the tenth day, she finally got the nerve up to ask him about the chip.
“It’s because I have Rogerson’s, see,” he explained. “Bunch of rich assholes wanted a guard bear. They implanted it so they could control when I shifted. It didn’t end well for them.”
“Well, it sounds like they got what they deserved,” Aurie had replied, thinking about how young he must have been.
“You sound surprisingly okay with that.”
Aurie had smiled. “I’m a foster child. I’ve got a list of people I wish had gotten what they deserve.”
The encounter had broken down whatever arbitrary wall Aurie had constructed, and as the days counted down until the date Dr. Lee had sent them in response to Aurie’s comm, Aurie grew more and more certain that she’d miss the Breakwater when she was returned to her normal, everyday life.
Then one day Annie cornered her after she had finished with Dom.
“Hello,” she said. “I need to talk with you for a moment.”
“What about?” Aurie asked. She was still a bit frightened of Annie, but she’d come to respect the other woman nonetheless.
“Dom,” Annie answered. “And you. Dr. Lee changed her price for the surgery. The embargo set around Do’n means that the hospital isn’t getting the usual brand of anesthetics. She wants us to go around it. I need you to explain to her that we can’t?”
“May I ask why?” Aurie asked.
“Our main employer has certain personal stakes in the embargo being respected. He’s not someone we want to anger,” said Annie. “Just let her know that it’s a no go. Other than that, I wanted to know how you’re doing.”
“I…” Aurie trailed off, collecting her words. “Am better than expected, honestly.”
“You look it,” Annie said. “Thalia says you’re a lot more colorful now.”
“I appreciate you asking after me,” Aurie said with a smile.
“Oh, it’s not a selfless endeavor,” Annie replied. “You like Dom. You like Zosha, and Thalia, and Delphine. And you can stand the rest of us, even Custer. It seems like a lot more than I could say about you and you old coworkers.”
“I don’t understand,” Aurie admitted.
“I’m saying, once Dom’s chip-free, we’ll drop you off anywhere in the universe you want to go. But if you want to stick around, there’s room for you here.” With that, Annie strode off. Aurie, in a daze, just sent Dr. Lee the comm Annie had asked her to, leading to several days where despite Aurie’s best wheedling, Dr. Lee refused to budge, which in turn did its part to gradually ratchet up the tension on the ship.
&nbs
p; Aurie was on her way to her and Dom’s daily checkup when she ran into Hyde walking the opposite way.
“You may want to give it a minute,” he told her as he passed her. “He’s pretty upset. This isn’t easy on him.”
Warily, Annie continued toward the room. She could hear muffled swearing and movement and the scrape of something being dragged across the floor. She had almost reached the doorway when she heard a loud thud, followed by a moan of pain. Alarmed, she looked into the room only to see the chair overturned and Dom grimacing and clutching his bleeding hand, blood smudged on the wall where he’d punched it.
Aurie gave him a look she generally reserved for her trouble patients.
“And what did that accomplish?” she asked patiently.
Dom deflated. “Nothing. It… it’s all nothing.”
Aurie studied him for a moment. “Hop on the table.”
“What?” Dom asked.
“I said, hop on the table,” she repeated. “I need to put something on your knuckles.”
Dom stared at her for a moment, then obeyed.
“I don’t know why you bother,” he told her, a quiet confession. “Even if you could do the surgery, it wouldn’t do anything, not really. I still wouldn’t have any control over my shifts.”
Aurie hummed as she looked for antiseptic and something to cover the wound with. “Do you know how long it takes to become a qualified doctor? Classes, exams shadowing, residency? The technical answer is a really fucking long time.”
“That’s nice,” Dom said, clearly a little confused.
“But you know why we do it?” Aurie asked. “Because if we do, someday we get to be the big fancy doctors. Because if we succeed in the end, then we succeed now. I think it’s similar with you. Even if it all seems impossible because there aren’t any clear victories around you at the moment, the war’s not lost yet, you know? It’s about the finish line. And you’ll get there. You’re strong, and you’ve got a lot of help.” She made a noise of victory in the back of her throat as she dug up a bottle of antiseptic spray.
“Well, thank you,” Dom told her, swallowing. “I hope you’re right.”
“Usually am,” she told him. “Now give me your hand.”
He did, and she inspected the broken skin, wiping the blood away.
“You guys really need to hire a doctor, you know that?” Aurie sighed as she applied the antiseptic spray to the abrasions on Dom’s knuckles.
“You offering, Princess?” he asked her, a small smirk playing across his lips.
“Me? On a smuggler ship?” she asked, batting her eyes at Dom. “Oh, no, Mister, I’m too delicate and sensitive—don’t let the fact that I’ve almost completed my residency as a neurosurgeon fool you, if I see one drop of blood, I’ll pass right out.”
Dom rolled his eyes. “Keep milking that, why don’t you.”
Aurie beamed at him. “Don’t worry, I plan to,” she told him sweetly.
“Really though, are you happy at Grand View? Every time you talk about it, it just sounds like you hate it,” he said, pinning her with his hypnotic eyes.
Aurie shifted uncomfortably. “I mean, its stressful, sure, but that’s medicine. And I don’t have to get along with everybody to work with them efficiently, so…”
“But if you had the chance to work somewhere else, would you take it?” Dom asked, almost demanding.
“I…I don’t understand,” Aurie admitted softly.
“I just—” he started, but whatever he was about to say was cut off by a cry of pain as he jolted forward, clutching his head in his hands.
“Dom?” Aurie asked, taking a step forward as her heart leapt into her throat. He shook his head, sinking to his knees and leaning over so his forehead touched the ground as he continued to grunt in pain.
“Dom, what’s wrong?” Aurie felt frantic despite years of training. She hadn’t been this scared since her first surgery where she had to do more than actually observe. “I need you to talk to me.”
Dom just curled in on himself more, fingernails cutting into the skin of his scalp. Aurie realized that he was shaking so hard he was practically vibrating. At first, she thought it was some sort of seizure, but as a ripple ran through his muscles, causing him to buck back sharply, an understanding of what was happening flooded through her life ice water.
“Oh no,” she breathed out, taking a step back as Dom bucked back again, this time leaving the back of his shirt split as the bones of his spine seemed to try and break free of his skin. “Oh shit.”
She knew she needed to get out of there as quickly as possible, but as soon as she turned to flee down the hallway it seemed like Dom lost whatever shred of inner strength was keeping the transformation at bay. In a roar of blood and muscle and bone he shifted outward until Aurie was staring in terror at the hulking, fur-covered form of a black bear. He snuffled at the tattered remains of his shirt for a moment before stilling and turning his golden gaze on Aurie.
Looking into his eyes, Aurie lost all remaining hope that somewhere, deep down, the bear was still Dominic. There was nothing hypnotic or soft in the bear’s stare, only an animalistic rage. The bear stood back on his hind legs and growled low in his throat, the bass reverberating through Aurie’s bones.
“Okay,” she said softly. “Okay, we’re just going to—”
The bear dropped back down on all fours and roared. Aurie shrieked and ran for the doorway, pulling down the medicine cabinet on her way out. She heard the thud of impact as the bear barreled into it and the following bellow of anger and pain that chased her down the hallway. As she turned the corner so quickly she skidded into the wall, she could see the dark mountain of fur push his way through the remnants of the ruined cabinet and started down the hallway after her.
Aurie had been scared a lot. Scared of the dark, of foster fathers, of failing classes, of burning out before she completed her residency, of some of the patients that came in during the late shift. An hour ago, she would even have said she was terrified of those things. Now she knew differently. Real terror was everything seeming to go in slow motion, like she was running underwater, and the only thing that was moving at a normal speed was the monster after her. Real terror was the adrenaline seeming to shrink her skin until she thought she’d burst out of it and clouding her thoughts until there was nothing left but run, run, you’ll die if you don’t run. It was the way the only two things that she knew were real were herself and the bear to the point that every time she put a foot down she was only half sure it would actually connect with the floor. Terror was feeling yourself sinking and fighting for air, or waking up to find yourself in freefall, or trying desperately to keep ahead of a faster, sharper animal.
Aurie was so close to the main body of the ship. If she could just get to one of the other shifters, or even Delphine, she’d have a chance.
Thalia found them first.
She rounded the corner, looking like someone who was about to threaten to file a noise complaint, and then froze as she took in the sight of a terrified doctor and an enraged mass of fur and claws barreling down the hallway at her. To her eternal credit, she reacted much more swiftly than Aurie had. Turning and dashing back down the hall, she opened the door to her and Hyde’s room, then leaned back and yanked Aurie inside and slammed the button to close the doors. A split second after the lock engaged, a muffled, angry snarl sounded from right outside before the sound of an impact shook the doorframe.
Aurie and Thalia looked at each other, breathing heavily.
Colby (BBW Western Bear Shifter Romance) (Rodeo Bears Book 3) Page 47