“Okay,” Thalia said in a tone that could be best described as placating, “I need you to not freak out, but that door’s not going to hold until Dominic shifts back.”
“What?” Aurie demanded, voice coming out shriller than she could ever remember it being. “You live on a ship with five bear shifters and that’s not a precaution anyone ever thought might come in handy?”
Thalia walked towards the bed as the pounding on the door continued. “First of all, the other four are in control no matter what form they’re in, meaning they’re only as likely to try and break a door down as a bear as they are as a human. Second, there’s a reinforced room by the engine room that can hold him. The problem is, he can usually recognize a shift and get there, or let someone know to get him there, in time to be locked down before he’s completely shifted. That stupid fucking chip, however, is messing with that. He can’t predict his shifts anymore. The sedatives were supposed to counter it.”
“I think he’s built up a resistance to them,” Aurie said faintly, afraid to take her eyes off the door.
“No shit, really?” Thalia asked as she thumbed a button on an intercom system identical to the one in Zosha’s room. “Hyde, you better be at your fucking station.”
Hyde’s sigh crackled through the intercom. “What’d I do now?”
“I need you to get over here now. I’m in—” she broke off as a particularly loud thump came from the door. “I’m in our room,” she finished with a not insignificant amount of panic.
Aurie was slowly backing away from the door on shaking legs, still unable to look away from it, as Hyde’s voice, now attentive and worried, asked, “why? What’s happening?”
“It’s...fuck. Oh, oh fuck,” she said as the bear rammed into the door so hard one of the panels jutted into the room, exposing the wiring as the growling from the other side grew more audible. “Aurie, bathroom, now.”
Aurie whimpered a little, rooted in place.
“Bathroom!” Thalia barked. “Hyde, I need you here ten minutes ago, bring Custer or the captain if you can.”
“Thalia? Thalia, what’s happening?” Hyde asked, sounding frantic, but Thalia was pushing Aurie into the bathroom and closing the door behind them.
“We’re going to be okay,” she told Aurie. “We’re going to be absolutely fine, this is a smallish ship and there’s no way Dom can break through both sets of doors before someone gets here.”
“Are you sure?” Aurie demanded with just a tad of hysteria.
“Look, I don’t fucking know, I’m a journalist,” Thalia snapped.
She and Aurie stared at each other for a moment, the only sound the snarling and thuds and metallic groans form the other room, then burst out laughing.
“Oh,” Aurie gasped. “Oh, my God. I’m a medical student, and you’re a journalism student, and we’re about to get eaten by a bear. They didn’t cover this in my orientation, did they cover it in yours?”
“Nope,” Thalia giggled helplessly. “But suck it, academia elitists. You may think journalism is a useless major but I can tell you it’s exactly as helpful as a medical degree in spontaneous bear attacks.”
They both broke down again, clinging to each other, as there was a loud roar from outside, followed by another roar, followed by the sound of two equally pissed off bears colliding. Thalia slapped a hand over Aurie’s mouth as they listened, wide-eyed, to the struggle. It only lasted a few moments before quiet settled, interrupted once again by the sound of a very human set of footsteps making its way quickly towards the bathroom.
The door swung open to reveal Hyde, panting and naked, which Aurie decided to magnanimously excuse due to mitigating circumstances. He reached down as Thalia reached up and then they were in each other’s arms, Hyde burying his face in Thalia’s hair and whispering fiercely to her. Aurie, not knowing what else to do, stayed sitting and staring dumbly up at them. Delphine walked up and nudged them gently to the side so she could get by and crouch by Aurie.
“Are you alright?” she asked in what Aurie was realizing was Delphine’s brand of concern.
Aurie nodded and then, humiliatingly, burst into tears. Delphine hesitantly reached out a hand, which hovered for a moment before landing gently on Aurie’s shoulder.
“It’s okay, you’re safe now,” she murmured as Aurie sobbed into her shoulder. “Dom’s sedated and he’ll shift back before he wakes up. This won’t happen again.”
Aurie shook her head, gasping for breath around the sobs escaping her throat and mortifyingly aware that the sound was probably carrying pretty far.
“I just,” she choked out. “I-I just couldn’t do anything. I just…”
“You did enough,” Delphine told her. “You’re alive, and Dom’s alive, and that’s all anyone could ask for.”
She tugged gently at Aurie’s arms, pulling her until they were both standing.
“We need to go talk to Annie and the captain,” Delphine murmured. “Wash your face, then we’ll go.”
Aurie nodded miserably and turned to the sink to splash cold water over her ruddy face. She tugged her sleeves over her hands and used them to pat her face dry before reaching over to grab toilet paper to blow her nose on.
“Okay,” she sniffled. “I’m ready.”
They maneuvered awkwardly around Thalia and Hyde and made their way to kitchen, where it turned out talking to Annie and Captain Ingram really meant talking to Annie, Captain Ingram, Rick, Zosha, and Custer.
“I’m so sorry,” Zosha bawled as soon as they entered, crossing over to hug Aurie tightly. “I promised you that nothing would happen to you and then this happened to you and I’m so, so sorry.”
Annie’s eyes flickered impassively over Aurie’s tear-stained face before landing on Delphine. “Where are Thalia and Hyde?”
“Hyde is, presumably, putting pants on and returning to the charade that he doesn’t have actual emotions and will be here with Thalia once that’s under control,” Delphine answered.
Annie nodded sharply, crossing her arms. “Aurie, sit down.”
“No, really, I’m—” Aurie started to protest. Annie just snapped her fingers and pointed at the chair.
Aurie sat. It turned out to be pretty good advice as her legs gave out halfway down and she collapsed awkwardly into the chair with an oof.
“Thank you,” Annie said before turning back to the captain. “Do you still have all the estimates?”
“Probably,” he replied. “If not, they’re easy enough to rerun. Ah, Hyde, Thalia, glad you’re here. Let’s get started.”
Hyde nodded sharply and tugged Thalia towards the table where they both sat down. Aurie tried not to be conspicuous in the way she stared at their clasped hands.
“Okay,” Annie said, “in light of very recent events, it appears that we need to reevaluate a few things. Obviously, this cannot happen again. We need to have a working plan about how we go about that, and it needs to be decisive. Obviously, keeping him sedated isn’t going to do shit.”
“I can’t abandon Dom,” Hyde said quietly. “He’s like a brother to me, and he’s always stood by me. You don’t just abandon that. But,” he went on, squeezing Thalia’s hand, “he almost killed Thalia, and I can’t let that happen either. I don’t want to abandon Dom, but it’s not just us shifters anymore, and this afternoon was an exercise in what happens when someone who isn’t one of us gets caught by Dom in one of his shifts. So that means the only real solutions we have are kick Dom, our main mechanic who’s been loyal for years, to the curb, drop everyone who isn’t a shifter off at the nearest station, or fix this chip for good. I know what my vote is.”
“But getting the chip out would require circumventing the Do’n embargo,” Rick said, “and that means risking getting on Sylas’s bad side, which means getting on Spinner’s bad side. I trust him to put Zosha ahead of whatever he’s got going on with Sylas, but the rest of us? If he didn’t see most of us as expendable we’d have a line of surgeons begging to operate on Dom in the cargo hold.”
Annie huffed. “I feel like the only real question here is if we drop Sylas a courtesy call before we do this. As someone who can’t turn into a bear at will, I would prefer not to be caught off guard by Dom shifting, but I want to stay. This is my home. And as shitty as it is, doing the run for Lee looks like the best way to protect it.”
Leo sighed and shook his head, rubbing at his temples. “Shoulda known Dom would be all trouble.”
Annie cracked a smile at that. “All of us are all trouble. That’s what you get for being the captain of a smuggling ship.”
Aurie sat there, processing. The crash of adrenaline and the surge of relief had left her feeling almost numb emotionally, like her head was an empty cavern echoing what everyone else was saying. She was relieved that a decision had been made, on some level, but she was also afraid. There were the obvious things to fear, of course, like bear shifters and criminals and criminal bear shifters, and then there were the fears that she couldn’t or wouldn’t put into words. There was the sickening lurch of failure in her stomach, the shame of being so helpless, not just in the face of Dom’s shift but in her utter uselessness at preventing it. The creeping dread of being dropped back into thirty hour shifts and a colicky baby and coworkers who would never, never do anything but look down on her. Her thoughts spun around each other like a Moebius strip but it was like swimming through static to find them, and Aurie didn’t think that it was worth the effort. Instead, she focused on the people in front of her.
“So we’re definitely running this little errand for Dr. Lee,” Rick clarified.
The captain nodded. “Best choice we’ve got. I’ll chart a course for Do’n. Is Dom secure?”
“In the fortified room,” Hyde answered. “I say we leave him in there until it’s time to take him in for surgery. We can’t risk him shifting while we’re trying to get this done and honestly, I don’t think he’s going to be much for socializing right now.”
“Great,” Captain Ingram sighed, scrubbing his hands over his face. “Do’n is, what, six hours from here? I’ll take the cockpit. Rick, you, Annie, and Zosha get us a plan going. Custer, you’re in the engine room until we dock. Delphine, Thalia… see where you can help.”
“Um…” Aurie started, rising partway out of her seat.
“You, get some rest,” the captain said, pointing at her. Zosha’s got a bottle of purple pills in her room that help her get to sleep. I recommend taking one. When you wake up we should be back on our way to Centrata. You’ve had enough stress for one day.”
Aurie nodded and hovered awkwardly for a moment as everyone else grouped up and went about figuring out how to work a miracle before slinking to Zosha’s room. She checked the bedside table and sure enough, there was a little plastic container of pills. Swallowing one dry, she plunked down on the bed, kicked off her shoes, and waited for it to kick in. There was nothing that she wanted to concentrate on, specifically, but clearing her mind didn’t work either. The past few days flickered through her mind, running together and blurring, until she succumbed to the effects of the pill.
She woke up, groggy but feeling better, approximately ten hours later according to her multi-tool. There was a message from Zosha, who Aurie was somewhat unsurprised had managed to get her contact information without her knowledge. It was brief and to the point—Sylas was displeased, but their contact on Do’n had come through and they were heading back to Centrata. Dr. Lee had been informed of their pending arrival and was expecting to see Aurie in person to verify her safety.
Aurie read it over twice, then stood almost mechanically and went into the bathroom to brush the disgusting taste out of her mouth. She spat the paste into the sink basin and rinsed it out, then leaned forward to press her forehead against the cool surface of the mirror and closed her eyes. Now that she was awake she had to do something, but there wasn’t anything she wanted to do. She didn’t know how to help the others, and she didn’t really want to talk to them anyways. There was only one person she did want to talk to and he was apparently locked up at the moment.
Aurie opened her eyes. Silver lining: she knew where to find him.
The trek to the engine room was short. She stepped inside and looked around, waving awkwardly when Custer looked up from his multi-tool and beamed at her.
“Hello there,” he crooned. “Are you looking for me or Dom?”
“Dom,” she answered quietly.
“I thought so,” he said. “The two of you glow together, do you know that? I’m so glad we kidnapped you.”
“Thank you,” Aurie said after a short pause.
“And you, of course, are glad we kidnapped you,” Custer said, still smiling.
Aurie started. “That’s—” she started.
Custer cut her off with a wave of his hand. “Don’t bother lying to me. I’m actually very smart, you know. People assume I help the others do their jobs because I’m not capable of doing any of them on my own. Delphine did, at first. The truth is, it’s because I’m capable of doing all of them. Always they underestimate me. You know what that’s like, don’t you? I can see it in your eyes. You succeed out of spite because someone told you you couldn’t. That’s admirable, almost. Somewhere along the way you realized that you were meant for more and your drive to succeed switched from satisfying a grudge to the need to find a purpose for your life. I know people like you, and believe me, even though leaving behind a promising career to hop on board with a bunch of smugglers is, objectively, a terrible career move, if you don’t do it you’ll never stop wondering what would happen if you did.”
“And that’s when my self-preservation instinct pipes up to remind me how well I usually do against bears,” Aurie said drily. “And guns.”
Custer shrugged. “Self-preservation instincts are for people over fifty and democratically elected leaders. You need to live a little. Besides, Annie’s going to be trying to convince you to stay anyways. She’s very persuasive.”
“She’s mentioned it,” Aurie told him. “I guess it makes sense to want to have a doctor ready on a ship like this.”
Custer snorted. “That too. But mainly she wants you here because she’s pregnant, and even though you specialize in something completely unrelated you’re both a good fit and more knowledgeable than any of us.”
Aurie was momentarily sidetracked by the image of a hugely pregnant Annie. “That assumes I would be willing to be here when the craving and mood swings kick in.”
“Honestly, I’m looking forward to it. She managed to stay calm enough to help engineer the death of her almost-husband when he wouldn’t leave her alone. Seeing if she loses control should be interesting.”
Aurie stared. “Annie killed her fiancé?”
“And a few of his guards,” Custer confirmed. “Don’t feel bad for them. He was a warlord.”
Aurie had no response to that. “So, about Dominic.”
Custer pointed. “If you move that metal panel there’s a short hallway, then his special room.”
“Thanks,” Aurie said before trotting off to follow his instructions.
The secret hallway was wider than the main corridor with long scratch marks gouged out of the wall. It looked like something out of a horror movie, and Aurie’s heart cracked a bit as she thought about the amount of time Dom must spend in here.
The door at the end was metal, like the rest of the hallway, with a small window a few inches above Aurie’s head and another at her feet.
“Dom?” she asked hesitantly, her voice seeming thunderous in the quiet. She waited a few moments and then sat, crossing her legs and wrapping her arms around them. “Are you upset with me?”
Colby (BBW Western Bear Shifter Romance) (Rodeo Bears Book 3) Page 48