by Roxie Noir
Jack was standing there, talking to one of the younger bears. Her guards had changed — she didn’t recognize these two from the night before — but they didn’t look any friendlier.
Delilah walked to the kitchen, holding her head high and ignoring them all the best that she could. As she got closer, she could hear loud, ragged breathing combined with low murmurs.
That was never, ever a good combination — that sound meant that one person was in a lot of pain, and someone else didn’t know what to do.
As she entered the kitchen, everyone looked at her: William, Emma, and Roy. Briefly, she wondered where Miles was, but it wasn’t important right now — he couldn’t help, and she didn’t need him punching anything at the moment.
Her eyes flicked to William’s back. Even though he was moving around a little, he either hadn’t been able to get off the table, or he’d been prevented. His face was a mottled red and white, and he was thrashing around, trying to get his hands under him to push up and off the kitchen table.
“I gotta piss!” he roared. The empty Jim Beam bottle was on the floor, the straw still in it, and William was obviously still drunk.
Delilah ignored him. His back was just as she’d feared: the skin around the gashes was a deep, angry red, and puffy. In a few places, between the stitches, she could see the pus already beginning to leak out. She let him thrash, donned a glove, and put a finger to his back.
“Ouch!” he shouted.
He was hot, almost scorching hot. It was true that shifters had a higher temperature range than regular humans by a couple of degrees, but William was bad. As she pressed down, even more off-white pus leaked out. An infection had clearly already taken hold, just as she’d feared, and tried so hard to avoid.
For a moment, Delilah felt totally helpless. What was she supposed to do? She’d already done her best with supplies pilfered from the clinic, and now what?
“Help him up,” she told Roy. She’d prefer to catheterize him, of course, but they hadn’t gotten a catheter and she would have a very hard time doing it on this table, anyway. Besides, it was hard to catheterize a fully conscious, cooperative patient, and William was anything but.
As Roy and Emma tried to help him up by his shoulders — both wearing gloves, Delilah insisted on gloves, even though she didn’t know what they were helping at this point — William roared in pain. She could see the ugly gashes on his back twist and move, the stitches straining.
He walked toward the bathroom, slowly and painfully, and Delilah turned to search through the bag for painkillers, any kind. She found a single bottle of Vicodin that was half-empty.
Just then, Emma came back into the kitchen.
“Was this all the painkillers they had?”
“There’s also a bottle of Advil,” Emma said.
Delilah stared at the other woman like she was an idiot.
Emma stared right back, and the two looked at each other for long moments, the air between them fraught.
Delilah was doing her best to think of something, anything, that wouldn’t make the situation worse. Emma was either an idiot or brainwashed, but she was also the only other person in the place with any medical know-how at all. Had she gotten more and distributed it to the men who hung around the Lodge? Were they all high right now, or selling it to people around these small Alaskan towns?
Finally Emma looked down, taking off her gloves angrily and throwing them into the trash.
“Fjords isn’t a nice place to live for a lot of people,” she said, finally. She wouldn’t look up at Delilah. “Most of the people here either work on fishing boats or in canneries, you know, and so did their parents and their parents before them, and — there’s just no escape for most people, Delilah,” she said. “You wear out your back doing that stuff, or you have an accident and you tear off a couple of fingers or mangle an arm, and your doctor gives you Vicodin, and before you know it you’ve got an opiate problem and your clinic’s always out of drugs.”
Delilah looked down at the bottle in her hand and felt terrible. She hadn’t considered that angle of it.
“The pack is what keeps most of our heads above water,” Emma went on. “I know it goes bad sometimes, like this, but think of where we’d be without them.”
A grumbling noise came down the hall, the sounds of someone gasping and cursing in pain, and then Roy’s voice, talking William through it.
Back in the kitchen, William eyed the table.
“Got any pillows?” he said. He swayed a little on his feet, and Delilah couldn’t tell if it was last night’s alcohol or the pain.
She turned to the two men who hovered at the door to the kitchen, just outside. Her guards.
“Go find him some pillows to lie on, will you?” she said.
They looked at her and then at Roy, who nodded once, quickly, and then they went.
14
Miles
In an odd way, Miles liked watching Delilah work. Watching the blood and the gore and now, the horrible infection and the disgusting amount of pus that Delilah was draining from William’s back by hand did turn his stomach a little, but then, she was there, giving orders to Emma, looking in charge of the whole situation.
She looked good at her job, and Miles enjoyed it, especially while making sure he wasn’t getting in her way.
After a while, she looked around the kitchen, at William still on the table, at the IV she and Emma had attached to him, and started taking off her gloves.
She looked desperately unhappy, even as she gave Emma and Roy a few final instructions, then made for the kitchen door and Miles, standing right outside of it.
“I need some air,” she said, and walked for the front door.
Her two guards, both skinny kids who seemed to look to Roy for instruction every thirty seconds or so, followed them, frowning.
Delilah made for the front door of the lodge and went right through it without even looking back. The guards did not like that, Miles noticed, even though they all knew perfectly well that there were more people outside, already shifted.
As soon as he stepped through the door, there they were. They were on the other side of the driveway, maybe one hundred feet away, but he know how fast grizzlies could run.
Delilah would never make it if she tried to get away.
It was drizzling lightly, and instead, Delilah walked to a gazebo off to the side of the lodge, Miles right behind her, and sat heavily on a bench. She was getting a little wet when the drizzle floated in through the structure’s open sides, but she didn’t seem to care.
Miles sat next to her, not really sure what his role was. Delilah had her face in her hands, and his best move seemed to be to put one arm around her and hold her close.
Sitting like that, he could feel her breathing, smell her hair.
If he closed his eyes and listened very, very closely, he could hear her heart beat, thumping gently next to him. It was like music.
“I don’t think he’s going to make it,” Delilah said. “It’s happening so fast. Faster than I thought. The infection is bad, and even though he’s fighting it, I’m afraid he’s going to go septic.”
Miles rubbed her back. Septic, like the tank? he thought.
He wasn’t exactly sure what happened when a person went septic, but it probably wasn’t good.
“Maybe he’ll still pull through,” Miles said, trying to make her feel better.
Delilah looked up at his, her eyes bloodshot, her face wet. “Sepsis is when an infection causes an immune reaction that inflames someone’s entire—” she looked at his face for a moment and seemed to change her mind. “It’s really bad,” she said. “Really really bad. Once William is septic, it’s not going to matter what we do.”
“What if we get him to the hospital first?” Miles asked.
“Maybe,” Delilah said. She sighed, more tears leaking from her eyes. “Maybe.”
William had never been particularly close with Miles’s family, but he was still present in all of
Miles’s memories as a kid: throwing baseballs, coaching little league, teaching the neighborhood kids how to ride bikes.
He was a pack member, and had always been a pack member.
That meant he was family.
But still, even so, Miles felt bound by what Roy had said. He didn’t really like Roy, it was true, but under his leadership the pack here had gone from a loosely organized pack of men who could turn into bears at will to a real community organization, one that took care of its people — most of the time, anyway — and made them really feel a part of something.
Most of the shifters in Fjords — Miles included, he thought — put the pack above themselves, above their families, even. The pack was family. It was that important.
And yet, they were content to just let William die rather than invite investigation into their activities. Was it really okay to exchange one life for the comfort of the people who’d ordered Larry’s death?
“There’s just nothing I can do,” Delilah whispered. “I feel so helpless. I can’t even get myself out of here.”
Miles pulled her close, trying to shield her from the rain outside and from the wracking guilt he knew she felt.
“I can’t believe I moved away, only to come back for this,” she whispered. “Miles, I’m sorry.”
He kissed the top of her head, tenderly. Watching her so sad made him ache, but he didn’t know what to do. William probably was going to die, and he knew he couldn’t convince Roy to let her go, and he couldn’t fight his way out.
Since he couldn’t think of anything to say, they stayed that way for a while in the gazebo, Delilah crying softly and Miles doing his best to comfort her, even though he didn’t really know how.
15
Delilah
Delilah didn’t know how long they sat together in the gazebo for, but she did know that the only thing that made her feel better at all were Miles’s strong arms around her. She felt like they were anchoring her to the ground, and that without them she might just float away in a cloud of self-pity and grief.
At least, she thought, there was one person in Fjords who cared about her beyond her ability to stitch men up.
After a long, long time in Miles’s arms, Delilah’s joints were starting to ache from staying in the same position, and she realized that her back had soaked through with drizzle. She took her head out of her hands and looked around, realizing for the first time that day how tired she was. Tired, cold, and wet.
She sat up, Miles’s arms still anchored firmly around her, and looked around.
As she’d been in her tired, sad reverie, the rain had increased to a steady soak. No wonder she was so wet and cold — how had she not noticed?
For a moment, she leaned against Miles, letting his big, strong frame support her. Then she sighed and stood, knowing that even that slight comfort wasn’t one she could partake in, not really.
“I’m going to try to take a nap,” she said, stretching and rubbing her eyes. Now that she was no longer in his warm arms, she was freezing cold, and she wrapped her arms around herself.
Miles stood too, looking around. Delilah saw something move across his face, quickly, and then he looked back at her like he had a secret to share.
“Look around,” he muttered to her.
She did, and in her worn out, tired state, it took her a moment to realize what she was looking at.
Nothing.
There were no grizzlies out there — when they’d come out, there had been a few lounging around, mostly looking relaxed under trees, but since the rain had really started, they were all gone.
She wondered if it was a trap, but why bother? They had her exactly where they needed her — what was the point in catching her trying to escape? She was already their prisoner.
Tentatively, she took the steps down from the gazebo, half-pretending that she was just walking back to the lodge, her head swiveling the whole time, Miles walking next to her. They reached the path from the gravel parking area into the lodge, stopped, and looked around.
There was truly, honestly no one but them out there. The rain was soaking them through to the skin, but Delilah didn’t care. She was unguarded for the first time in nearly twenty-four hours. William was going to die anyway — she was going to run for it.
Bravely, she grabbed Miles’s hand, feeling a twinge of guilt, but ignoring it.
The two of them walked, casually but quickly, toward Miles’s truck. Delilah tried to act like she wasn’t looking around frantically.
They were thirty feet away, then twenty.
Miles released her hand to look in his pocket for his keys, brought them out trying to keep them from jingling.
Ten feet away, and then there was a noise: the sound of claws on gravel.
An enormous bear wandered out from the gap between Miles’s truck and another car.
Then, it sat down and simply stared at them.
Delilah and Miles looked at each other, and she felt like she could read his mind:
There’s only one of them and two of us, they were both thinking, she knew.
Beside her, she sensed rather than saw Miles start to shift, all his muscles flexing and then that red-brown fur sprout out, a growl tearing itself out of his throat.
Delilah shifted too, or at least she started to, but the bear in front of them roared. It was loud, and suddenly, from all around them, other grizzles came out: they’d been behind trees, behind rotting stumps, feet away behind a corner of the lodge.
She gave up and reverted to human, her own red-gold fur disappearing into her skin. The bear in front of her seemed to growl in approval, but even as she turned to go back inside, knowing when she was outnumbered, Miles roared back at him.
“Miles, don’t,” she said, feeling tired and empty.
He bared his teeth, growling, totally ignoring the other bears beginning to surround them.
“Please,” she said, and she felt the desperate tears start in her eyes, threatening to burst forth. She felt almost too tired to cry again, but there it was.
Miles advanced until he was six inches from the bear in front of him, the other bears not more than ten feet away. Delilah could see how it would play out: even if Miles got one, the others would get both him and her.
“Miles, don’t,” she said again. “Come on, you’re the only one I’ve got.”
Bear-Miles paused, mid-growl, and looked at her with one eye.
Delilah swallowed her tears and shook her head at him.
“She’s right,” said Roy’s voice, behind them. “Just go back inside, and stop trying to get out.”
Delilah whirled. She’d been so caught up in what was happening in front of her that she didn’t even realize Roy had walked up behind them.
“Just let me leave,” she said. She wanted her voice to have more spark to it, but the truth was, she was tired and worn out. “He’s going to die whether I’m here or not.”
Roy scoffed.
“Sorry, doc,” he said. Then he seemed to soften, bringing his hands together in front of him. “Listen, just for a few more days, then you can go home. We’d feel awful if we didn’t do everything we could for William. He’s looking better, by the way.”
It was the only good thing she’d heard all day, but it didn’t make her feel better. She sensed Miles shifting back into a human next to her, but without even looking over at him, she walked past the bears, past Roy, into the lodge, then down the hallway to the room that had become hers.
Miles followed as far as Roy.
“You’re despicable,” she heard him say to the older man.
“I’m your alpha,” Roy answered. “And you need to get in line.”
Then she slammed the door shut, stumbled to the bed, and crumpled onto it.
Moments later, there was a gentle knock on the door.
“Del,” Miles’s voice said.
“Come in,” she said, tired to the bone.
He opened the door and shut it behind him, locking it. Amazing that t
hey’d left the lock on.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She sat up on the bed and he sat next to her, putting his hand on her back again.
“You’re freezing,” he said.
“Yeah.”
There was a moment of silence, and then Miles stood. He offered her his hand, but Delilah just stared at it, too exhausted to even think.
“Come on,” he said. “Take a hot shower, at least.”
He pulled her to standing, and she stayed there for a moment, her hand in his, just looking at it.
“I can’t fucking believe this,” she said, and then burst into tears.
More than anything else, Delilah was furious. Her fucking father had died at just the wrong time, and because he hadn’t cared at all about her, he’d left the whole mess of his life for her to sort of.
Then Larry, the asshole drunk, had crashed his car into the alpha’s mate, who probably should have been looking where she was going to begin with.
Then there was everything else — the bears trying have their own brand of justice instead of leaving it to the courts, getting two people killed and one mauled, and now she was involved, given the impossible task of keeping the last man alive, despite conditions that would make an 18th century doctor turn up his nose.
And of course, in the middle of it all was Miles, who had to still be single and still be wonderful and good-looking. The moment she’d seen him again, everything had come rushing back to her — how desperately she’d loved him, and then how she’d had to choose between a life beyond Fjords and a life with Miles.
Even though she’d loved him then — and even though she was positive she could love him again — she still thought she’d chosen right.
“Hey,” said Miles, putting his arms around her, rubbing his warm hands over her cold back. “Hey, it’s gonna be all right.”
“What’s happening?” Delilah said, half-sobbing into his chest.
“You’ll be okay,” Miles said, his face now in her hair. “William will either get better or die, and the first chance we get, we’ll get you out of here, and—” there was a tiny pause, a micropause, but Delilah noticed it “—you’ll drive back to California as fast as you can, and this will all be behind you.”
