“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.”
“Sylas always had a pretty good reputation for being fair for a criminal overlord,” Zosha said, a bit nervously. “We’re model employees, or as close to it as he gets. He’d probably count it as a strike against us, but I don’t think he’d react too harshly unless it looked like we didn’t respect his authority.”
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.”
Au
rie 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?”
After another breathless, still moment sitting on the ground next to the door, his reply filtered through the cutout.
“Why would I be mad at you?” he asked in a soft, raspy voice.
“Because I couldn’t help you,” she said. “I really thought I could, you know. I thought I could look at pictures of your brain and fix it all. I didn’t even think to check that the sedatives were still working.”
“It’s not your fault,” Dom replied wearily.
“Well, it’s not yours, either,” she told him. “And I’m hoping it’s not just destiny—it seems too cruel. So where does that leave us?”
There was another pause. “Random happenstance?”
“Works for me if it works for you,” she said, and they settled back into silence. Aurie was just wondering whether her presence was irritating Dom when he spoke up.
“Do you really think any of this is your fault?” he asked.
“I’m a very self-centered person,” she told him. “I know, logically, that I’ve been doing my best and that it’s not my fault that it wasn’t enough, but I still seem to be able to blame myself for situations outside of my control. Also, I don’t like my best not being enough. And…” she trailed off for a moment to collect her thoughts. “I like you. A lot. I want to help you. The fact that I’m not good enough to is frustrating for more than just injured pride.”
“You shouldn’t feel bad about it, you know,” Dom rasped through the door. “Not being able to help me, I mean.”
“I was just so useless,” Aurie bit out, frustrated. “I couldn’t even help myself.”
“No one would expect you to be able to. This isn’t exactly your area of expertise,” Dom told her gently.
“So? Thalia’s a journalist, and she had it under control.”
Dom snorted. “Thalia is, by best guess, from a mob family.”
“Huh.” Aurie filed that tidbit away for later.
“So, yeah. You not being able to help someone with a horrible, incurable disease? Not your fault.”
“Hey,” Aurie said, a little more sharply than she meant to. “None of that. Finish line, remember?”
Dom laughed. It sounded choked. “I don’t think there’s a finish line for me, Princess.”
“Well, keep fucking looking,” Aurie all but snarled. “And stop calling me Princess.”
“Why? It suits you. You’ve got the princess name, the princess hair… just like fairy tales.”
“You think about things that don’t apply to real life too much. I’m not a princess, you’re not a monster, and we’re two hours out from Grand View, so you better get your shit together enough to be able to let my dear advisor stab you in the neck.”
“And there’s that bedside manner,” Dom teased. He was avoiding what she said, but since his voice sounded a shade warmer and more stable, Aurie let it go.
“Yeah, well,” she said, “forgive me for not treating the bear shifter with kid gloves.”
They settled into a slightly more comfortable silence.
“I can leave, if you want me too,” she offered.
“Nah,” Dom sighed. “I’m going to tell you something, and I expect for you not to pass it around. The world is loud, to me. It’s just so much noise scraping around the inside of my skull. But you? You make the world quiet. And I’m a selfish man. It’s my fault that you’re here instead of anywhere you’d ever be by choice. So I’m going to take advantage of that for as long as I can.”
“Oh,” Aurie said, feeling suddenly warm, and the two remained in a soothing, companionable silence until the Breakwater touched down.
It was strange to see Grand View again. She’d have thought that it would be the most welcome sight in the world, but all it was was a monument of too much stress, too little sleep, and coworkers who were, at best, apathetic.
Aurie and Dom were accompanied to the emergency entrance by Hyde and Thalia. Aurie had no idea how Dr. Lee had managed to get the place cleared out and didn’t really want to know. Instead, she focused on putting one foot a head of the other and getting herself and Dom where they needed to be.
Dr. Lee was waiting for them by the emergency entrance, intimidating despite her short stature and pixie cut. She crossed her arms and gave them the most controlled yet lethal glare Aurie had ever been on the receiving end of in her life.
“Aurie,” Dr. Lee greeted crisply. “Fine friends you’ve made here.”
Aurie winced. “It wasn’t on purpose?”
Dr. Lee snorted and shook her head. “You can explain it to me on the way down. Might affect how his operation goes,” she said as she swiped her ID card over the reader to reveal two uniformed assistants. “Correli, Marcus, please show these fine folks to the theater.”
The taller assistant nodded and beckoned. “Come with us, please.”
Dom, Aurie, Hyde, and Thalia all looked at each other, then moved forward. Dr. Lee caught Aurie’s hand in an iron grip.
“You and I need to talk,” she said. “The others can get prep done.”
“That’s… she’s kidding about messing up the operation, I promise,” Aurie assured the others as they were led down the hallway.
“So how’d you end up in this mess?” Dr. Lee asked when Aurie caught up to her.
“I think they just had a register of the people who worked with brains and scalpels,” Aurie told her. “I just drew the short straw.”
Dr. Lee harrumphed. “You’re not going to be taking part in the surgery. I don’t need a backseat doctor.”
Aurie swallowed, thinking about having to cut Dom open. “No, I didn’t think so.”
“You ain’t coming back to work any time soon, are you?” Dr. Lee asked, sideyeing Aurie.
“I haven’t decided yet, ma’am,” Aurie said truthfully. “But it doesn’t look good.”
Dr. Lee was silent for a long moment. “I don’t have to tell you how stupid this is, right? Gallivanting off with a bunch of kidnappers because one of them’s pretty?”
“Oh, I’m not doing it for Thalia,” Aurie joked nervously before wilting under Dr. Lee’s hard stare. “And I’m not doing it for Dom, either. I like him. I think I like him a lot. But I’ve always thought there was more than being resident number five, you know, the one with the tits. I think this might be my more.”
Dr. Lee exhaled long and hard through her nose. “If you need something, be it a ride home or anything else, comm me. But let it be known that I will be saying I told you so until the day you die.”
Aurie gave her a weak but genuine smile. “Thanks. That means a lot.”
Bearly Christmas Page 72
