Grounding Gracus (First Wave Book 6)

by Mikayla Lane

  She quickly headed back to her raft and stared at her gear for a minute trying to figure out what to do. She’d rescued many a stranded and distressed tourist, but never one in a predicament like this. This was definitely an interesting first.

  With her mind coming up blank and knowing the guy was going to need some serious treatment for his drug overdose, she called the one person she knew would answer the radio immediately and may have an idea how to proceed.

  “Blanche? It’s Rebecca. I kind of need some help here. Over,” she said into the radio, hoping Blanche would get back to her quick.

  She smiled as her radio crackled and she heard Blanche’s voice. “Becca? Are you alright?”

  Rebecca grinned. “I’m fine. Unfortunately, one of our tourists decided to try out some of Mike’s pot candy… a whole lot of it. And he’s now passed out here on the river, by Bartow’s Bluff. I’m going need some help for him,” Rebecca said, trying to figure out how to tell Blanche about the bears. And their human cuddle bunny.

  “Aww honey, what a way to start your trip! Can you get close enough to see if he’s still alive and breathing?” Blanche asked.

  Rebecca laughed, she couldn’t help it. The whole situation was pretty screwed up. “Yeah, if it weren’t for the two bears he’s currently bed buddies with,” she said with a snort.

  There was a long silence before Blanche came back on the radio. “Honey, I don’t think I caught the last thing you said. Please repeat,” Blanche said before the radio crackled and went silent again.

  “He’s sleeping in between a baby bear and its mother,” Rebecca said with a shake of her head and a grin.

  “That’s a joke right?” Blanche said, her voice portraying her disbelief.

  “No, ma’am. Yes, I did get pictures. I just don’t know how to get him away from the bears to check him further,” Rebecca said, still grinning at the idiot.

  There was another long silence before Blanche came back on. “Girl, you stay the hell away from the fool and wait for the rescue boys to come along. They’re on their way. I’ll let them know to drop in a little further away so they don’t disturb the bears. Lord knows we don’t need the momma to wake up and see him!” Blanche said.

  Rebecca laughed. “Yeah, how often does she get to wake up to breakfast in bed? I’ll keep an eye on things until they get here. Thanks Blanche,” Rebecca said, preparing to head back to check on the sexy, but stupid tourist when the radio crackled again.

  “You stay away Becca! The boys will be there soon,” Blanche said worriedly.

  Rebecca turned off the radio so it wouldn’t wake the bears when it came back on again and she grabbed a bundle of her rope, formulating a plan as she headed back to the very large, very beautiful and very stupid man.

  She crept up closer to the trio than she had the last time and noticed that the human’s head was farther up and away from the momma bear’s head. She moved even closer and was able to lean down and reach out a hand to touch the man’s neck. Verifying he was still alive, even though she could see him breathing and hear him snoring. It just boggled her mind that the bears hadn’t killed him.

  Well, Rebecca thought with a shake of her head, God watched out for dreamers and fools. But even He must have had to work overtime last night with this particular fool. What truly amazed her was that even with all her movements, the bears and the man, still hadn’t awakened or moved.

  Caught between taking another picture of the trio close-up and trying to extricate the man, she sighed as she pulled the rope from her shoulder and quietly walked right up to the man’s head and leaned down.

  Hoping that if none of them had awakened already, they wouldn’t now, Rebecca managed to loop the rope under the man’s armpits. She stepped back to test the pull of the rope, when hazel eyes lazily opened and looked right at her.

  She stood completely still, trapped in the unfocused gaze of his beautiful eyes and stunned that he wasn’t comatose. It wasn’t until he gave her a lopsided grin that Rebecca realized that he was still stoned out of his mind and could now get them both killed if he awakened momma bear and she wasn’t feeling quite as good as he was.

  Rebecca quickly thought of and discarded several ideas to shut him up and keep him calm when he reached his arms out to her.

  “Mate…,” he said in a deep voice that sent a cold shiver down her spine.

  She moved forward quickly and placed her hand over his mouth to shut him up. “Hush, before you get us both killed. Please,” Rebecca said quietly, hoping like hell the fool would shut up.

  His large hands reached up and bobbled in the air before he touched both sides of her face and the contact was almost electric. Rebecca was surprised at what felt like energy pulses rushing through her cheeks, the chill leaving them quickly at the contact and becoming warm. Very warm.

  She wasn’t sure if she was afraid he’d wake the bears or if she was afraid he would let go of her face, but she stayed like that for a few minutes. Her holding his mouth and he holding her face.

  She felt his goofy smile under her hand and couldn’t contain her own grin at the handsome but stupid guy. She held her finger to her lips and was hopeful when he nodded his head that he would remain quiet so she could get him out of there. Rebecca slowly removed her hand from his mouth and he smiled broadly at her with an unfocused gaze.

  *****

  Traze T’Alq and Risk Demetrios were scanning through the emergency channels where their people were located, looking for anything that might signal that one of their own was in trouble or that a group of dark ones or Relian’s had been found when Risk looked up at Traze.

  “Hey, where is it that they sent that Valendran Commander? The one from the Adaria?” Risk asked Traze, hoping that he was wrong about his suspicions.

  Traze leaned back and thought about it for a minute. “I think it was Colorado. Some National Forest there. Why?” he asked curiously.

  Risk leaned his head down. “Damn, we need Grai in here now. I mean right now,” Risk said as he turned to the comm and alerted a rescue team to get on deck in the docking bay.

  Traze called his brother through the Shengari’ and looked at Risk curiously as he listened intently to something with his headphones.

  A few minutes later when Grai came into the comm room, Risk didn’t bother trying to explain, he unplugged his headphones and turned up the volume on what he’d been recording since he first heard it.

  “Seriously, Becca has pictures and we’re bringing her camera back with us. I swear to God, you’d never believe it without them!” Grai and Traze looked at Risk curiously as the strange, laughing voice came over the radio transmission.

  Risk just held up his pointer finger and shook his head, knowing they needed to wait a minute and listen to a bit more before they would understand why he had called for him.

  The crackling began again and another voice came over this time, this one disbelieving. “Is it true that he was sleeping naked with two bears?”

  Laughter came through clearly as the first voice came back on the radio. This time it was obvious that there was more than one person laughing around the radio.

  “No! It was better than that! This guy looks like a damn giant! Taller than the damn bear and naked as the day his momma birthed him! And there he was, stoned out of his mind and laying in between two damn bears like he was Goldilocks or something!”

  Another voice piped up in the background. “The bears were just as stoned as the giant!”

  While another chimed in, “We’re calling him the ‘Giant Bear Whisperer!’ This is going to make the internet implode and we’re gonna be famous!”

  Grai’s eyes got huge and he looked at Risk. “Where the hell is that?”

  “Right outside Glenwood Springs, CO. It’s somewhere in the forest along the Colorado River. I’m sending the coordinates to the rescue team now, but we have to get those pictures,” Risk said with a sigh wondering what the hell had happened. It couldn’t be what it sounded like.

&nbs
p; Grai growled. “Get Scaden down here! Now!” He said as he went back out of the command center and headed to the docking bay, sending a call to his mate that he had to leave for a little while. She was shocked when he explained why.

  Grai couldn’t imagine what the hell had gone wrong and why the man was in trouble. He didn’t really know Gracus well enough to know what the man was capable of and had gone on Ivint and Scaden’s word that Gracus was well versed in human culture and knew of the dangers. He truly hoped that it hadn’t been a mistake.

  Traze told him through the Shengari’ that Scaden was going through the portal on the Adaria now and would meet him in the docking bay. Grai strode into the docking bay in Dillon, TX at the same time that Niklosi and Amun ran up to him and walked beside him.

  Without looking at either man, Grai nodded his head. “I know he is your friend and you may go, but if you get in the way or disrupt this mission, you will be removed.”

  Amun and Niklosi nodded their heads as they entered the transport craft and secured their gear. Grai nodded to the on-call rescue team and held up one finger to them, letting them know they were only waiting for one more person before takeoff.

  Within minutes Scaden was running up the ramp and sat next to Grai, locking himself into the seat. As the craft took off, he turned to Grai. “What the hell is going on? What happened to him?” Scaden asked, his concern for his friend his only thought.

  Grai pulled out his comm and replayed the conversations that Risk had heard through the emergency channels in Glenwood Springs, CO, to the snickers and choked laughter of the rescue team in the craft with them.

  Scaden looked horrified. “No! There’s no way that is Gracus they are talking about!”

  Niklosi didn’t bother to hide his grin when he leaned over to look at Scaden and asked, “Did you explain to him about the marijuana being legal in Colorado?”

  Scaden looked like he was thinking about the question, when his eyes got huge. “Fuck! He was going into the woods to be alone and he’s only been there for twenty four hours! It can’t be him, I’m telling you, it can’t be.”

  “Sounds to me like he had his hugs and drugs,” one of the team members said with a laugh.

  Grai leaned over to look at Amun who was several people over from him. “What are the effects of marijuana on a Valendran?”

  Amun pulled out his comm and studied it for a moment before responding. “I don’t see that it would affect us to the point that they are speaking of on the radio. Our metabolisms work too quickly. But, in order to be sure, I would need to know exactly what he had and how much of it. I’ll know more when we see him,” Amun said, looking apologetically at Grai and Scaden.

  A few minutes before they were to drop on the cabin that Gracus was given to use, all of the team comm’s beeped with notifications at the same time. Everyone looked at one another curiously as they reached for their devices.

  Grai pulled his out and saw the message from Traze about the same time that everyone else burst out laughing and Scaden gasped. It was a meme that Traze had intercepted on the internet and prevented from being posted.

  A picture of Gracus laying buck naked on the ground with a mother bear at his back and a baby bear covering the front of his groin area with the caption, “When going native, goes way too far.”

  Amun looked up at Grai, trying to stop his own laughter. “I really need to know what he took. If it could do this to him, then we really need a chemical makeup completed to see if there are other affects that we aren’t aware of. It could even be that he ate something that increased the potency. I need more information.”

  Scaden put his head in his hands, feeling a little sick to his stomach over this. He turned to Grai. “Maybe he was drugged…,” he began before Grai projected the meme on the wall of the transport and zoomed in on the ground around Gracus and the bears. There on the ground, were the unmistakable candy wrappers that said, ‘Mike’s Mountain Magic Blend’.

  Niklosi burst out laughing again as Amun sighed and said, “Gracus always did love candy…”

  Grai tried to keep a straight face. Although the situation was very serious, the danger of their discovery always a risk, but Grai was trying damn hard not to laugh his ass off. Even he hadn’t considered warning the Valendran about the legal drug and he really should have. He would certainly make the warnings clear to all off world personnel as soon as Amun knew the specifics of the reactions to their bodies.

  Grai turned to Amun. “I want a full work up on what affects this drug would have on us so we can warn others about the potential dangers.”

  Niklosi laughed harder before saying, “You mean dangers other than stripping down and frolicking naked in the woods with dangerous wildlife?”

  The ship erupted in laughter and this time even Grai couldn’t hold it back.

  Scaden looked at Amun with a worried gaze, not the least bit amused at the situation. “Why can’t I reach him on the Shengari’?”

  Amun shrugged. “I really can’t tell you until I scan him. If he consumed enough of the drug to do this to him,” Amun said holding up his comm with the meme of Gracus on it. “Then you can safely bet that the energy of his beast must be muted or negated while the drug is in effect. I need samples and testing before I can tell you more.”

  Niklosi laughed. “Yeah, I think we all need samples of the stuff!”

  Another one of the rescue team members added, “Can I be a part of that test group?” While a few others nodded their heads in agreement.

  The laughing pilot turned to Grai. “We’re ready for you to drop.”

  Grai and the others stood and waited for the pilot to countdown the de-cloaking so they could drop to the ground near the cabin.

  “Three… two… one… drop!”

  One by one the men dropped from the now de-cloaked ship and hit the ground running. Grai called out which teams were to stay and secure the cabin while he had Niklosi, Amun and Scaden come with him to go get Gracus.

  Traze updated their comms to let them know which hospital Gracus was being routed to and Grai headed to the garage to get the SUV that was still there. He’d just opened the door to the garage when Niklosi whistled and laughed.

  “Looks like our pilot had a problem with piloting,” Niklosi said as he looked at the scratches running down the side of the SUV.

  Scaden grunted, trying to hide his worry for his friend as he got in the back seat with Amun, while Grai jumped in the driver’s seat and immediately turned off the EAT system.

  Grai turned to Niklosi and pointed at the dashboard system. “Go through that and find out where he went while he was here,” Grai said, knowing that it would be important. He wasn’t sure why he thought that, but he’d learned a long time ago to trust his instincts.

  Grai headed into the town, already knowing the route to the small medical center where they had taken Gracus. As soon as he heard that the man had needed some peace, he had chosen this place for him to go because he knew of the restorative effect that this area would have on him.

  He had brought his mate, Tricia, here before the birth of Tristan. Not only so she could benefit from the positive energy of the area, but so he could try to relax. He’d been so unsure over what kind of offspring that he could create that he’d been panicked throughout the entire pregnancy, more so near the end. Until he’d held his perfect son in his arms for the first time, he thought with a smile.

  Grai pulled into the small parking lot of the medical center and wasn’t too surprised to see that the place was a lot busier than it should be. He sighed, knowing that word of the naked fool had made the rounds of the town and in such a small place a naked giant who slept with bears was going to be quite an attraction.

  They all got out of the vehicle and headed into the crowded medical center, their size and number creating another wave of chatter through the small crowd of people in the emergency room of the hospital.

  Grai scanned the crowd for any familiar face and finally seeing someone, he moved
through the gawking people, making a beeline for a friendly face.

  The sheriff turned just as Grai approached and the man’s face broke out in a big smile as he moved toward Grai with an outstretched hand.

  “Grai! What a surprise! What brings you to town? How long are you staying?” Sheriff Joe Scarborough asked, not too surprised to see his fishing buddy.

  Grai smiled and shook his hand. “Joe, it’s good to see you. Is there somewhere we can talk in private?” Grai asked, looking around at the now silent crowd who were listening to every word that they were saying.

  The wise, older sheriff looked around the room and nodded his head before addressing the crowd and his deputy who was standing beside him, staring at the Valendrans.

  “If you don’t have a reason to be here, you need to leave now. If you aren’t gone in five minutes, you’ll be fined for… creating a public nuisance. Now go!” Joe made a shooing motion with his hands and the people began to slowly file outside, grumbling the whole way.

  The waiting room was completely empty a few minutes later and the sheriff turned to his deputy. “You go outside and make sure they don’t all wreck trying to get out of the parking lot at the same time.”

  When the deputy left, Grai didn’t waste any time. “Joe, your naked tourist is one of my men and I need this buried. Fast,” he said as he showed the sheriff the meme Traze had pulled from the internet already.

  Joe snickered and shook his head. “Damn boy, the only reason I didn’t think he was one of yours is because of how he was found or I would have already buried it and called you. What the hell made him go nuts and do something this stupid? Usually your guys are quiet and no one really knows they are there,” Joe said, shaking his head.

  Grai sighed. “I have no idea, but I brought our doctor to help find out,” Grai said, hoping the sheriff would take the hint. He was grateful when the sheriff did.

  “Let’s go find Dr. Landry. Your guy keeps trying to get away so we have him… well… he’s a big guy…,” Joe said before he just shut up and led the way through the ER doors and into the back, hoping Grai would understand what they would find.