by Roxie Noir
“He was going to die!”
“He’s still going to die.”
Miles stopped pacing and turned to look at Delilah. “Are you sure?”
She shrugged and wouldn’t meet his eyes, but he could still see tears forming. “Maybe there’ll be a miracle, but it’s bad, Miles. It’s bad.”
Miles growled, his bear right beneath the surface again, his skin prickling from below, raw rage and anger simmering inside. He’d gotten Delilah into bad trouble for William’s sake, but William was still fucked. All this was for nothing. He started pacing again.
“Goddammit!” he shouted, and punched the wall.
Delilah jumped in surprise.
“Fuck,” he muttered, shaking his hand.
“That’ll help,” she said sarcastically.
“I can’t do anything!” he shouted. He’d never felt so helpless, so totally worthless: the woman he’d loved, the woman he’d loved for years, was trapped by the people he considered his brothers. Kidnapped.
“Just don’t punch the wall,” she said, her tone softening.
He flexed his hand, frowning, feeling the tendons move over the joints and bone. It had hurt.
“You checked the windows, I guess,” he said.
“Bears everywhere.”
“How many?”
“Three I could see. Probably more around.” She paused. “They really want me to stay here,” she said.
He shook his head, clenching his jaw. It was barbaric, he thought, fucking barbaric.
“Miles,” she said. She walked up to him and laid a hand on his arm, then pulled it away. For a moment he saw a flash of her pale skin through the opening in the comforter, and Delilah looked away, pulling the blanket tight around her again.
“Listen, I can’t do anything in this blanket. Will you go get me some clothes? These are covered in blood.”
Miles looked at the pile of clothes on the floor, big brown splotches on them. “Sure,” he said, body still rigid with anger.
She looked at the door, as if trying to set it on fire with her mind. “They’re not going to hurt me, I think. They need me to keep William alive, at least for now. We have time to figure this out.”
Miles cracked the knuckles on his left hand, an old habit, and then winced, shaking out his right hand, the one he’d used to punch the wall.
Delilah sighed, then moved the blanket slightly again. There was another flash of skin, and then her small, warm hand was on Miles, holding his big hand in hers, gently turning it over, touching him where he’d punched the wall. His knuckles were already red, two already turning to a violent purple.
“You really fucked up that wall,” she said, half-amused, half sympathetic.
She squeezed his hand gently, and Miles flinched, just a little.
“It was asking for it,” he said.
She was close, not even a foot away, and her touch on him felt electric. He barely noticed the pain now: the only thing was her, standing so close, holding her hand in his.
“It’s not broken,” she said, finally. She didn’t let his hand go, but kept holding it, looking up at him. “It’ll be sore, but you’ll be fine.”
Even though he’d been furious a few moments before, Miles’s face broke into a grin as he looked down at Delilah, his hand in hers.
“You could kiss it and make it better,” he said.
She wouldn’t look him in the eyes, but he was almost sure that she smiled. He could see it in the way that her lips twitched, the way her cheeks moved even though he couldn’t see her well.
“Just get me some clothes,” she said, looking back up at him, beautiful despite her wet hair and blanket. “We’ll figure something out when you get back.”
Chapter Thirteen
Delilah
Two hours later, Miles came back with Delilah’s suitcase. She was glad it was still filled with most of what she’d brought up from California: shirts, pants, underwear all neatly accounted for. Even if Miles was far and away the person she trusted the most right now — even though he’d gotten her into this situation by failing to really think it through — she had never met a man who had a good grasp on what constituted “wardrobe essentials” for a woman.
He didn’t say much when he brought it, probably because she kicked him out again right away. The thought did go through her head that he’d already seen her naked, plenty of times, so what did this matter?
Why would you consider it if it didn’t matter, she thought quickly, and then had him leave again.
Delilah was afraid of what she might do. That moment, earlier that night, when she’d held his hand and told him he was fine, she’d felt almost magnetized. It had taken every ounce of her will not to throw herself into Miles’s arms, throw the blanket off, and let him kiss her as she swooned, like she was in an old movie or something.
Even now, dressing, it was all she could think about: it would have been so sweet, the perfect moment. She’d never loved anyone like she loved him, and for years, she’d thought it was because she’d been seventeen at the time. People grew out of those feelings, didn’t they?
But then she came back, only to find out that she hadn’t outgrown them at all, that it was even worse now, because her options were to force herself to abstain or to break Miles’s heart again.
Abstaining was hard, sure, but she was certain that breaking Miles’s heart again would destroy her completely. It had taken her years to get over the first time, years to stop waking up in the middle of the night wondering if she should just drive back, right now, forget college and medical school and all her lifelong dreams.
And finally, she was better, she thought. She’d gotten over her first love enough to function well in life, she was totally certain that getting away from the Fjords pack had been the correct decision.
After all, she’d been back for just a couple of days and they were already holding her prisoner. What other evidence did she need?
They were Miles’s family, though. He considered them brothers and sisters, thought that their bond was stronger than blood, even. She would get both or neither, and Delilah knew that she could only handle making it neither.
Finally, she caught a few hours of sleep, comfy in her own pajamas, alone in the room. She knew that there were grizzlies constantly patrolling outside, but she also knew they weren’t going to hurt her — not yet, at least, and probably not ever.
Roy wasn’t a complete idiot, after all, and Delilah was both a doctor and shifter. She could be incredibly valuable to the pack, though they seemed to think the best way to handle her was via kidnapping. But given the level of violence she’d already seen in her few short days back in Fjords, they could really use a doctor who knew how to treat shifters properly.
Delilah was dead asleep when there was a knock at the door, and she swam up from a deep, deep sleep, feeling like she was fighting through layers of water and cotton. The knock sounded again, and as she opened her eyes, for just a moment she wasn’t sure where she was.
Then she remembered and threw the blanket off, wide awake now, and stomped to the door, pulling it open just as the huge shifter on the other side raised his fist yet again. She only vaguely recognized him from the night before as one of the men hanging around, making sure that Roy’s orders were carried out.
“Emma’s asking for you,” he said. “William woke up and he’s trying to move around.”
“Jesus Christ,” muttered Delilah. Then she stepped forward, wagering that this guy wasn’t going to hit her, not right then and there.
“He needs a hospital,” she said again, the words starting to echo a little, even to her.
“No hospitals,” he said, shrugging.
Delilah slammed the door in his face and hurriedly pulled off her pajamas, fishing jeans and a shitty t-shirt out of the suitcase Miles had brought her. She pulled her hair into a high, messy bun, put shoes on, and then jerked the door open again.
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.
Chapter Fourteen
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 lea
gue, 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.
Chapter Fifteen
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.
