After thirty minutes of a gentle lecture on appropriate workplace behaviors, during which at no point did Mr. Friedrichson look above her collarbone, she was finally released to go fulfill the duties of her residency, which went normally, meaning she spent the rest of the day growing slowly more and more irritated with everything but especially insurance companies. She managed to catch about ten minutes of sleep in two plastic waiting room chairs pressed together, which only made her more tired and frustrated rather than less, before having to assist in an uncomfortably touch and go surgery on a twelve-year-old with a brain tumor.
By the time she finally walked back out of Grand View General Hospital, she was angry, tired, dreading returning to her own apartment, and on the verge of tears.
And that’s when she got kidnapped.
She supposed, as she was gently but firmly herded towards what appeared to be a decently sized cargo ship, that it said something when your kidnappers where nicer than your coworkers and your neighbors combined. There were three of them: a tall, dark man with an eyepatch who’s remaining golden eye gave him away as a shifter immediately who seemed significantly more annoyed at kidnapping Aurie than Aurie was at being kidnapped, a woman with her hair swept back by a patterned cloth and no discernable expression, and a slight, pale girl with dark hair and eyes who quietly apologized the whole way to the ship.
“I really am so sorry about all this,” she said.
“I’m sure you are,” Aurie said in her most reasonable voice, “but you appear to be doing it anyways, which sort of negates your apology.”
The pale girl winced. “Would it make you feel better if I told you we aren’t going to hurt you?”
Aurie considered it. “Yes, but not as much as, say, letting me go would.”
“See, that would sort of defeat the purpose of us doing this in the first place,” the man said in a voice that implied that he would rather be just about anywhere in the universe other than kidnapping an innocent medical student, a feeling which Aurie could definitely empathize with. “Look at it this way: unexpected vacation days.”
Aurie considered trying to consider fighting them off as a ramp leading into the ship lowered, but decided that she was probably exhausted enough that she’d just fall asleep trying to run. At the top of the ramp stood a broad, hairy man and a tall woman with dark red hair.
“Which one’s this?” the broad man asked.
“Aurelia Talbott. Still a student but almost done with her residency,” the pale girl answered.
The man at the top of the ramp grunted and walked into the ship as Aurie and her kidnappers began to trek up the ramp.
“Any difficulties?” the red-aired woman asked once they reached the top.
“No,” dark-skinned woman said. “Where’s Dom?”
“Where do you think?” the red-haired woman answered with a raised eyebrow before turning to Aurie. “Hello. I’m terribly sorry about all this, but, unfortunately, needs must. I’m Annie. This is Hyde, Zosha, and Delphine.”
“Sure, go ahead,” Hyde grumbled. “Tell her our names. Do you want to help her fill out a police report, too?”
“Yeah, it would really suck if we went to jail for kidnapping instead of, you know, all the other illegal shit we do,” Zosha told him, deadpan.
Hyde sent her a look that was pure venom and opened his mouth to say something in response, but Annie cut him off.
“Alright,” she said. “Zosha, you and Delphine take Aurelia here to your quarters. I’ll comm you when Dom is ready. Hyde, go do your job.”
Hyde walked off, muttering under his breath. Zosha giggled.
“Don’t mind Hyde, he’s always grumpy. I have no idea what Thalia sees in him, honestly.”
“I’m… sure he has many nice qualities?” Aurie responded hesitantly, unaware of what the correct procedure was for gossiping with one kidnapper about another kidnapper’s love life was.
“Not really,” Annie said, sounding highly amused. “Make sure she’s got anything she needs, okay?”
“Of course,” Delphine said quietly.
The group of women moved towards what appeared to be a hallway, Delphine’s grip light but solid on Aurie’s arm.
“Why’s Hyde so pissy about her being here, anyways?” Zosha asked. “I mean, he likes Dominic.”
“I think he’s just frustrated that there’s not really much he can do to help,” Annie told her as they reached a crossway. “Now remember: anything she needs.”
“’Kay,” Zosha said. “See you soon.”
They split apart, Annie going further down the hallways and Zosha, Delphine, and Aurie turning down a corridor that reminded Aurie of living in the dorms.
Zosha walked up to one room and punched a code into the keypad by the door. “This is my room,” she said as the door hissed open. “Well, my room and Rick’s room. You’ll meet him later. Anyways, this is where you’ll be staying while you’re here. Due to the whole thing where you’re technically our prisoner, either Delphine or I—or anyone else that’s part of the Breakwater’s crew—has to stay with you at all times. You can wear anything of mine, though, and you can watch any of the holovids we have.”
“Great,” Aurie said, moving to sit down on the bed. She had been tired at the hospital. Now, she was exhausted. All she wanted was to be in her own apartment, in her own bed, but instead she was getting abducted by the world’s most cheerful kidnappers. Unable to resist the cloud of sleep that crept through her mind, Aurie felt her eyelids drift shut. Maybe this was all a bad dream, and when she woke back up everything would be fixed.
As per her usual luck, when she woke back up, nothing was fixed.
Zosha was standing next to the bed, leaning over Aurie with her hand on her shoulder.
“Good morning,” she said. “The bathroom’s attached if you need it. There’s a new toothbrush in there, too, so feel free to use it.”
“Thank you,” Aurie said. “That’s very polite of you, especially in light of the whole kidnapping thing.”
Zosha winced. “I am sorry about that. It’s a complicated situation. Captain Ingram’ll explain it all, I promise.”
“That sounds… promising,” Aurie sighed. “Bathroom’s through here?”
At Zosha’s nod, Aurie walked into the small connected bathroom and shut the door behind her. It had a shower stall, a toilet, and a sink with a sonic tap and a water tap. According to the holovids, this was the point where Aurie would tap into her inner genius and figure out a way to escape. Unfortunately, Aurie was no vid hero, and even if she managed to somehow escape she had no idea how to get planetside again. She looked her reflection in the tired eyes and sighed, grabbing the toothbrush Zosha had left out. As she brushed her teeth, she ran over the things she knew and the things she needed to find out. The things she knew were: she had been kidnapped, her kidnappers seemed like pretty decent people other than that one glaring flaw, and that there was a pretty good chance that if she kept her head down and did what was asked of her she’d get out alive. What she needed to know was what, exactly, they needed her to do. She decided to hold off on a full-fledged panic attack until someone asked her to, for instance, sew a bag of something illegal into someone stomach or perform a lethal injection. For all she knew, they just really desperately needed someone to take out an appendix.
“So,” she said, walking back out of the bathroom. “Where’s this captain I need to speak with?”
“Breakfast,” Zosha said. “I hope you like dehydrated fruit.”
Aurie, suddenly starving, followed her dutifully into the rest of the ship.
Annie was sitting at the table next to Hyde, a tall brunette man, and a prodigiously hairy barrel-chested man.
“I brought her!” Zosha declared cheerfully and they entered the kitchen.
“Fantastic,” the hairy man said. “Aurelia, right? You’ve already met Zosha, Hyde, and Annie, and this is Rick. I’m Leo Ingram, I’m the captain of the Breakwater. We deal in acquisitions and transportat
ion.”
“Sooo… smuggling,” Aurie translated.
“Smuggling,” the captain agreed. “It’s… well, I guess that’s all a bit irrelevant to you. You’re here because my mechanic needs medical and, obviously, we can’t just waltz into a hospital equipped to handle it, what with our criminal records and active bounties and lack of medical insurance.”
“I have medical insurance,” said a new female voice from behind Aurie. She turned to see a yawning freckled brunette about her height in a loose shirt and pajama shorts. “Is there any coffee left?”
“Wait, why do you have medical insurance?” Hyde asked, slightly incredulous. “You’ve been here for months. How are you even paying the bills?”
“I took my lifestyle change as an opportunity to reconnect with my mother. She put me back under her plan,” the brunette said, plopping down in Hyde’s lap and taking a long sip of his coffee.
“And your mother’s insurance provider doesn’t care that you’re part of a band of intergalatically infamous smugglers?” Hyde asked.
The woman shrugged. “She’s reasonably sure that her lawyers can plead Stockholm Syndrome if I ever get arrested, so, no. Is that the doctor?”
“Yeah, her names Aurelia,” Zosha answered, leaning back on her heels. “That’s Thalia,” she murmured to Aurie. She stalked Hyde across at least one system and then dismantled a corrupt government, and now they’re in love and she’s learning basic engine maintenance from Dom.”
“Who’s Dom?” Aurie asked.
“I’m so glad you asked,” Thalia said. “You’re going to be getting very well acquainted with him.”
“That’s the one who needs my help, then,” Aurie said, resigned.
“Got it in one. He should be in the room you guys set up, by the way,” Thalia said, taking another long gulp of Hyde’s coffee. Hyde swatted her shoulder and took the cup back.
“Good to know. Thalia, why don’t you show Aurie there?” Annie said.
“Because I just sat down?” Thalia replied.
“And you’re not actually doing anything until Gamma shift, which gives you plenty of time to come back later,” Annie told her calmly.
“Fine,” Thalia said, rolling her eyes. She leaned back to peck Hyde on the cheek before sliding off his lap and walking towards Aurie and Zosha.
“Tag me into lead kidnapper duties, Z,” Thalia said, holding her hand up. Zosha grinned and high-fived her.
“Have fun.”
“Okay, so, any question?” Thalia asked as they stepped back into the hallway.
“I don’t know where to begin,” Aurie said. “Your crew… isn’t what I was expecting for a bunch of kidnappers.”
“Alright,” Thalia sighed. “Rundown of the crew: the original crew was Hyde, Dom, Rick, Leo, and Custer. All of them are bear shifters. They picked up Annie through a series of happenings of soap opera proportions, which sort of set off their trend of picking up women in various parts of the galaxy, myself included. Leo and Annie are together. They’re both reasonable, but don’t fuck around with either of them. Zosha’s with Rick—that’s the brown-haired dude—and has been since she accidentally got the crew into the U4 game. Zosha’s sweet, but she’s smart and she’s spent her whole life in an uphill battle for survival, not to mention she’s seriously connected. Rick’s the first mate, and if someone says that Dad said to go do something they’re talking about him. Delphine was sent to kill the crew and got captured instead, leading to her and Custer falling in love, which will make sense after you meet Custer, who defies description so I’m not wasting my time. My name, again, is Thalia. I’m a journalist, and I’m with Hyde, the technician. The last member is Dom, who you’re about to meet. Quiet, sweet, reserved. Oh, look, here we are.”
The room Thalia lead her to had obviously been recently repurposed, boxes pushed against the wall to make room for some medical equipment and a table in the center of the room with the man Aurie assumed was Dom sitting shirtless on it.
If this was another day manning the walk-in clinic, the man on the table would have been the highlight of her week. Even sitting she could tell he was short, but he more than made up for that with the almost delicate structure of his face that should have contrasted sharply with the hardness of his body but somehow didn’t. He had the same golden eyes as the other men on the ship and close-cropped dark hair.
He looked up. “This her?”
“This is her,” Thalia confirmed. “Dominic, meet Aurelia; Aurelia meet Dom.”
“The very least you could do in this God-forsaken situation is call me Aurie,” Aurie muttered.
Thalia quirked an eyebrow at her but said nothing.
Aurie turned her attention back to the man on the table.
“So, what seems to be the problem?” she asked.
He gestured behind himself to what, on further observation, was a more rudimentary version of the X-ray machine she used back at Grand View. “There’s something in my neck. It needs to come out.”
Aurie walked around him and inspected the medical equipment, deciding she didn’t really want to know where it came from. It was easy enough to boot up and select the “localized scan” option, waiting for the attached wand to light up blue. Picking it up, she turned back to Dominic.
“Alright, let’s get this over with,” she told him. “Face forward and lean over.”
He complied. She was about to ask where, exactly, she should start looking when she saw it: a thin, pale line in his tan skin approximately an inch and a half across.
“This will tingle a little, but you shouldn’t feel any pain,” she said, placing the wand against his neck and waiting for it to do its job. It only took a few seconds for the image on the screen to clear and for Aurie, heart sinking, to see a very specific problem with her kidnappers’ request.
“So, um,” she started with no little amount of apprehension, “there may be a slight… complication.”
“Complication?” Thalia asked in a terrifyingly mild voice.
“Yeah, um, you see this?” Aurie asked, pointing at a small white square on the screen. “This is a chip—I’m assuming that’s what you wanted me to look for?—that’s imbedded in Dominic here’s neck. It doesn’t look like it’s hurting anything, it’s pretty small, but from this X-ray it looks like it was put in before he finished growing. That means it’s pretty deeply imbedded in his neck and what’s more, I’m a bit wary of how close it is to his spine. Honestly, I don’t have the skill to get this out and even if I did, I couldn’t recommend going through with it. He’s much safer leaving it in.”
“No, he’s not,” Thalia sighed, “and neither are we.” She opened up a comm channel on her multi-tool. “Hey, guys, I really hope you’re still in the kitchen, because we’re about to need to have a little family meeting. Me, Dom, and Aurie will be up in five.” She clicked the link out.
Aurie stared at her. “I don’t think you understand. He’s not in mortal danger from this. It’s…annoying, maybe, but not fatal.”
“He has Rogerson disorder,” Thalia told her.
Aurie blinked and leaned slightly away from Dominic. “Oh.”
“The chip generates some kind of high-pitched noise, or something that his brain reads as a high-pitched noise, that causes him to shift unexpectedly,” Thalia continued.
Aurie had, in her many years working in various hospitals in various areas of the city, learned the very important lesson of not blaming people for their medical conditions. It was poor medical practice. With that said, the knowledge that she was standing next to a man who might, spontaneously and without warning, turn into a feral bear at any second was…alarming.
Edward (BBW Western Bear Shifter Romance) (Rodeo Bears Book 1) Page 31
