Colby (BBW Western Bear Shifter Romance) (Rodeo Bears Book 3) (51 page)

“This could be a fake,” he said. “What story could possibly important enough to go through all this just to get it?”

“Serkot,” Thalia said right as the doors opened with a
ding.
She powerwalked out, heading straight for her room and digging in her pocket for the room key. She fumbled a few times due to the shaking of her hands—
embarrassing
, she thought—before managing to open the door.

Her room was neat, only a few things not still in her suitcase. She habitually traveled light and had gone to the club almost immediately after checking in, so it was easy to sweep everything into the case and zip it up. She turned to find Hyde standing in the doorway, waiting on her. There was nothing left of the smirking man from the bar left in him. Now, he resembled a particularly homicidal statue as he stood rigid, something dark burning in his eye.

“Why do you want to ask me about Serkot?” he asked, his voice deathly calm.

“Now? Really?” Thalia asked, trying to push past him.

“Yes, now. I’m trying to decide if I should just kill you now or not,” he replied.

“Please don’t,” Thalia said. “Okay, so, long story short. Seven years ago, you were an exemplary member of southern Serkot’s Red Quarters until all of a sudden, Councilor Marcus winds up dead with your DNA all over the scene. You flee. Obviously, you know all of this. What I’m trying to write my article about is what really happened. Logan Tillman, the man who framed you, did it because he wanted to be able to push his registration bill and didn’t have enough votes. After framing you, not only did he have enough votes to get the bill passed, he got elected to chancellor.”

“Shockingly, I have been keeping up with the news on that,” Hyde said drily.

“Have you been keeping up with the aftermath of the registration bill passing? Things were already bad for shifters in in the Gorgon system. Don’t think I didn’t go over how much you had to get a place in the guard. After the Tillman debacle, it only got worse. Anti-shifter violence isn’t legally considered a hate crime there anymore.”

Hyde raised an eyebrow. “And you think one little article is going to change that?”

“If it’s just one little article, what’s the harm in letting me write it?” Thalia countered.

“Are you really asking me that right now, while we’re running from the people after you?”

Thalia considered his point. “Fair enough.”

“So as much as I don’t want to ask this,” Hyde said, looking like someone who was about to attend his own execution, “but what are you going to do next?”

Thalia blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“After we get out of here,” Hyde expanded, gesturing at the room. “Where are you planning to go?”

“A different inn, where I plan to use a fake ID to get a ticket online. Hopefully I can shake these assholes for a while,” Thalia said. “Maybe they’ll think I gave up on the story and fuck off.”

Hyde snorted. “Speaking from experience, Tillman’s not the sort to just let things go. You need a more permanent plan.”

Thalia thought for a moment. “Move to the Outer Rim and settle down with a jakit herder?” Hyde’s face managed to display several strong emotions in response to that without ever shifting. He seemed to go through all five stages of grief, starting with denial and ending with acceptance, in roughly as many seconds and rubbed at his temples as though he had a headache.

“Look, my plan to remain unmurdered was somewhat dependent on publishing my article. I’m winging it at the moment.”

“Come with me,” Hyde ground out like it pained him to say.
 

“What?” Thalia asked warily.

“Come back to the Breakwater with me. The others would never forgive me if they found out I left you alone and defenseless, and there’s no way they wouldn’t find out.”

“So, in order to protect me—grudgingly—from a few mercenaries sent by a super sketchy criminal dickwad, you’re taking me to a ship filled with mercenaries and sketchy criminals?” Hyde nodded. “Fuck it, I’m in. Point the way.”

“Follow me,” Hyde said, stalking back out into the hallway. Thalia had to jog to keep up with him. The trip to the elevator was uneventful, as was reaching the lobby. It was only when they reached the street that things went to hell. Chasing down the sort of people that frequented the dangerous parts of town meant that Thalia, too, had to frequent those parts, which how when a bullet slammed into the wall next to her head she knew no self-respecting law enforcement officer would be showing up to lend a hand.

Hyde swore and pushed her into the nearest alley, which was good because Thalia’s brain had chosen to shut down. People stalking her across a system and a half wasn’t the best experience ever but suddenly the realization that she could die crashed over her. It took all her years of experience with repressing emotion to keep herself from freaking out.

“Are you armed?” Hyde asked, looking through the scattering crowd for their attacker.

“I have half a candy bar and a can-do attitude,” Thalia responded automatically. She was wearing decent shoes. Could she get away if she ran? And how much of an asshole move would it be to leave someone who had offered her protection—albeit somewhat reluctantly—to get possibly murdered while she made a break for it?

“Fantastic, let me know how bringing optimism to a gun fight works out for you,” Hyde shot back as several men emerged from the crowd, striding with undisguised purpose. Thalia was no great mathematician, but there were definitely more than two of them.

“I mean, optimism, a candy bar, and a badass space pirate,” Thalia said, pasting the best shit eating grin on her face as Hyde spared a moment to throw a thoroughly annoyed look over his shoulder. “Look at it like this: you can’t kill me, which I have no doubt you’d love to do at the moment, if they,” she nodded at the steadily advancing figures, “do it first. So, you know, grin and bear it.”

“I’m throwing you into a fucking turbine the second I think Annie won’t have me drawn and quartered for it,” Hyde said backing slightly more into the alley.

“Aw. Chivalry isn’t dead, it just smells funny and hasn’t moved in a while. What’s the plan?”

“I can’t beat all of them like this, and I’m assuming you’re not going to be much of a help. I’m going to have to shift, which means we need to get to the
Breakwater
immediately afterwards. I need you to take my comm unit and call Richard Chapel,” Hyde told her, stripping his jacket off in one fluid motion and throwing it to the side. As it turned out, despite going a few rounds with his truly sharp tongue and being in imminent danger Thalia was still capable of finding him ridiculously attractive.
 

“I can do that,” Thalia said. Hyde handed her his communicator.

“See the dumpster over there? Get behind it. Tell Rick what’s going on, and if it sounds like I’m dying feel badly about your life choices and run away.”

“I’ll just practice my lamentations, shall I?” she said, making her way to where he told her to go. “And… try not to die.”

Hyde snorted. “Sage advice. Now, hide.”

Thalia hid.

She heard the slightly nauseating sounds of muscle expanding and reforming and the creaks and snaps of bones rearranging. The urge to look was strong, but Thalia had priorities and tapped once on the comm, the holoscreen flickering to life. If she lived, she’d maybe get to see him shift again another day, and the best way to get out alive was to do what he said.

She opened the video call function of the comm and scrolled until she found “Chapel.” Her finger was just about to press the connect button when she heard a shout, followed by a growl, followed by the loud
pop
of a blaster going off too close for comfort. Flinching, she forced herself to make the call.

The sounds of the fight continued, echoing off the alley walls, and Thalia was somewhat embarrassed to realize her breaths were coming shorter and shorter.

None of that
, she told herself.
What sort of self-respecting investigative journalist can’t handle a little danger?

Nevertheless, it was a relief when the call connected and a man with touseled brown hair and, of course, gold eyes peered out at her from the screen.

“See, you’re calling me from Hyde’s comm link, but you don’t appear to be Hyde,” Rick Chapel said, “so I imagine you can understand my confusion.”

“I’m almost always confused, so I understand perfectly,” Thalia assured him. The distinct sound of bones breaking, accompanied by a squelching noise, cut through the air and Thalia flinched again. “Okay, so, um, it’s like this: I sort of stalked Hyde to a bar—
not for weird reasons
, I just need to interview him for an article—and, wouldn’t you know it, apparently the people I’m writing the article about don’t want it to get published, which, fair enough, they’d probably go to jail. So it turned out they had people following me and they apparently decided to act when they saw me talking to Hyde and so now he’s a bear and I’m sitting behind a dumpster next to what I really hope is an unused condom and hoping they die before he does. And he told me to call you to tell you this was happening and that we’re going to be making a run for the ship, pending our survival. So. Um. Just letting you know?”

Rick took in the rant with a slow blink. “Are you telling me that you’re in trouble and Hyde is helping you? And that he’s bringing you to the
Breakwater
as part of that?”

“Yes?” Thalia said.

Rick sighed. “Karma is a beautiful thing. I’ll get everyone ready. Good stars.”

The image winked out. Not knowing what else to do, Thalia peeked around the dumpster and immediately wished she hadn’t. She had known, intellectually, that getting in a fight with a bear wasn’t the sort of endeavor that left a pretty corpse behind but the sight still shocked her. On the bright side, it looked like Hyde was almost done.

Thalia leaned back against the alley wall, forcing herself not to think about what was on it, and breathed deeply. She couldn’t go falling apart now. Actually, she should be happy. Not only had she found her man, she was going to be sailing off with him. Surely at some point she would get a few answers, and that was all she needed. Journalism, it sometimes seemed, was the art of making mountains out of molehills. So, really, everything was going even better than planned. It wasn’t like she’d rather have the mercenaries very much alive and succeeding in their goal. This was the best outcome for the situation.

She took a deep breath in and then slowly let it out, letting the tension leak from her shoulders only to tense right back up when something very large and suddenly very close to her huffed. The warm air hit her face and she winced at the smell before she could help herself. Slowly, she opened her eyes.

Hyde in bear form was much, much bigger than Hyde in his human form, as well as significantly hairier. The eyepatch hadn’t stayed on after the shift, the scar tissue over his eye standing out against his dark fur. The look in his remaining eye held a tad more judgement than Thalia thought a bear should be capable of.
 

“All done?” she asked, voice level.

The bear huffed again, which she assumed meant yes. She pushed herself to her feet and then, cautiously, looked around the edge of the dumpster.

The scene wasn’t any more pleasant than it had been when she’d looked before. She took in the broken, ruined bodies, suppressing the urge to vomit, then nodded at Hyde who ambled towards the alley exit. Thalia paused, dashed back to get his jacket—the only article of clothing to survive the encounter—and followed him.

If the good people of Starbright City had ever seen a bear before, Thalia couldn’t tell from their reactions. There was a good amount of gawking, with some hushed whispering thrown in. Hyde seemed to be ignoring it all, so Thalia followed suit as she hurried to keep up with him. They trekked through the Portside District and to, predictably, one of four docks for designated for trade ships. A tired-looking guardsman looked up and then back at his comm unit before doing a double take and staring wide-eyed at Hyde and Thalia.

“Is that a bear?” he asked, incredulous.

Thalia looked over her shoulder. “What? Where?” She could almost hear Hyde’s eyeroll.

The guard just pointed wordlessly at Hyde’s hulking form.

“Oh, you mean him?” Thalia forced a laugh. “No, no, this is Huckleberry. He’s my…service dog.”

“Your service dog,” the guard repeated, a furrow forming between his eyes.
 

“Yes. He helps with my anxiety,” Thalia told him earnestly.

The guard seemed unconvinced, possibly because he wasn’t an idiot. “Ma’am, I don’t know what—”

“Look,” Thalia cut him off. “We’re trying to get on our ship to get out of here. Now, either this is my beloved service dog Huckleberry and we go on through or this is a bear and you have to contact the necessary people and fill out the necessary paperwork. Do you think they’ll pay you overtime for that shit?”

The guard stared at her for a long moment before deflating. “All service animals are required to be on some kind of leash.”

Thalia shrugged and pulled two pairs of pajama bottoms out of her bag. She tied them together, then gently wrapped one end around Hyde’s massive neck. The look in his eye was more exasperation than fury, she was pleased to note.

“There,” she said, straightening back up with one pajama leg in her hand. “Leash.”