ROMANCE: BIKER ROMANCE: Werewolf Rider (MC Shifter Pregnancy Romance) (New Adult Paranormal Romance Short Stories) (118 page)

He says it dourly.

Frankie smiles into his intelligent insightful eyes, despite the seriousness of the situation.

“Quite so.”

The two of them share a smile in the color-streaked dark of the control room.

“Captain? Captain!” A junior officer is running –
running!
- into the control room.

“Yes, Ensign Smith?”

“Captain! The ship is now coming alongside! Men appear to be preparing to come on board.”

At the same moment, a thirty-ish woman behind the control panel – Junior Lieutenant Leeton – looks up at the captain.

Everyone is still, entirely, silent. All eyes are on Captain Wright.

“Condition Delta.”

“Yes, Captain.”

The young Ensign hurries to broadcast the change of condition.

“Lieutenant Howard, Commander Lewis?” The captain calls out the names of the two most senior officers in the room.

“Yes, Captain?” They both answer at once.

“Have the men assemble at the bridge, prepared to answer the threat.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“I am putting you two in command out there.”

Frankie swallows preparing for oncoming adrenaline. 

“Yes, Captain.”

“And, Lewis?”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Get the SEALs unit up there with you. Lieutenant Jakeman is in charge there, I believe?”

“Yes, Captain.”

Yes.

“That's all.” He looks at them for a moment, and his eyes fill with concern. “That, and good luck.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

Frankie feels herself turn, and move quickly through the door towards deck.

***

“
Fire!
”

That night, in the middle of the relentless ocean and in the black of night, with hostiles swarming onto the deck, armed with automatic weaponry, you do what you’re trained to do without thought. But they keep coming.

Frankie feels herself go through the motions shot after shot, her expert aim whether while in motion, or not, is near perfection. After the many years of practice, it feels like she doesn’t even need to aim. She relies on her intuition, an almost magical gift and advantage over enemy fire.  

“Stay back, men!” she spots one sneaking along the side rail, before she takes care of it.

Frankie hears her own voice shouting orders to the group behind her. All the years of training, the years of living as a Lieutenant, had changed her; had blended and crystallized into someone that can give orders as easily as breathing, that can watch the pattern of the battle without needing to think about it. To see this while in such dire peril is a skill of the elite, and why she is with Seal Team 7. 

“Fire!” she calls.

She watches men fall to the volley, and yet, the enemy still keep boarding. Her team behind the armament turret, sheltered from incoming fire, all moving in a well-orchestrated manner.

Frankie loosens her body, as she peers around the edge. The deck before her is deep gray and blue with the scattered light from the turret. There is little movement out there now.
Perhaps they have stopped coming, at least on this side of the vessel
? She cranes her head a little further. Her men are stationed over here, and Commander Lewis is on the other side, with his team. Team 7 is further ahead, behind the aircraft control tower, she imagined.

As she watches, Frankie sees a dark shape move from around the corner of the tower.

No!
Her heart jumps. It’s Storm. He’s bringing some men around toward her and her team, attempting to make a foray out onto the space of the deck where the pirates have been boarding. She wants to cry out to him,
No! Don't do it
! And yet her heart is bursting with pride. How can anyone be so insanely brave?

Then, as the group scouts across the deck, the firing starts again.

No! Storm!

Just as suddenly, Frankie is moving a few feet back behind their shelter, motioning her men back to prepare to make room for the fourth oncoming, stealth SEALs who have just arrived at her location, each step with the exacting precision and speed.

“Storm?”

“Frankie?”

Their eyes meet, and, insanely, they are grinning at each other. Laughing –
laughing!
- they reposition their men, anticipating their next move.

“Right?” He nods to her when the men are in place according, instinctively knowing what to do.

“Right.”

They look into each others eyes and, suddenly, it seems to Frankie that time stops, she is seeing into another time. They are both dressed differently. He is in the uniform of the Civil War. They are together on land, and it is dusty and dry. They are in a battle, together. There's a special closeness between them then, too; an ineffable connection that spans time, spans the ages, and her soul. 

Frankie thinks, suddenly.
I have known this man before?
She shakes off the hallucination quickly. 

How could she remember another life in a split second like that, in which they stood shoulder to shoulder, co-commanders, and faced death together in another time and place?  They seem to be natural partners, in some intense way, minus the shenanigans. Her heart skips a beat and she pulls herself back to the here and now,
again.

Frankie looks across again at Storm. Their eyes meet again. Deep green, piercing eyes to her baby blues. Frankie notices his pupils dilate with their locking eyes in a shared intensity.

He sees it too
.

She feels her heart crescendo with the joy of that.

Now firing, and moving, and firing, inching forward, he is moving out, again, into the crazy, spinning, violent world of the battle on deck with attackers now coming from all angles, things getting ominously dicey with their growing numbers.

Frankie carries the oddly timed vision in her heart, as she leans around the corner of shelter and takes aim and fires.

I need to see you again
.
Be safe.
Her mind sings out the mantra as she darts, heedless of the danger, around the corner to take better aim.

***

The world is a dream now, suddenly in slow motion.

“
Frankie!
Frankie! No!
”

Frankie hears her name called, as bullets fly in her direction. Strange. So that’s what it feels like to be shot, she never imagined it would be like that. She expected either that she would not notice until it was too late, or that it would be more dramatic, somehow.

She relives it, and sees the pirate take aim at her, almost sees the bullet, as it moves, on a collision course, towards her. Then she feels it. Warm blood now flowing down her body. Only later, does it feel painful. Much later.

“
No! Frankie!
”

Someone, somewhere, is shouting her name. Then two bearlike arms enfold her, lifting her up against a hard-muscled chest, moving her further out of the way of gun fire and boarding pirates.

“Frankie!”

“Rex..?”

“Frankie? Stay with me! You're gonna’ be fine. Frankie?”

“I...”

She wants to explain that it is only her shoulder. It was in and out. She can still shoot. That she should, still, be able to stand, seizing control over her body, and senses.

“...Okay.”

She manages to get the word out. She sees his face melt into a grin of pure elation that she could weep for it, if she had a moment to think beyond circumstances. 

“Good!” He breathes. Then,

After taking her safely out of the line of fire, he declares “I've gotta’ help the men...”

He is already turning away, taking aim around the side of the turret. His men are behind him.

Frankie takes her eye off him for an instant, focuses on the maelstrom in front of her. In time, and far too late. From across the other side of the deck, a man hurtles onto the ship from yet another attack position. He is wearing dark clothing in the Somali style. He is holding a blade. And he is coming straight for her.

Frankie does not have a second to cry out or alert anyone, to even take aim. Her assailant is on top of her. She cannot fire at this close range, and he is pinning her arm to the deck, her other arm holding the hand with the knife. He attempts to lunge, dropping the knife to her throat. 

No
, Frankie thinks, dazed.
Not now
.
Not this way. Not happening!
She struggles to throw him off, seizing his hair with her released pinned hand and tossing his head back. She isn’t as strong, though, and her shoulder is not doing what she tells it. The knife slashes down toward her chest. She tosses herself to the side.

Her world, now in slow motion, is black, and white. And now filled with a cry of such wildness that she would have thought no human could make such a gut wrenching call.

“
Noooooo!
”

As he shouts it, Storm launches himself across the deck straight through the firestorm of bullets, straight at Frankie's assailant. She feels the shock of impact as his body crashes onto the man launching him away from her. They both roll on to the deck, further away from Frankie. Storm is strong; so much stronger than the pirate, who suddenly looks helpless.  Storm is kneeling on his chest, and his hand is around the man's throat, the other hand twisting the wrist of the hand that held the knife. He is snarling – snarling! - at the man, and the cords on his neck stand out as he chokes the man one-handed, strangling the wrist with the other.

“Jakeman!”

“
Storm
! Move away! He's dead. You’re in the open here!”

Two of Storm's men have run into the no-man's land of the deck, trying to pull him away from the body that now lies there.

As they pull him away, another group of pirates arrive where he had just been. The other SEALs shooting and, it seems, succeeding in holding them at bay. Except for one lone enemy slithering toward Storm, and Frankie sees him approaching from behind, fast.

Storm is still snarling obscenities since taking down Frankie’s attacker, in pure rage. He does not seem to be fully lucid of his surroundings, deep in emotion. Frankie watches him from her now well-hidden position, her eyes starting to glaze over. She can feel her heart aching, fit to break. She had no idea that he would be filled with such animal instincts in protecting her.  Stunned at the raw, inhuman-like sounds that came out of him as he did.

If she doesn’t survive tonight, she thinks, she at least would have that moment forever. That moment he came for her, protecting her with everything he had, the pirate not standing a chance, even if he had seen him coming. She smiles. Now, with heavy blood loss she feels consciousness slowly slipping away. Not before she manages to aim her gun for the perfect shot, dropping the man at Storm’s six. Storm, shocked at the sudden fire from behind, sees the drop, realizing what just happened, watching her drop also losing consciousness after saving his life.  

***

There is light above the smoke, and lurid red tone on the sea somehow, as if an ominous warning of the evening events. The water is strangely, incongruously calm, tranquil waves lapping almost-unnoticed against the sides of the ship.

It is a victory.

Below the smoke, there are dead men; and the living men are moving the bodies. Taking stock. The men are amped up; fueled from the surprise attack. 

“Boys?”

It is Captain Wright. He is on the deck, standing just ahead of where, hours before, Frankie and her group held their ground against the pirates. Now, the deck is being washed of blood, and moving dead bodies.

It has been a long night. But at the end of it, there is only one wounded Navy crew, they are not certain if he will make it yet. There are five others in the infirmary with non-life-threatening injuries. Frankie is one of them.

“Yes, Captain?”

“Well done.” The captain says. The sudden battle and injured Team weighs heavily, carving new expression lines beside his mouth.

“Thanks, Captain.”

The words are vehement. He is rigid, and angry for this attack, it is clear.

“We've captured their ship, and have taken them prisoners,” he continues. “Everyone except for Turner, Smith, and Jenkins turn in for a few hours.  You three will be taking first shift, keeping watch. The rest of you, catch a few hours. You'll be needing it. Dismissed.”

“Yes, Captain.”

The men, exhausted, finish cleaning the deck and go below to their cabins.

Now early morning, Frankie stirs in bed, in the infirmary.

“
Where..?
”