Chapter Thirteen
“Welcome, Harper. I believe you already know what we do here,” Aaron said, grinning ear to ear. His men walked with them past the different parts of the still. Here the fruit was put in to boil, here the steam was collected, here it dripped down and into barrels. In another section the completed booze was sitting and aging a little.
“I won’t bore you with the details,” Aaron continued as his tall and unwashed men took up stations on either side of him. Dahlia sat at his feet and let her tail flick back and forth as he spoke. “I’m much more interested in telling you how this is going to benefit you.”
“Don’t bother,” she interrupted. “I already know your plan. You want to control as many people as possible and put yourself in a position of power. It’s disgusting.”
“No, darling!” He grabbed her hands. “It’s our destiny! And it’s already working. I have shifters and humans who are all going to want to work for me, to be paid in booze. We’ve gotten most of the cash that’s left back, we’ll be rich again. And you, you can be a part of it. You can be a queen, a president, whatever you want.”
“Never.”
Her decisive tone gave him pause. “Never, Harper? That’s an awful long time.”
“I’m very happy with the way things are. I don’t want any of this.” A sharp pain made her double over but she didn’t stop. “Kill me if you have to, but I won’t let you do this. I’m going to stop you. Just like Marcus wanted to stop you.”
Her uncle frowned in confusion. “Marcus? But darling,” he leaned over and put a hand on her shoulder, “Marcus developed the machines for us. It’s his recipe. He gave us all of this.”
Harper straightened up and stared at Dahlia. Everything was clear right at that moment. “You! This was your whole plan. We didn’t find Marcus’ hiding place, we found the spot you were forcing him to work. And once you all had what you needed, you killed him.”
“No.” Dahlia’s voice came out deep and dark from her jaguar throat. “No one wanted him to die. One of the last batches he made went wrong and a barrel exploded. Part of it hit him on the head and killed him. It was an accident.”
She prowled closer to Harper. “I will live with the guilt of what I have done everyday, Harper Bachmann. But I will not let you take this away from me. Your family destroyed mine. Now, I’m going to rule right alongside of you. No more bowing down. I’m part of this now.”
Her voice rang through Harper’s body. No, that was something else.
Harper cried out as everything inside her seemed to shake. She could feel that something was about to burst out of her but was terrified to let it out. “No! Oh no, what’s happening?”
Dahlia and the men looked at her with open mouths as she felt a deluge pour down between her legs. It was her water - it had broken. The child inside of her was anxious to come out, to escape this awful situation and she heard her own voice take on a pitch she’d never used before.
“Grey! Grey, help me!”
Outside the door of the silo, a metallic, crashing sound rang through the room. All of the shifters and alliance members fell in the doorway as a massive tangle of arms and legs. Bachmann’s armed guard quickly raised his gun and took aim. She threw herself at him so that he shot up into the air and the bullet whizzed right by her ear.
“You dumb whore!” He quickly went to reload but she knocked the bullets out of her hand. “Stop that!” He slapped her across the face and she screamed, not from the slap but from the pain of her child pushing its way out of her.
Grey and Alex led the charge. Someone shoved Harper and she fell to the ground. Once she was down she couldn’t get up and Dahlia ran to her and grabbed her ankle in her mouth. The jaguar pulled her quickly to the side as Harper’s body bounced over rocks and hardened dirt.
“Stop! Dahlia, please, I thought you were my friend.”
The shifter didn’t answer. She kept going until they were far from the fray, right at the side of the curved wall. The jaguar dropped Harper’s ankle, then walked up to look her in the eye. Harper was breathing hard and the need to push was more than she could stand, but seeing that horrible gaze up close made her forget everything else that was happening.
“I will not kill a mother,” Dahlia said softly, then ran off to fight the intruders.
Harper’s body was pulled taut with pain. She arched backwards and screamed, but her cries were lost to the sound of the silo fight.
The ground rocked as the corrugated metal ceiling twisted and turned above her. A fresh wave of pain ripped through her and Harper promptly passed out.
Meanwhile, Grey and his group were wide awake.
The shifters attacked with any means they could. Emily charged Bachmann right at the ankles, slashing at his achilles tendon with her tusks. Grey flew for the shooter’s eyes, scratching at them as he fumbled for his gun. Larissa went after the third man with the help of Alliance security, but Dahlia was right behind them. The two faced off and were about to dive at one another when the rifle went off and shot at the barrels. Booze spilled out everywhere.
“Damn it!” Bachmann turned to run to his product but his legs were too badly injured. He fell to the ground and started to crawl his way over. Grey left the shooter, whose eyes were too red bloody to be of any use to him, and quickly shifted back to human. Before anyone could react, he quickly grabbed the gun and pointed it at Bachmann.
“Stop right there!”
At the sight of the gun pointed at her boss, Dahlia slammed into Grey from behind. The shock of her weight made him fire and the bullet went right into Bachmann’s gut. His body jumped from the force of the shot and then blood poured out of him and seeped into the ground.
Grey rolled over and found Dahlia on top of him. “You fool,” she purred. “You should have stayed with your little halfling. Now you’ll never get a chance to meet that new baby of yours.”
She opened her giant mouth to bite his throat and a battle cry came out of her as a Grey looked at her shining fangs. Drool stretched across the inside of her mouth and vibrated with the force of her growl.
Then, she jumped as if something had burned her. Her leg was bleeding. Grey looked and saw Emily, still in boar form, attaching the jaguar from behind.
“Stupid little pig!” she cried and rolled off of Grey to face her attacker. As soon as she did, Grey grabbed the gun and aimed her leg. He put his finger on the trigger and shot.
Dahlia collapsed, breathing fast, as she also bled into the ground from where the bullet had grazed her hip. From across the silo, Grey heard Alex call to him.
“Grey! You had better get over here. Harper needs you.”
He ran over, gun in hand, and kneeled next to the unconscious Harper. “Sweetheart,” he smacked her face a little, “can you hear me?”
Alex grabbed his hand. “She’s out. Let’s get this baby.”
Grey nodded and leaned down to get Harper’s clothes out of the way. The rest of the group slowly made their way over. Larissa was quick to push the men out of the way and take Grey’s place.
“Are you going to greet your son with a gun in your hand? Go and guard Dahlia and the other two. I’ll bring this baby into the world.”
Emily kneeled down to help her as well as a few of the Alliance members. Together, they gently pulled Harper’s baby from her womb and brought it into the world. It was a girl. The baby came out as a human, but all the shifters could smell the feathers hiding just below the surface, waiting to come out.
“A little flier,” Larissa said, smiling. She looked at the sleeping Harper and moved a hair out of her face. “Sleep now, mama. You’ll need your rest.” She pulled off her shirt and wrapped the baby in the worn cloth. Just a few feet away, Bachmann breathed his last breath. Dahlia, the shooter and the third man were taken prisoner by the security guards and marched out. Grey came over to join them, no gun this time.
“Here she is, papa,” Larissa said, handing him his new infant. “What are you going to name her?”
He looked down into the sleeping girl’s face, looked around at the blood-stained dirt and the destroyed barrels.
“I don’t want to name her today,” he said. “I’d rather get her home safe with her mother.”
With the help of the group, he took his family home.