I stared at the readings the SS Goldie’s mainframe computer displayed and then checked them again. The information coming over the monitor couldn’t be right. I shook my head but that didn’t change the data the computer spit out. I sighed and leaned back in my seat.

This was my first mission working for Union Delivery, and I’d be damned if I screwed the pooch so badly they never gave me another one. Flight school graduation had been one week earlier. Union Delivery was my first real job and a simple one. Or so all my classmates claimed when they undertook their missions. Granted, I was first in my class, but the readout I’d received seemed downright ridiculous.

I turned in the chair and spoke to The Goldie. “Computer, send a message to Commandant Miranda from Jessica White.” The fact that the delivery system still expected us to address ourselves and didn’t automatically do it was one of the last antiquated problems with the ship-to-ship communications. “Let her know that I am questioning my orders. I think something is wrong.”

“Affirmative.” Goldie had a soothing voice that had been designed specifically to fit my psychological profile. Every ship in the fleet sounded a little bit different. If I were to get stuck in intergalactic space travel on someone else’s vessel, it was entirely possible I’d be irritated and unhappy the whole time, based on the sound of the ship’s voice alone. Or so the data suggested to the people in charge. I wished they’d spent as much time fixing the comms as they had designing happy computer voices.

I really didn’t care about niceties, just convenience. I’d traveled space for as long as I could remember. Certainly longer than I should have been. The laws about how much time minors could spend off planet were meant to stop kids from having just the kind of upbringing I’d had. My Uncle Mac had believed in things like rules and regulations for other people, but not when it came to his own ship. Many a night, he’d gone to bed, leaving either Calvin or me in charge. Now, if the authorities had ever found out, he could have been in serious trouble, but the Whites were a family that never did anything halfway. We either managed to avoid trouble or die from an overdose of it.

The jury was still out on which one of those fates I would turn out to have.

I was, at least, trying to walk—or fly—the straight and narrow. I worked for the government. Not against it.

Goldie beeped, and I checked Commandant Miranda’s reply.

I checked the orders twice when I saw them and threw them back to command. That’s why you had to wait for so long. Command feels that with your special flying abilities, you don’t need to be held back. It would be a waste of resources. You can do this. Be careful in shifter space. Otherwise everything is the same as any other delivery. You can do this.

Should I be concerned that the commandant felt compelled to tell me I could do this more than once? I sighed. Again. Even Uncle Mac, before he had blown to smithereens in a space battle with a rival pirate, hadn’t ventured to shifter space. Every good pilot knew that. The shifters didn’t allow non-shifters onto their planets. Landing was a death sentence, and crash landing was no excuse. The biggest problem? The space that wound through the tri-fold shifter worlds were brutal, and the solar flares from the three rotating suns played havoc with onboard systems.

A pilot had to be an expert on all things space travel to hold their ship steady and straight.

All of this meant it was a really good idea to simply avoid the region altogether. The shifters—bear, wolf, and giant cats—had outlawed the use of their own spaceships for anything other than defense. But destroying anyone who dared penetrate their borders didn’t seem to bother them.

So, of course the Union had gone and terraformed planets on both sides of their systems. Someone had to deliver goods and manage the trade.

It looked like one of those someones was going to be me.

The folks at the Union who determined our assignments—and I highly suspected it was one dude in a room somewhere—weren’t wrong. I could get this ship back and forth across shifter space. I’d done it before. Of course, I’d never wanted to do it again. The dampening systems had gone haywire, and it had been the roughest ride of my life. But I’d done it.

I guess that mattered more to my bosses than my newbie status.

I sighed. They gave extra pay to the pilots who made these runs. Maybe that would mean that I could actually afford to buy my brother out of jail this month instead of next. I gritted my teeth. Stupid jackass was why I was in this situation to begin with. We were going to live quietly, somewhere on a planet with no one around who could involve us in any nonsense that might end with us getting blown up. Then the stupid idiot had to go and get himself arrested.

And I got to fly through shifter space.

Asshat.

Pilots didn’t know what they carried. It was our job to just get it where it belonged, and whatever I was carrying must need to be in the new colonies. I’d never found putting off anything made it any better. I had an uncomfortable thing to do. I might as well get it done and make it a memory. I could put this in the back of my brain where I shoved everything else I hated thinking about. I’d make this trip one of those ‘yep not thinking about it’ things too.

I programmed in the coordinates. For now, autopilot would do just fine. I bit my fingernail.

Shifter space on my first day employed by the respectable Union. No one would believe me, even if I was allowed to talk about this, which of course I wasn’t. Breaking non-disclosure agreements could mean death. I wasn’t getting executed or destroyed. Not if I could manage not to. I was going to find my little planet somewhere, and I was going to see to it I stayed in one piece. That was all I ever wanted.

It was a full twenty-four hours of nothing special happening before I got to the edge of shifter space. Earth space was always busy, but well patrolled. I didn’t need to worry too much about space traffic. Other pilots kept to themselves and their designated lanes. It wasn’t until I got a little farther out showboating happened. Pilots liked to stretch their legs, and even though I wasn’t likely to do anything stupid, I’d been known to speed on occasion. I liked the way the ship moved, I liked how it responded to my commands. I liked the control, and okay, I liked the thrill of it.

But I had no need for any of that this time. I was going into shifter space.

I’d have plenty of things to hold my attention for about eight hours before I could let my guard down.

I held on to the controls and took the ship off autopilot. More fools died in this area of space trying to keep the ship on autopilot than any other mistake. I was many things, but foolish wasn’t one of them. Not anymore.

The truth was, the shifter planets were gorgeous. Blue. Green. They had almost no pollution. Earth might look like them if we hadn’t nearly destroyed it during the dark years. Ugh, I had no time for these thoughts. I needed to concentrate.

Goldie’s controls were steady. One hand on the thruster, I kept it from increasing against the space winds. It was such a bizarre stream in this area of the universe, as though it either wanted to push me forward, jerk me right, left, or destroy me all together. I shook my head. There I went, personifying inanimate objects again.

I was a good pilot but the rest of my brain—yeah not so smart. The winds didn’t want anything. They were a space phenomenon that no one could solve because they couldn’t spend enough time to research them in the region. Thank you, shifters.

Sweat broke out on the back of my neck as though I somehow knew Goldie was about to start shaking seconds before she actually did. I sighed. I’d wanted this ship when no one else in my graduating class had. She was old. But then again, so was I. In my group of twenty graduates, I was the eldest of the bunch. The ripe old age of twenty-five put me four to five years senior to everyone else in the class.

Of course, they didn’t have my life experience and were probably taking nice little runs from Earth to Mars without having to pass by a bunch of shifting to animal lunatics on either side of them.

Hours felt like minutes and somehow also like years. Sweat drenched my body. I gripped the controls. If I could will the ship to stay like this—shimmying but not breaking apart—I’d do it. My stomach clenched as nausea rolled through me. Space travel was usually boring.

A loud boom sounded, my first indication that I’d been shot. What in the hell? I was still in the passage that allowed us to move through this system. I hadn’t strayed even a little bit over. Boom. Again. This time I was able to tell that the firing was coming from Wolf Planet.

“Fuck. Me.” I screamed before I pressed the button to give Goldie instruction. “Goldie, tell the Union I’ve taken fire and. ‌. .” I realized I didn’t know how bad off I was. The controls were going haywire. I couldn’t make out any of the readings. Looked like I was in a spin, but who could tell. I was being sucked into. . . “I’m going to crash land on Planet Bear.”

Oh, that was bad. Technically, it wasn’t called Planet Bear. It was something more sophisticated, but we called it after the shifters occupying it. And who gave a shit about that now? I was going down onto it, which meant that I was officially going to be a White that went kablooey. Bear defense would make sure that if the crash didn’t kill me, they would.

Damn it. I wanted the quiet existence and the minding my own business part of this life. I wasn’t even notorious, hadn’t earned what was coming for me. Maybe this was some kind of family karma. I bellowed out my fear. I wouldn’t go afraid. That much I would promised myself. All the way to my end, I’d be brave. This was so damn unfair.

I held on to Goldie tightly. What else really was there to do?

I thought the alarms finally woke me. Goldie’s proximity warnings must have gone off sometime upon entering the atmosphere, but I couldn’t remember exactly. My head hurt. I clutched my forehead. Blood seeped through my fingers, dripping onto my broken console.

How had I gotten here, and why wasn’t I dead? I undid the belt holding me in the chair and rose. Goldie was a mess. She wouldn’t be salvageable. There were more problems than I cared to figure out right then, none the least of which was half the ship seemed to be missing. Several tree branches had taken down the top hatches, and an entire wall of the hull was gone, simply sheared away. Gold bars were strewn all over the control room, which at least let me know what had been in the cargo bay. No wonder the Union had been in a right old hurry. I sunk back down in the chair as dizziness assaulted me. I was clearly concussed, and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it.

Damn it, I’d crash-landed on Planet Bear. How fucked was I?

Tears I’d refused to shed earlier—I thought, anyway, since there was a whole chunk of missing time in my head I didn’t know for sure—rushed out. Well, this just plain sucked. Sucked. Sucked. Sucked.

How was I still here? The bear air security should have blown me out of the sky while I’d been descending. And yet. . .

Okay, I’d sent an SOS to the Union. They’d at least come to see what happened to me and do a preliminary scan for my remains and their gold. Maybe not in that order.

Despite the fact that the world tilted backward and forward, making me want to puke, I pulled myself into a standing position. I was alive. That was weird, but I wasn’t going to complain. If the universe wasn’t done fucking with me yet, then I’d just go for it, as per usual. Maybe I was on my way to becoming notorious. Maybe I’d be the first human woman to crash on Planet Bear and return to talk about it. I grabbed several gold bars, taking them one at a time, since they were heavy. They usually had tracking on them. When the Union found their gold, they could also locate me.

Plan decided, I grabbed the bag hanging from the back of my chair and shoved the gold in. The whole kitchen area of the ship was gone. I’d have to find food and water.

What did I know about the bear shifters who lived here? Nothing. Nothing at all. All my uncle ever said was stay the heck away from shifter space. I’d gotten away with it once. Twice, not so likely.

They were dangerous enough the Union respected their borders, which was all the information I needed. I had to figure out how to hide until help came—however long that took. Anything else would mean death for sure. Since I’d already somehow managed to cheat my own demise once today, maybe the universe was on my side.

Or maybe I was delusional. Dying in a crash would have been painless—hadn’t I been unconscious when I hit? Maybe the universe said ‘psych!’ With bear shifters somewhere out there, I couldn’t afford to get cocky.

I exited the ship, leaving it as fast as I could manage on foot. Smoke bellowed upward. Whatever set of circumstances had allowed me to survive, I wasn’t going to stick around the wreckage and let the creatures find me. I sucked in a deep breath as fresh air and dizziness assailed me again. Concussion, or something in the air itself? A thought dawned on me. Not every planet was kind to human lungs. Was this one? Did the shifters simply breathe differently? Was this all just psychosomatic?

I forced myself to calm. I was breathing. If I couldn’t, I’d be dead already. Who knew how long I’d been out cold in that chair? The ship had gaping holes. I’d been breathing the air a long time. I was fine. I had to be smart. I could survive. I had twenty-five years of experience to draw on.

I’d kept my brother and myself alive for a year in the woods before our uncle found us after my parents had been blown up in a bizarre barn fire that had sent the whole structure into the atmosphere of the planet they’d been trying to raise us on, landing them and the barn who knew where. They’d been dead. Or at least it had seemed that way since they’d never come back. Our house on that planet—that had turned out to be not at all safe—had gone up in that blaze too. We’d had to eat berries and hunt animals to survive. Sometimes, we’d been so hungry I hadn’t known how we would make it. But I’d done it. I’d kept us alive.

I could do the same here. I’d just have to be tough and smart, again. . .

Blood continued to ooze from the head wound. Swiping the stinging flow away from my eyes didn’t do much, but passing out again would be really, really bad. Nearby woods drew my attention, and I ran hard and fast for them. My injury and blood loss made this a lot harder than it should have been, but I gritted my teeth and kept going, losing track of time. I moved until I had to stop for a breather. I rested, and then I ran some more. I ate things that I hoped weren’t poisonous plants. I never ran into another living soul anywhere. If I’d been focused on anything before I fled the ship, I’d have grabbed a protein bar. Clearly, my concussion had knocked the sense out of me too. Gold bars, yes. Food, no.

Maybe everything we knew about Planet Bear was wrong. Maybe it was actually completely devoid of people. Maybe. . .

My mind had really started to play havoc on me, and I needed to settle it down. I had to find some real food, some protein that I could put in my stomach. But that was going to be easier thought than done. My hunting skills without a weapon were zilch. My father’s shotgun had made it through the blast that took him out, falling from the sky, but the bullets hadn’t come down with it. I’d been able to feed us better then than I could take care of myself now.

I stumbled into a clearing and then darted backward. I needed to be calculating, to make sure there were no bears waiting to eat me. I inched toward it with hunger and desperation making me bolder with each step. I stopped abruptly on the edge of the forest, almost unable to believe my eyes. There was a house. An actual house. Tears flooded my eyes, and I pushed them away.

Seeing a house wasn’t necessarily a good thing. That meant there were bear shifters around. I clung to a tree on the edge of the woods. If they found me, I was dead.

I waited a while, watching the house. It was the middle of the day. Did bear shifters work? The house was alone, the only one I could see in any distance. Maybe it was some kind of country home that no one used. Maybe my concussion wasn’t better. Maybe it was empty. Maybe there was food around. Maybe I was really crazy enough to go find out.

I ducked, although I wasn’t exactly sure why. I was the only moving object around, and at five foot ten, I wasn’t exactly small. Someone could see me if they just glanced out the window. A dusting of rain hit me, and I was suddenly extremely glad the last however many days, weeks, years that I’d been here had been good weather, pleasant outside and not too cold at night.

That might all be changing.

I ran as quickly as I could manage to the edge of the house, breathing hard. Tiredness weighed on my shoulders, but hunger came first. I pressed my head against the window. The lights were on, but no people. I ran to the next window and did the same. Perhaps calling the structure a house was pushing the definition. This place was a mansion. An estate. It took me half an hour of cautiously ducking around windows and trying not to be seen to circle it, and the entire time, I saw no one inside. The fact that it didn’t look abandoned—the lights were on and there were occasional pieces of clothing thrown over the backs of chairs—was both concerning and great news. The first, because they could come back at any time, and the second, because that meant there might be food.

I made my decision and refused to overthink it. I was getting in there. I tried the door, fully expecting it to be locked. They had a lot of stuff to be protected from invaders like me. All of it looking very human. The whys of that I would figure out at a later time, if ever. Maybe I’d never think about this period of my life ever again. Or it could feel like a nightmare I’d soon get over.

The door handle turned. The door creaked open. My hands shook, and I shoved them in my pockets. A war raged in my head, and I didn’t know what to do about it. I needed to go in. I had to find something to eat and maybe also steal something to protect me from the elements while I waited.

But I hadn’t been invited. We’d been poor on our colony planet, but my mother had taught me manners and my uncle had his own brand of morality he’d pounded into us. I’d never been in a huge house like this one. I almost felt like I should take off my shoes and leave them at the door.

I sighed. The occupants of this house could return any time. I couldn’t afford to dally. No siree Bob. I rushed forward like my life depended on it and made my way to the kitchen. I’d seen it from outside. I knew where it was. I tracked dirt onto the floor, which made me wince. Someone was going to have to clean up after me.

The bear shifters had what looked like a giant freezer with a small fridge beneath it. Very different than the traditional way humans did it. Perhaps they needed food to stay better for longer periods of time? Oh hell, what did it matter? I flung open the fridge part and grabbed the first thing I saw. It seemed like some kind of porridge.

I pushed it into my mouth, using my hands like some kind of savage. We had manners, if nothing else, in my family, but all of that had gone out the window with my starvation. This was probably not the protein I needed. Still, it tasted like heaven all wrapped up in one delicious bowl. There was a small trace of honey to it.

I rushed over to the sink and placed the bowl down. Okay, next I would look for. . .

“Stop.” A low, masculine voice sounded in the room. I whirled around. The tallest man I’d ever seen—he must be an entire foot bigger than me—stared down at me. He was shirtless, wearing only shorts, and his hair was wet like he’d just gotten out of the shower. I hadn’t heard anyone coming. Then again, I’d been a little busy feeding myself like a maniac.

“I’m sorry.” That was the only thing I could think to say to the brown haired, brown eyed, thick eyebrowed giant. He had muscles for his muscles. Yes, he probably ate human women for a snack, and he wouldn’t even have to shift to do it.

His pupils changed. That was the only way I could describe what happened for the few seconds that his gaze changed from the dark brown look of a man confused about what was happening in his kitchen to the look of a bear that found some woman in his cave. Or wherever it was that bears slept.

The giant cocked his head to the side for a second and took a deep breath. The gaze changed right back.

I held up my hands. “Please don’t kill me. I’ll go back to the woods. No one will know I was ever here. My people will come for the gold. They’ll take me with them. End of story.”

He took a second to answer me. “You’re who they’re looking for. The pilot who crashed here. A small woman. They’re not reporting that part. Interesting. Amazing what humans let their women do.”

I almost launched into my equal rights speech, and then I thought better of it. I’d call him a misogynist in my own head and leave it at that. Time and place, Jessica. Time and place. “I’m the one. I didn’t mean to come here. Planet Wolf shot at me for no reason. I was in the registered lane. I thought I would die in the crash or you guys would kill me. I didn’t mean to be here.”

He still hadn’t moved. “You smell. . .” He didn’t finish that thought, instead running a hand through his hair. “This is going to be complicated.”

“You’re telling me. I’m sorry. Please let me go. I’m sorry I tracked dirt. I’m sorry I ate your food.”

He pointed to my head. “You’re hurt. Badly.”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” I backed up. Maybe I could run for it. How fast were bears?

The owner of the house shook his head. “My attempts to calm you are not working. So, I’ll just say it. Be rid of your fear, human woman. You are not in danger from me, and you will not be in danger from my brothers, although they’ve yet to return and don’t know about you. I can guarantee it. You will not go into the woods. You’re hungry.” He pointed to the table. “Sit in a chair. I’ll feed you.”

I didn’t move. “Are you just waiting until authorities arrive to take me away or shoot me on sight?”

“I’m the authority, mate. And no one is taking you anywhere.”

What had he just called me? My knees gave out. I’d never fainted in my entire life, but there was a first time for everything.