You Don't Belong Here

Chapter Fifty Six

Goldstein sat alongside Rinaldi's gurney in the medical ward, silently watching her as she slept. Her breaths were labored and uneven, but she was alive. She would be lucky if she could manage to ever walk again.

He hadn't seen the glint of the scope in the distance, but she'd been watching from her own perch. She fired a shot and her bullet found purchase in the sniper's shoulder, but he managed to return fire on the woman. His own bullet hurried itself into her abdomen and continued on until it pushed its way completely out of her body. Her spinal cord had been severed in the process. The doctors had done what they could, but her recovery couldn't be guaranteed.

'Forty seven...' he thought to himself. 'You've saved my ass forty seven times now. I'll be damned if I turn my back on you now.'

He'd already developed a plan. He would build a sturdy ramp for his porch. He would put in a request for a service dog. He would fix up the spare room of his house. He would drive her to every appointment and rehab session he could, and arrange transportation for her when he was gone on missions. He would sell his speed boat, the sports car, and every other unnecessary "toy" that he owned in order to help pay the medical bills.

She would throw a fit, he knew...but he didn't care. They had made a pact years ago that they would always have each other's back no matter how far up shit creek they got.
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Goldstein watched on the camera feed as she interacted with the predators. The larger seemed a little aggressive toward her, but that smaller one...it made his skin crawl.

When she'd first made him aware of exactly what she'd been up to for the year she'd been gone, and the situation between the other woman and the larger male, his stomach has lurched violently. He asked if she'd shacked up with one of their kind, but she never gave a straight answer. Granted, they'd decided long ago that they shouldn't pursue an intimate relationship lest it jeopardize a mission, but that didn't mean he didn't still feel jealous when he learned of her having relationships with other men. But the thought of her booking up with one of these things...he just couldn't stomach that.

'Shut the fuck up! You don't know that you wouldn't do the same if you'd been in her shoes. Maybe the females are actually hot?'

He chastised himself as his inner argument continued. The only thing he was sure of in this moment was that it had nearly broken him having to walk her to Keizer's office and then place her in that containment cell. She was still the same Rinaldi that he'd known for so many years, but as far as the facility was concerned, if you're directly exposed to extraterrestrials, you have to be treated as an extraterrestrial. They wanted to see how you interact with them. How you each handle different stressful situations. And in the event of male-female exposure...they wanted to observe possible mating rituals.

His skin crawled at the thought of it. The other woman was in no condition for such a thing, so that left Brielle as the only option.

He noticed her shivering on the live feed. She was naked, held captive in what was more or less a giant glass box, and she was sitting on the cold ground. Her exhaustion definitely wouldn't help the situation.

Goldstein tensed as he watched the smaller male shift closer to Brielle until their arms were touching. A moment later she leaned her head and legs against him as well, and not long after, the male lifted her off the ground and placed her in his lap. She curled into his body and rested her head against his chest. His mandibles brushed against the top of her head ever so slightly.

The sight of it was enough to boil Goldstein's blood, and he became completely oblivious to the larger male doing the same for the other woman as he kept his massive arms wrapped protectively around her body.

Goldstein pushes himself to his feet and walked out of the security command room and headed down the corridor. He said nothing as he passed various soldiers and scientists alike, only chain-smoked the last three cigarettes in his pack. He'd be damned if he was going to sit there and watch her get freaky with some crab-faced alien monstrosity. They may be built like disturbingly tall, perfectly proportioned body builders from the neck down, but that didn't mean the thought of it was any easier to choke down.