Breakwater: Custer (BBW Bad Boy Space Bear Shifter Romance) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Hyde. He’s being an asshole and making me do all the boring codes.”

    “Life’s hard,” Annie said.

    “I still don’t know why this is happening in the first place,” Delphine told them.

    Annie sighed. “Custer vouched for you, and that’s not nothing. The boys have all had to get used to being able to rely on each other’s judgment to survive. They probably won’t be nice about it, but they trust him enough that they’re willing to give this a chance.”

    “I see,” Delphine said, trying to figure out how that web of trust must work.

    “You get used to it,” Zosha told her as they entered the kitchen. The shifters were already seated, Dominic already working his way through a bowl of soup as promised. They looked up when Delphine, Annie, and Zosha entered, faces ranging from distaste to indifference with Custer’s huge smile being the outlier.

    “Alright, no one start shit,” Annie said, taking her seat next to the captain. “Someone serve.”

    Rick leaned in and began pouring the soup into bowls, leaning in and pressing a kiss to Zosha’s cheek as he handed one to her. Custer snagged two and gave one to Delphine, who had dropped into the seat beside him.

    “So, Delphine,” Hyde said conversationally, “how goes it on the ‘psychopathic assassin’ front?”

    “Hyde, what did I just say?” Annie asked sweetly.  

    “What? We’re all going to pretend she didn’t try to kill us now?”

    “No,” Annie replied through gritted teeth, “we are attempting to work with her to avoid the second wave. Now, be. Civil.”

    “And as the only person here who she actually got close to killing, I say we focus on what Annie just said,” Zosha added. “You guys have all tried to kill each other at some point, and you’re all fine now.”

    “We’re being open and accepting,” Custer said, his smile only mildly threatening.

    Hyde snorted and said nothing else. No one else seemed inclined to start a conversational thread, and the quiet loomed for a moment.

    “So, Delphine,” Zosha said awkwardly, filling the silence, “where are you from?”

    “Mason,” Delphine answered, poking at her soup with the spoon. It seemed safe.

    “No, I mean, where did you live before you started working for Mason?” Zosha clarified.  

    “I was raised in one of the Mason buildings,” she said. “What did you say this was again?”

    “Seaweed, tofu, and soy paste. So your parents worked for them?” Zosha scrunched her nose.

    Delphine frowned, trying to calculate the nutritional gain from the soup. “If by parents, you mean the people who donated their genetic material to my existence, then yes.”

    Annie snorted. “Not close, I take it.”

    “I never met our ‘father,’ and our ‘mother’ was removed when it was decided she had an inappropriate emotional connection to us.” Delphine took a bite of the soup. It was salty, but decent for space food.

    “Wait, I’m sorry,” Hyde said, leaning in. “‘Emotional connection?’ Also, if you weren’t raised by your parents, how did you grow up at a Mason center and not, like, an orphanage?”

    “Mason sank too much time and money into my cluster’s creation, even after some executives raised concerns about how our ‘mother’ raised us. She got upset when we felt pain,” Delphine explained. “And the prospect of us dying alarmed her. Our training suffered, and when our results were significantly lower than other clusters an investigation was launched and we were reassigned to a trainer who was capable of completing the required curriculum.” Delphine forced her mind to shut out the memory of trainer Ramirez’s warm brown eyes, the ghostly pressure of arms around her and a voice telling her someone loved her, the way she’d screamed when the guards dragged her out of the dormitory. She’d called them her children. How foolish.

    “Okay, so when you say ‘creation…’” Zosha trailed off. Everyone at the table was staring at