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CHAPTER 1
It was late evening when Shannon Duffy came riding into Lamentation, Arizona. The sun had already gone down behind the mesas in the west, and night was gradually pulling its star-spangled blanket across the sky overhead. Lights were coming up in the windows of the saloons and houses of ill repute, and the tinkling strains of badly tuned pianos drifted through the air. Nearby, at the edge of town, a natural stone archway stood silhouetted against the darkening sky. Whenever the wind blew just right, the stone gave out a low and mournful moan. That was how the place had gotten its name: Lamentation.
A band of rough-looking centaurs were congregated around the end of the street, talking in low tones and pawing at the dirt with their hooves. As Shannon Duffy rode past, they grew silent and stared at her with dark eyes. She did her best to ignore them and continued onward into town. It was wise not to mess with centaurs, especially a mean looking bunch such as that.
Shannon just hoped she looked mean too.
It paid to look mean in Lamentation. Especially at night, and especially for a woman.
There were, of course, a few exceptions to that rule. If a woman was looking to sell her body, for example, then it paid to look pretty, not mean. But Shannon Duffy hadn’t come to sell her body. She wasn’t that desperate.
Not yet.
From a distance, she might have passed for a man. A wide-brimmed cowboy hat shaded her face from the lights in the windows, and a baggy duster concealed her ample curves from the eyes of the men loitering on the boardwalks that lined both sides of the street. Up close, anyone would immediately know she was a woman, but that was fine. Just so long as no one found out what shereallywas.
As Shannon rode deeper into town, more sounds reached her ears. The slap of cards, the clink of glasses, and the raised voices of the men who were already well on their way to getting drunk. The air was laced with the odor of horses, tobacco, and strong whiskey. The latter smelled good to Shannon. She could use something to wash the dry taste of dust from her mouth.
But first, she needed to tend to her horse, a dapple gray mare named Stormy.
There was a livery stable near the center of town that charged outrageous nightly fees. There were also hitching posts all up and down the main street that cost nothing at all. Shannon chose the stable. She didn’t have much money, but at least she knew her horse would still be waiting for her when she returned. It paid to be careful in Lamentation.
She rubbed the horse’s neck reassuringly as the stable boy took the reins to lead her to her stall.
“It’s okay, Stormy. I’ll be back soon.”
As she was coming out of the stables on foot, a klaxon blared from the other side of town. She turned toward the sound, and watched as a steam-powered Coppelius airship rose above the rooftops and took to the skies.
That ship would be laden with humilk from the surrounding ranches. Maybe a little firestone as well, from the few remaining mines that were not yet tapped out. Lamentation wasn’t quite big enough to rate a railway line, but the airships—a relatively recent invention—could transport small batches of goods north to Tucson, where they would then be loaded onto trains and driven eastward.
Shannon had seen pictures of the eastern cities, with their paved roads and towers that scraped the heavens. Some of them were as tall as ten stories. Occasionally, she imagined what it would be like to live in such a place, but that was an impossible dream. Ever since the Occurrence, nobody made it past the Hundredth Meridian without a thorough physical inspection. It wouldn’t take long for the customs agents to realize she was tainted.
A sound startled her out of her reverie. A rustle of feathers from the alley next to the stable.
Shannon turned and looked. Several figures were down there in the darkness feasting on a pile of refuse. When they sensed her watching, the figures lifted their hairless heads and glared at her with eyes that reflected the light like red jewels.
Harpies. The creatures were a common sight in skies above the Arizona desert, but it was unsettling seeing them up close. Shannon shuddered and quickly turned away.
As she made her way down the boardwalk, she could feel eyes moving over her body. On horseback, she might have passed for a man, but on foot it was harder to hide her small stature, and her faded jeans clung a little too tightly around her plump thighs and wide hips. Some of the men called out to her with lewd invitations as she passed, but she kept walking, pretending not to hear.
Then she noticed something she couldn’t ignore. It wasn’t a sound, but a scent. It reminded her of the odor of wolf pelts, dark and warm and animalistic—but there was a human edge to it as well, salt and spice and hot, masculine skin.
Before Shannon even realized what was happening, her body reacted. Her nipples turned into bullets beneath her linen shirt, and a hot, needful sensation corkscrewed its way through her pelvis, forcing a desperate moan from her lips.
She stumbled down the boardwalk and quickly ducked into the dark alcove at the front of a closed shop. Thankfully, it was empty.
The scent faded as quickly as it had appeared, and Shannon’s arousal faded with it. She was left trembling and beaded with sweat, her pulse thumping at the base of her throat.
Alpha… she had smelled an alpha.
That fact was not surprising in and of itself. Alphas weren’t exactly a rarity in frontier towns, though they were considerably less common than the betas who made up the majority of the human population. Shannon had expected to encounter at least a few alphas tonight.
What she had not expected was her body’s reaction to their scent. She had taken her usual dose of suppressant elixir before setting out from the ranch a few hours ago. Her unwanted omega urgesshouldhave been extinguished.
Was she already going into heat again? Surely not. Based on her cycle, she should have still had a couple weeks left to go. Maybe she was developing a tolerance to the elixir, the way drunkards did with liquor?
That thought made her tingle with panic.
Her fingers fumbled nervously in the pocket of her duster. She drew out a pint-sized bottle of scuffed and weathered glass and held it up to the light. The bottle contained a small amount of rose colored fluid—just enough for one swallow. Shannon drew out the cork and knocked back the last slug of liquid. The stuff burned her throat on the way down, and it curdled her empty stomach.
