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Flarity saw the other two men casting resentful glares in Lacerda’s direction.
Good.
If there was one thing Ned Flarity had learned about being a leader, it was that you should always breed resentment among your underlings. Give them a reason to stab each other in the back. It kept them from thinking of ways to stab you in yours.
CHAPTER 8
Behind the livery stable there was an iron hand-pump well. Shannon worked the lever until the water gurgled out of it, clear and cool. She splashed one handful onto her face to wake herself up. With the second, she rinsed the sour taste of sleep from her mouth. The third, she drank. It wasn’t as good as coffee, but it would have to do.
She’d spent the night in the hayloft of the stable, and she’d barely slept a wink. Now it was after daybreak, and the sun was already climbing over the rooftops of Lamentation, filling the streets with pale golden light. At this hour, the town almost looked pretty, but Shannon knew it wouldn’t last.
In the distance, the wind moaned through the natural stone arch at the edge of town.
Shannon splashed a few more handfuls of water onto her face, then stood up and stretched her limbs. God, she was tired. She should have talked to Rosie. The woman would have given her a place to sleep for the night. But Shannon wasn’t one to take charity.
Besides, the hayloft hadn’t been the cause of her sleepless night. As a girl she’d taken plenty of naps on a bed of straw in her father’s barn.
No, the real reason for her insomnia had been that damned alpha.
Tanner McBain.
Shannon’s hand still stung from when she’d slapped him. It wasn’t anger that had made her lash out at him like that. It had been fear—fear of the sudden arousal his indecent demand had sent coursing through her body. Even after she’d stormed out of the theater, his scent had clung to her clothes, and every time she got a whiff of it, she would picture his cocky smirk and his iron-gray stare.
If she tried to close her eyes, it only got worse. Images would appear in her mind’s eye. Images of a stage, and a bed, and two grunting alphas sharing their omega mate. Only in these visions, the omega wasn’t Red Riding Hood. It was her, Shannon Duffy, and the two alphas were Tanner McBain and his brother. Shannon didn’t know what the brother looked like, but she could guess. He was an alpha, after all, and Tanner’s kin. God, it was so dirty and wrong.
And impossible.
Shannon could never be with an alpha, let alone two of them at the same time. If she did, her true nature would be exposed, and she would lose everything—the ranch and all the poor, helpless girls who were depending on her for their protection.
“Damn it,” she muttered under her breath.
She put on her hat and went back inside the stable. Stormy was still there in the stall where she’d left her. Shannon put on the mare’s saddle and bridle, but she didn’t mount her right away. She still needed to walk some life back into her legs, so she led the horse by the reins out into the morning sunlight.
The town was still quiet at this hour, but not silent. As Shannon was coming out of the stable, a large wagon rattled past. It was carrying about a dozen voluptuous young women with wide, bovine ears and stubby horns protruding from the front of their heads. They wore crude canvas outfits that left their arms and legs exposed, and Shannon could see that their hips were marked with Ned Flarity’s brand.
Hucows.
Out of all the new species that had come into existence in the aftermath of the Occurrence, hucows were the most profitable. Their breasts produced a rich, creamy milk that a lot of people liked, and it also took a lot longer to spoil, which meant it could be shipped east by train and by airship.
The hucows themselves were generally docile and good natured, which meant they were easy to keep as livestock. Never mind the fact that they were clearly a sapient species with the ability to speak and reason the same way ordinary humans could. They were profitable, so people thought it was okay to own them and treat them like animals.
Worse than animals in some cases.
Shannon had heard rumors about the way Ned Flarity abused the hucows he owned. Her heart went out to the ones riding in that wagon, but there was nothing she could do to help them now. According to the laws of the territory, they were Ned Flarity’s property, and that was that.
She turned away sadly and led Stormy on down the street.
Last night, Shannon had told Tanner McBain about her ranch, but she hadn’t told him everything. For example, she hadn’t told him it was actually a hucow ranch, which was home to more than five hundred hucow women.
Technically, Savannah owned those women, even though she despised that idea. The hucows were just as human as she was, even if they weren’t biologically the same species. But the law of the land said that hucows were animals, and that meant somebody had to own them.
Personally, Shannon thought of Duffy Ranch more as a sanctuary than a farm. She provided her girls with plenty of food, warm clothing, and a safe place to stay. It was true, she did profit from the milk they produced, but hucows had to be milked regularly to stay healthy, and all the money she made went toward keeping up the ranch. It was a fair and humane system.
But these days, it was getting harder and harder to compete with the really big hudairy operations like Flarity’s. And to make matters worse, lately Shannon had been having a string of bad luck. Just last month, for example, a rockslide had dammed up the creek she used for irrigation, and it had taken her weeks to get it unblocked again. By that point, all her vegetables had died, and she’d been forced to dip into her savings to purchase more food for the girls.
Now her only hope was the firestone.
She should have gone looking for it sooner, but her father had warned her of how dangerous the journey would be, and she’d been reluctant to leave the ranch unattended. Now she had no choice in the matter. The hucows would have to take care of themselves while she was gone.
