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To say the animal was killing Blaylocke would have been something of an understatement. It was taking the man apart with its teeth, disassembling him joint by joint while he screamed in agony. Shannon found herself thinking, in a state of shock-induced detachment, that it was incredible how much of a man could be removed before he finally stopped living.
Even after Blaylocke had finally gone silent, the wolf kept at him for a while, shaking the man’s tattered body like a dog with a dead squirrel. Shannon didn’t want to watch, but at the same time, she couldn’t look away.
Finally, the wolf dropped Blaylocke’s remains and turned its head toward Shannon.
She froze. Her heart seemed to have quit beating. It was as if her whole body had somehow turned to stone.
This is it, she thought. Now it’s my turn to die.
She just hoped her death would be quicker than Blaylocke’s had been.
The wolf didn’t rush her. It stalked toward her slowly, its gold-rimmed eyes fixed intently on her own. Its ears were back, but its teeth were not bared, and its head and tail were low. It appeared nonthreatening, submissive even, with the exception of all that vibrant red gore smeared around its muzzle.
When it was only a few feet away, the wolf stopped and stared at her. Its wet nose twitched, searching for her scent. Tears spilled from Shannon’s eyes.
“Please don’t kill me,” she whispered.
The wolf lifted its head and perked up its ears as if waiting for her to say something else.
“Please…”
A shot rang out in the distance. The red wolf shuddered briefly, snarled, then took off running at a blinding speed, moving away from the sound of the shot. In less than a second, the animal was out of sight behind the boulders. Shannon stared at the place where it had disappeared.
Her heart had started beating again. It was drumming in her ears like a tom-tom. She turned in the direction the shot had come from. Two men were coming toward her on horseback over a slight rise in the desert that she hadn’t even realized was there until now.
One of the men was Tanner McBain.
Even before he was close enough for Shannon to see his face, she knew it was him. He was dressed in a pair of tight jeans and a bib shirt, with a bandana tied loosely around his neck and a cowboy hat hiding his face from the sun. His horse was a powerful looking palomino with a golden mane that matched its rider’s hair and beard.
The other man was riding a chestnut and white paint horse. Shannon guessed that must be Tanner’s brother, Logan. He was not what she’d expected.
The man was as tall as Tanner, and every bit as strongly built, but that was where the similarities ended. Instead of a hat, he wore a wide, blood colored band around his forehead, and his dark hair was long and straight. Instead of jeans and boots, he wore a pair of buckskin britches and moccasins, and his upper body was clad in a loose-fitting tunic with a colorful sash around the middle. The tunic was open at the throat, and even from a distance Shannon was able to see a glimpse of gold upon the man’s deeply tanned chest.
His alpha sign.
Terror jolted through Shannon’s body as she realized that her own sign, the band of gold encircling her right arm, was also exposed. Currently, that arm was away from the approaching riders, so they hadn’t seen it yet, but as soon as they got close they would. She was more concerned about them seeing that sign than she was about them seeing her naked lower body.
She needed to think of a way to hide her sign, and quickly.
Nervously, she licked her lips and tasted blood from where Blaylocke had struck her across the face. That gave her an idea.
“Wait!” she cried out to the approaching riders. “Don’t come any closer!”
CHAPTER 11
Logan Summerhill had already stopped advancing and averted his eyes by the time the woman had cried out for him not to look. He had seen enough to know she was naked from the waist to the ankles, and her shirt had been torn open to expose her breasts. Logan did not consider himself a gentleman. Certainly nobody had ever accused him of being one. Nevertheless, he was not a total scoundrel either, and he would never take advantage of a woman in a state such as he had found this one in.
The same could be said for Tanner McBain. Logan knew without looking that his brother was averting his eyes too.
Still, neither of them were willing to turn their back completely—not with a giant wounded wolf nearby. From his saddle, Logan scanned the landscape to the left of the cluster of boulders behind which the beast had disappeared. He knew Tanner was doing the same thing on the other side.
“Turn around!” the woman shouted at them. “Don’t look at me!”
“We’re not looking atyou, Miss Duffy,” Tanner called. “We’re just keeping an eye out for that wolf.”
“If it comes back, I’ll scream,” the woman said.
With a grunt of reluctance, Tanner reined his horse around so his back was to the woman. A moment later, Logan followed suit. They glanced at each other.
