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So why did she feel the exact opposite?
Safe. Protected.
She had taken a second dose of Dr. Widdershins’ elixir shortly after they had stopped for the night. Normally, a single dose was enough to get her through the day, but she couldn’t forget the way her body had reacted yesterday in Lamentation, and she feared the presence of two dominant alphas might have a stimulating effect on her omega impulses.
Better safe than sorry, she decided. Two doses per day until the expedition was through. She had more than enough elixir left for that.
A howl pierced the night, and anxiety sparked through Shannon’s body. She sat up a little straighter, all of her senses suddenly on high alert.
“It’s alright, ma’am,” Tanner McBain said. “Just a coyote.”
“Yes… Yes, of course.” Shannon felt foolish. She was no tenderfoot. She knew the sound of a coyote when she heard one.
Still, she couldn’t help thinking of that wolf with its ruddy fur and gold-rimmed eyes.
“You ever heard a red wolf howl?” Logan Summerhill said, as if reading her thoughts. “I’ve heard tell they sound a bit like coyotes. Some say they come from coyotes breeding with gray wolves.”
Tanner just grunted. “No, I ain’t never heard one, but I know that wolf we saw today didn’t come from no coyote mama. You saw the size of that thing. Big as a damned bear. Now stop trying to scare Miss Duffy.”
His grin flashed white out of the darkness, but at the same time Shannon sensed a kind of silent communication between the two men. Had Tanner seen something when he had followed the wolf’s tracks? Something he hadn’t told her about?
“Do you think it’s still out there?” Shannon asked. “The wolf, I mean.”
“Oh, he’s out there somewhere,” Tanner answered. “But I don’t think he’ll be bothering us anymore. Not after Logan clipped him with that shot. Wolves are cautious by nature, even the big ones.” His expression became serious. “Still, me and Logan will take turns during the night keeping watch.”
“I can keep watch too, you know,” Shannon said.
“No offense, ma’am,” said Logan. “But you’re a beta. Me and Tanner, we can see better in the dark. We can hear farther. We can smell things a beta can’t.”
“Oh yeah.”
As an omega, Shannon could actually see pretty well in the dark too. Not quite as well as an alpha perhaps, but close. Of course, she wasn’t about to tell these men she was an omega.
She tilted her head back and looked at the glittering sweep of the Milky Way arcing like a rainbow of stars from the plateau on one side of the valley to the other. Nearby, the horses snorted.
“Probably ought to turn in now,” Tanner said. “It’s been a long day, and we’ll need to get back on the trail as soon as the sun comes up. I’ll take the first watch.”
“Can’t we talk a little longer?” Shannon blurted.
She wasn’t quite sure why she had said that. She hoped the alpha’s night vision wasn’t good enough to see the blush that filled her cheeks.
“It’s just… we don’t know each other very well,” she added. “Maybe… maybe you could tell me a little about yourselves.”
The alphas gave each other one more of those communicating looks.
“Alright, Miss Duffy. What would you like to know?”
Shannon thought for a moment, then said, “You two are brothers…”
Logan laughed. It was a deep, rumbling sound that stirred all kinds of strange and ticklish feelings inside of Shannon’s belly—and lower down, too.
“That’s not really a question, Miss Duffy, but I know what you’re asking. You’re asking how a white man and an Indian can be brothers.”
Shannon felt her blush deepen. “Well, I…”
“It’s okay,” Logan said with another one of those low chuckles. “It’s a natural enough thing to ask. The fact is, we’re not brothers the way most people mean. We don’t have the same mother or father. My people came from back east. Cherokee. When the government told them to move, they came west on the Trail of Tears and settled in the Indian Territories. They settled near a hill that was used for summer grazing, and that’s how we got the name Summerhill. That was back in ’48, one year before the Occurrence. I was born two years later.”
He slipped his hand inside the open collar of his shirt and touched his chest.
