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Tanner McBain.
The wounded alpha was awake, and his gray eyes burned with hunger.
CHAPTER 22
Keeping his right hand firmly clamped over Shannon Duffy’s mouth, Tanner carefully rolled over and pushed himself up onto his knees. The whole time, his gaze never shifted from the woman’s turquoise eyes, which seemed to hold him like a magnet.
It was Logan’s voice that finally broke him away.
“Tanner? You shouldn’t be up.”
“It’s okay,” Tanner answered. “I’m feeling better.”
Better, of course, was relative. He certainly wasn’t well. Dark shapes slithered around the edges of his vision, and the flames of the small campfire appeared to burn with impossible colors, green one moment, purple the next. Blood red. Sky blue. Black.
Tanner knew, however, that all these things were only hallucinations brought on by the residue of the venom still working its way through his system. They were a welcome improvement over the searing white pain that had come before.
Logan stared at him for a moment in disbelief, then he shifted his eyes down to the female sprawled across his lap.
“She’s an omega,” he said.
“I know.”
Tanner had found out right around the same time Logan had—namely, a few seconds ago.
As a matter of fact, it was the sudden explosion of the woman’s scent that had revived him. He’d heard how an omega’s heat-scent could give an alpha a sudden burst of vitality, but he’d never heard of anything like this. Even though it was the first time he’d ever actually smelled an omega in heat, he had a feeling Shannon Duffy’s heat was abnormally intense. Something in his alpha blood told him so.
“How did we not smell her till now?” Logan growled. His voice was taking on a dark, bestial tone.
“I don’t know,” Tanner said, noticing the same animalistic rumble creeping into his own voice, “but I reckon it’s got something to do with whatever she left back there in that canyon.”
During his earlier semi-conscious state, he’d caught snippets of Shannon and Logan’s conversations, first when they were on horseback after the incident with the snakeman, later at the spring where they were now camping. He knew the woman lost something in the canyon, and he knew that loss had caused her a great deal of distress.
What was it, he wondered.
A perfume to hide her omega scent? No. If she’d been wearing perfume, he’d have smelled that. Some kind of medicine, then? Something to suppress not only her scent but her omega urges as well?
Hell, for all Tanner knew, it had been a magical talisman. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter anymore. The omega had lost it, and now she was going into heat.
And it was up to Tanner and his brother to do something about it.
While Tanner watched, Logan bowed his head over Shannon’s backside and inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with her scent. A second later, his face took on a crazed look, and he hooked his fingers around the top of her jeans, no doubt with the intention of ripping them off. The woman tried to scream, but the sound was muffled by Tanner’s hand, which was still covering her pretty mouth.
His other hand darted out and seized Logan’s wrist. Logan snapped his face toward him and snarled. His wild eyes showed no sign of recognition. Tanner thought there was going to be a fight.
“Easy, brother,” he said. “It’s me, Tanner… remember?”
Logan snapped out of it. “Tanner! I… I’m sorry. It’s just…”
“I know,” Tanner said. “I know…”
Boy, did he ever. The woman’s scent was even stronger than the smell of the fire. It filled the air around them like an invisible cloud of desire, and it was all Tanner could do to keep from pouncing on her and rutting her into oblivion. If he hadn’t still been slightly weakened by the venom, he might not have been able to stop himself. He was impressed by the self restraint his brother showed when he removed his hand from the top of the woman’s jeans.
But neither of them would be able to hold out forever. They were alphas, and the woman was an omega in heat. Sooner or later, they were going to have to do something about that. They were going to have to give the omega what she so desperately needed—and from the smell of things, they were going to have to give it to her all night long.
“We have to gag her,” Tanner said, using his free hand to loosen the bandana around his throat.
“Gag her?” Logan asked, sounding almost appalled.
