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“That’s no devil, Shannon.”
“Flarity’s men?” she asked, her voice starting to tremble. “Could they have gotten ahead of us somehow?”
It was possible, but it didn’t make any sense. Flarity intended to follow them to where the firestone was. He wouldn’t have made his presence known like this.
Besides, the cloud was moving much too fast to be ordinary riders.
Logan raised one hand to shield his eye from the sun, and he squinted. Already he could make out the figures who were raising all that dust, bearing down on them with terrifying speed. They were not riders at all.
“Centaurs,” he said.
Instantly, he could smell the omega’s fear.
“Are they coming this way?” she asked.
Logan nodded.
“Oh God! Are they going to attack us?”
“It’s certainly possible,” Tanner said. “Always hard to tell with centaurs. They got their own ways of reckoning that don’t always jibe with our own.”
“Should we flee?” Shannon asked.
Logan shook his head. “We’d never outrun them. They’re not carrying riders the way our horses are. Besides, where would we go? If we turn back the way we came, we’re liable to run smack into Flarity and his men, and that would make for an even worse situation.”
“So what do we do?”
“We just keep riding,” Logan said, “and we meet ’em head on.”
“Are we going to fight them?”
The woman hadn’t said “you,” she’d said “we.” She wasn’t the kind of woman to let the men do all the fighting for her. Logan liked that. It was exactly the sort of trait he would want the mother of his offspring to have.
Damn, there he went again, thinking about knocking her up at the most inappropriate of times.
“Not if we can help it,” he said in response to her question about fighting. “We’re going to try to deal with them.”
“Don’t worry,” Tanner said. “Logan’s got some practice dealing with centaurs. You just let him do the talking.”
The alpha’s voice was calm and reassuring, but Logan knew his brother understood the danger of the situation just as well as he did himself. If it had only been their own lives at stake, that would have been one thing, but now they had the omega to protect, and Logan had every intention of defending her, even if it cost his life.
Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.
He glanced down at the wolf, whose head came up almost to the level of his saddle.
“Probably better if you stay on four legs for this encounter,” Logan said. “You look more intimidating that way.”
Rufus woofed in agreement, and Logan turned his attention to the omega. She was doing her best to look brave, but the scent of fear coming off of her was almost overpowering. Luckily, the centaurs probably wouldn’t be able to smell that. Their noses weren’t as strong as an alpha’s.
Still, they could sense fear in other ways, and if they detected any signs of weakness it might lead to a really unpleasant situation.
Logan wanted to tell the omega it was important not to be afraid, but he knew that was about as useful as telling somebody not to think of a white bear—a surefire way to make them think of nothing else for about ten minutes.
Instead, he told her, “You have nothing to fear, little omega. Me, Tanner, and Rufus will keep you safe. All you have to do is trust us.”
The way she looked at him with those big turquoise eyes made his heart burn with protective feelings.
“I trust you,” she said.
