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“You mean they kidnap human women?”
Logan took a bite of his food before answering. “Maybe they kidnap them. Maybe the women go to them willingly. Or maybe they get kidnapped, but they decide to stick around. I spent some time with a band of centaurs when I was younger, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to any of the women because the centaurs were real possessive of them. Based on some of the noises I heard in the night though, I’d say those women were enjoying themselves.”
“You mean the centaurs and the women…?”
Shannon left the question unfinished, and Rufus felt her body temperature suddenly go up. The scent of heat got a little stronger as well, until it nearly overpowered the smell of the fire.
“Yes ma’am,” Logan said. “But they only do it for pleasure. They can’t make baby centaurs that way. That’s the reason I lied about you having consumption and getting taken advantage of by bandits and such. I thought that leader might have thought about trying to take you with him. If he believed you were sick and possibly pregnant, that would make him think twice about it. Apologies for besmirching your honor like that, but I’m pretty sure it won’t get back to polite society.”
“It’s okay,” Shannon said, and Rufus noticed that her voice had taken on a sultry note. “Besides, it wasn’t entirely untrue. I actuallydidhave a run-in with some outlaws yesterday, and the villains had their way with me all night long.”
Rufus felt the omega’s weight shift as she opened her legs, but she quickly snapped them together again, and her expression grew worried.
“Shannon?” Tanner said. “Is everything okay?”
She hesitated a moment before answering. “It just occurred to me, Logan wanted the centaur to think I was pregnant, but… maybe I really am? After last night, I mean.”
Tanner set his plate aside and smiled.
“You don’t need to worry about that. We haven’t marked you. From what I understand, it’s technically possible for an unmarked omega to get knocked up, but it’s extremely rare.”
“Oh,” Shannon said. “I didn’t know that.”
She laughed, but it was a sad sound. “I guess there’s a lot I don’t know about being an omega. I spent so much time trying to hide what I am…”
Her voice trailed off, and Rufus nudged his snout against her for comfort. She scratched behind his ears again, and he thumped his tail against the ground in gratitude. After a moment, the pretty smile returned to the omega’s face, and Rufus realized something. When she scratched him behind his ears, it gave her as much comfort as it did him. That realization made the wolf’s heart ache with joy.
On the other side of the fire, Tanner had taken out his tobacco pouch, and he was fixing himself a cigarette.
“Well, I reckon tonight’s all about learning,” he said. “So far you’ve learned about centaurs, and you’ve learned something about alphas and omegas too…”
He finished rolling the cigarette, stuck it between his lips, and lit the tip of it with a burning twig from the fire. Then he looked right at Rufus.
“…I reckon we could learn a little about wolves next. What do you say, friend… you up for talking?”
Rufus dropped his ears back and hesitated. He wasn’t supposed to talk about his pack.
Then again, Shannon and the two alphas already knew he wasn’t an ordinary wolf. And he was sure he could trust them to keep a secret if he asked them too.
He couldn’t tell them his story in wolf form, though. For that, he needed a human mouth.
He took a deep breath and shifted.
CHAPTER 29
Shannon gasped as her upper body fell back a few inches. She had been sitting in front of the campfire with her back resting against Rufus for support, but in the space of a few seconds the giant wolf’s furry belly transitioned into a slightly smaller—and significantly harder—human torso. Shannon was still wearing her tied-up shirt, which left her midriff exposed, and the touch of Rufus’ rippling abdominals against the bare skin of her lower back sent a sudden pulse of desire rushing through her body.
She was dangerously close to going into heat again.
Or perhaps her heat had never truly gone away, the same way the stars didn’t really go away in the daytime, they were just hidden by the brightness of the sun. Ever since they had set out on horseback that morning, Shannon had felt that funny, needful tingle simmering just below the surface. The excitement with the centaurs and the hardship of crossing the desert had made it easy to ignore those latent urges, but now the sun was down, the stars were visible, and her heat was once more coming to the fore.
Would she require the attention of the alphas again tonight? They had not spoken about it during the day, but Shannon was pretty sure the alphas would not allow her to tend to her urges on her own.
And she was pretty sure she didn’t want them to.
Rufus sat up behind her. The way his hard muscles swept against her back made her heart beat faster. As he moved around in front of her, Shannon’s eyes were greeted with the masculine beauty of his naked body—the fluid contours of his limbs, the deeply tanned skin that seemed to glow in the firelight, and the plump veins curving over his forearms and his groin.
A quick glance between his legs let her know that she was not the only one experiencingurges. She let out an involuntary whimper.
