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Shannon still wasn’t sure how Flarity’s men had known about both of the paths, but she guessed the alpha, Butch Bartram, had had something to do with it.
None of that mattered now. Flarity’s men were all dead, including Bartram. And Flarity himself was even deader than dead, vanished without a trace.
Shannon and her alphas had decided to take the extra horses with them. They couldn’t very well leave them up there on the side of the mountain. If they ran into the centaurs again, maybe they could turn the horses over as a toll for crossing the desert. Otherwise, they would take them on back to Lamentation, sell most of them, keep a few. There would probably be questions. How did Shannon Duffy and her riders end up with these horses that had belonged to Ned Flarity and his men? And what had happened to their owners? But most likely no trouble would come of it. In this part of the world, law was for the towns and the railroads. The deserts and canyons were subject to an older set of rules, and what happened out there tended to stay there.
As the sun went down in the west, the horses were quietly cropping the buffalo grass growing around the cottonwood trees. Logan had gotten a fire started, and Tanner was honing the blade of his knife against a whetstone in preparation for skinning the pair of rabbits Rufus had caught for dinner. The wolf was now resting his massive head on his favorite human’s lap, and Shannon was scratching him gently behind the ears.
Her eyes were watching the dancing yellow flames of the campfire, but her mind was somewhere else, miles and years away.
“What are you thinking about?” Tanner asked.
Shannon looked up with a bewildered expression, as if she’d woken up from a dream, and it took her a few moments to get her composure back. Meanwhile, the blade of Tanner’s knife kept whispering across the whetstone with a slow, steady rhythm.
“I guess I was thinking about all that stuff Crusoe told us,” Shannon said at last. “I guess I haven’t quite accepted the fact that my father pretty much caused the Occurrence. Alphas and omegas, centaurs and snakemen, shifters… he’s responsible for all of it.”
“Does it bother you?”
“No, not exactly. There was no way he could have known what he was doing. If I’d been in his situation, I might have climbed inside that ship and started messing with stuff too, just out of sheer curiosity.”
Logan smirked. “Youdefinitelywould have.”
Rufus woofed in agreement.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Shannon said, and smiled. “It’s funny, though… I feel like I understand my father so much better now. I understand why he was so devoted to helping the hucows and giving them a safe place to live. In a way, he created them, so he felt responsible.”
“That was probably part of it,” Tanner said. “But I also think your father was just a good man. Everything you and Crusoe said about him makes me think that.”
Shannon nodded.
“He was a very good man, and I’m going to continue his work.” She looked over at the saddlebags, which contained the firestone Crusoe had allowed them to take. “With Flarity gone, I don’t have to worry about my debt. I can use the money from that firestone to expand the ranch and provide for even more hucows. Who knows, maybe if things improve this year, Duffy Ranch might even turn a profit.”
“That’s true,” Logan said. “And if not, we can always come back and get more firestone.”
“Yeah, but I’d prefer not to rely on that if I don’t have to. Still, I do think I’ll come back and talk to Crusoe sometime. We could talk about my father.”
Shannon sighed and turned her eyes back toward the fire. For a little while, nobody said anything, and the only sounds were the crackle of the burning wood, the rasping of Tanner’s whetstone, and the soft munching sounds of the horses.
“I was thinking about something else,” Shannon said. “I was thinking about us—the four of us—I was wondering… where do we go from here?”
Tanner checked the edge of his blade with his thumb. “You’re the one with the map in your head, Shannon. It’s up to you to tell us which way to go.”
“I wasn’t talking about how we’re going to get back to Lamentation.”
Tanner sheathed the knife and set it down.
“Neither was I, I reckon.”
Shannon was suddenly very aware of the blood beating in her veins. She was aware of the scent of the alphas too. It filled the air around her and mingled with the charred smell of the woodsmoke.
“It’s so strange,” she said. “These past few days have been the first time I’ve ever really known what it’s like to be an omega. I thought I would hate it, but I was wrong. I loved it. I really did. And not just the things we did together at night. I loved all of it, even the scary parts. I loved the feeling of having the three of you close to protect me. I don’t want to take the suppressant anymore. I’m tired of hiding. But there’s the ranch, the hucows…”
Her voice trailed off, and Tanner waited a few seconds to make sure she was done before he spoke up.
“Well, I reckon that wolf there is going to stick with you. He’s been watching your butt for some time now, and I don’t reckon he’s going to stop anytime soon.”
Rufus woofed and wagged his tail.
“And as for me and Logan, we’re not ready to quit you either.”
