Chapter Text
The morning was a cool steely gray that stretched over the wide expanse of ragged desert and as the sun rose over the distant jutting mountains, they became obscured through a shimmering ethereal haze. They loomed unseen to the East behind the shroud, appearing at their leisure when the atmosphere was right enough for his eyes to form them. The wind was hot and carried with it a thin, red dust that settled over everything as if a dry mist. Dead, uprooted things tumbled in the wind, and off a little ways to the left a dust devil whirled with fervor but no precision, kicking at the earth and stumbling like a ghostly drunkard that could disintegrate with the slightest alteration of current.
Cole Harper packed the last bit of tobacco he had into a jagged bit of rolling paper and licked it shut to smoke it while his paint pawed at the hard packed trail and nodded his head with impatience. The scent he was tracking was lukewarm at best and half-close to stale. His quarry was lying in wait, hidden somewhere in the vast expanse of the wild, cunning and extraordinarily intelligent. In ten years as a bounty hunter, he'd never before faced an enemy of such spark. There had been plenty who'd run but none who had been so stealthy and so innovative in their flight. He couldn't rightly expect much different. After all, most men he tracked hadn't been in the badlands and the desert as long as Dr. Gabriel Pruitt. A man who had allegedly learned every survival tactic he had from the medicine men of tribes that weren't always keen on holding a palaver with a white man. He was no ordinary doctor. That was for damned certain.
From what he'd heard of the man in the settlements and forts along the busier trails, he was a man of many names. Gabriel Pruitt was just one of them. His true name was largely unknown but his crimes were not so easily forgotten, murder chief among them. Folk that had met him who would speak to a bounty hunter, described him as kind in face and gentle in voice. A rare combination for an Alpha out in the West. It was enough to get him as much help as he could want anywhere he went. He was described as assistive, accommodating, and his posture unassuming and open. It wasn't something that many murderers could boast and it wasn't something Cole had been expecting. But expectations were something of a luxury in this day and age and those who held them were often disappointed.
Cole lit his rolled cigarette and took a puff of the old crap that tasted more like sweepings than tobacco and then spat in the dirt. The doctor was a con man, plain and simple. He'd seen too many evil men present one face to the world and hold a tempest at bay inside. A man of many names, he reminded himself. He'd seen men who had enamored settlements to the point that they'd become sheriff. He'd been nearly lynched by whole towns for having taken his bounty—the richest or most powerful man in a dying outpost of a village settled deep in a lonely valley. The kind of place that couldn't get wiped off a map only as it had never made it onto one in the first place. The doctor, as with many, were dangerous for their charm almost as much as their wit and their skill with a pistol.
He gently tapped his black and white paint into a walk and felt the stallion's energy thrumming between his thighs. A veritable engine, Stanford was. The horse was one he had broken himself and despite the word, broken, Stanford was anything but. He was spirited and vindictive and Cole had no doubt that he would remain so until the very last breath he took. It was a wonder sometimes that the animal hadn't done what he'd heard they would do, their minds too pure and wild to think of themselves in any other manner than free. A rancher once told a tale of a mustang who'd longed so far for freedom that he had leaned his head down for a drink from a river and had purposefully dipped the whole of his muzzle into the water. There was no amount of pulling and tugging that could stop him for when a horse has made up his mind—that is the end of it. The end of it, it was. Sometimes, he thought Stanford's revenge would come in a flurry and would unravel as unexpectedly as it would violently. Often, he eyed the places where the canyons lay ragged in the wastes and wondered if that day might be the day that the paint should send them both to their maker in one brave leap.
As if reading his thoughts, Stanford nodded quickly and stopped short, dancing back a few steps to test his limits before Cole jabbed his flanks with his heels and clicked his tongue.
“Ayup, ya damned fool,” Cole grunted, his voice lined in gravel and fitting for his jaded gaze and unforgiving demeanor. Whatever he thought about Stanford, he couldn't fault the horse for much, even if the mean bastard might some day put an end to him. Reason being, Stanford was a master hunter.
It was difficult to believe but he and Stanford had been through too many hunts together for him to ever even consider another horse. Perhaps it was why he was still alive after all this time. The knack that Stanford had in sensing intent was perhaps the most incredible talent Cole had ever witnessed. When they were close, Stanford knew it. When they needed to be quiet, Stanford was as unobtrusive as a mouse. When Cole's life was threatened at the end of a wild chase—Stanford was willing to draw blood. The sight and smell of it was enough to strike panic into most horses but for Stanford, it was as though he saw it as a necessary evil.
As they walked, Cole recalled a moment in which he had thought that perhaps, just perhaps, Stanford might have made a soft spot in his heart for him. A time when the child-murdering devil, Harlan McTrall had surprised them both in what should have been an embarrassingly obvious ambush, clicking his gun straight at Cole's back as he'd walked up to inspect a smoldering campfire...a trap. With a cold steel barrel behind his right ear, Cole had been forced to kneel in the dust. Harlan had thought of just about everything. The trap to lure him, the wherewithal to disarm him, even exactly where he'd planned to shoot him.
He hadn't thought of the horse.
Cole squeezed Stanford with his legs and the stallion began a trot, kicking up clouds of dry dirt as they went. His exceptionally powerful sense of smell was leading him toward a jutting bit of rock which he circled cautiously. The scent of Pruitt wasn't powerful and likely, he'd been gone for a day or so. He found blessedly little evidence that the man had even been there at all—no fire, nothing to suggest he had done more than just lay on his bed roll and sleep for a short time. He knew he was being hunted. He knew and he was prepared to run.
His scent wasn't as overstated as some Alphas and, at first, Cole had thought he could have been a Beta, though all witness testimony assured him that the man was, in fact, very much an Alpha. The manner in which the marshals had found the bodies of his victims would have at least offered some evidence to show it.
The descriptions had been disturbing. Limbs and organs and bones strewn about. Bodies ripped apart in a horrific Alpha rage. It was mindless, ruthless, and unfathomable. He'd set up a practice in Talton, a small mining town settled deep into the Rocky Mountains. He'd done well, utilizing a clear, cold spring that was said to have healing properties. He practiced medicine that was taught to him from schools on the Eastern coast—fancy schools with plenty of science to back up his methods. But there was a darker, more sinister force at work in Pruitt's practice. Or so the gentle folk of Talton had told him when he'd asked...
“He's a monster. He's possessed by the spirit of a witch doctor!”
“I'm sorry for the poor man. You see, he's been cursed by a witch. A witch of the Cheyenne. I heard tell he was in love with a Cheyenne Omega and the chief had him blackened with a spell...”
“Made a deal with the devil, the boy did. Man should have known better than to wander into the hands of those demon redskins.”
“You know, sometimes he could put his hands on you and cure you. Well...with a bit of this and that in your tea sometimes too. He was good about it though. Made all that hokey witchcraft sound very much intelligent when it came from his own words... Used to ask me about my dreams...what I thought they meant.”
“Learned all his black magic from the Arapaho. He's been fooling around with those heathens for years, painting himself like a savage and shooting arrows into buffalo. A doctor? I don't think so. Never was, I'll reckon.”
“He had a skull in his office. You know what kind of man sits at his desk and scribbles away with another man's bones staring at him over the blotter? A mad man...”
Smoke coiled out of his mouth like a snake while he took another pass around the rocks and then led the horse toward it, pawing all over the temporary camp before he rode off with his eyes to the dirt, noting small signs of Pruitt's direction in the loose regolith. He wasn't far. The scent of him had been getting stronger by the day and it was really no wonder. The doctor had no horse and Cole had been gaining steadily. It wouldn't be long before Pruitt should have been backed into enough of a corner that he would have to start becoming more crafty. He'd already doubled back a few times and had even created false scent trails. Those things took time and were risky if Cole didn't fall for them. He'd only fallen for one such trick so far. Pruitt would have to do better next time.
Stanford's ears flicked. Something had caught his attention. He brought himself to a halt and snorted, swinging his back end to the left a little bit with uncertainty.
“Whoa, boy.”
Stanford tossed his head and snorted again.
The dry wind shifted and Cole raised a brow. Pruitt's comparatively gentle Alpha scent was stronger from the west, all of his efforts to remain a safe distance or at least downwind somewhat coming to naught with the fickle weather of the dry landscape. He took a deep, lingering breath of it. Unlike other Alphas, Pruitt's scent didn't sting in his nose and although not necessarily pleasant, it was not unpleasant either. It was musky and smokey and honed with the familiarity of finely worn leather. It was not only Cole's nose that was exceptional, his scent memory was incomparable. He would remember Pruitt's scent for as long as he lived, just as he had with all the others.
The marshal's grit-laden tone rumbled through his memory.
“Bounty's double if you bring him to Talton to hang, Harper.”
He'd taken one live one before. He'd even considered it this time if only for the attempt to learn what Pruitt had to say for himself. If only to see how he might defend himself in a court of law. After all, it was interesting, was it not? Black magic and all. When it came down to it, Cole Harper didn't believe in black magic. Or white magic. Or any kind of witchcraft or religion in the slightest. Such legends and stories were merely cruel bedtime stories made up by mischievous grandparents who twisted nightmares from words in an effort to make their children or children's children behave. Gabriel Pruitt was a man of many names...and a man born of local legend as a doctor who dabbled in the supernatural—it was certainly a tale, and probably just that. Whether or not Pruitt had even committed a crime...well that wasn't any of Cole's business.
The only hang up about taking him alive was that he was an Alpha. Had he been a Beta, perhaps it could have been a possibility—moreso than it was now, anyway. A summary execution was likely the manner of death he would face at Cole's hands and the thought was in no way distasteful to the bounty hunter...until a doubled bounty was involved. 'Every trail has its end and every calamity brings its lesson' he thought wryly.
Twice the bounty for Pruitt was two thousand dollars. The government, and the town of Talton, was itching to get a hold of the man who'd practiced a whispered magic and...
Tore the heart out of Elvira Bergund and ripped her lover to shreds.
A simple case of a jealous Alpha gone feral. A man driven to kill by a fickle Omega and her boneheaded and thuggish brute of an affair. It was enough to make Cole almost feel for Pruitt. Though, nobody in the town seemed to even consider that the sweetest and most virtuous Omega, the blonde haired, sun-kissed Miss Bergund, could have actually been leading Pruitt on...that was all Cole's thoughts on the matter. Omegas, like any other dynamic, could be two-faced and unapologetic about their duplicity. It was an Alpha's keenness to protect and provide that often lead to certain types of misunderstandings. Misunderstandings that could lead an Omega to their death.
“What do you think, Stanford?” he grumbled out, as he gently squeezed his sides to pull him into a trot.
Stanford didn't seem to think much of Pruitt. He was attuned to the scent that Cole was tracking and he was smart enough to know what was going to happen once they found him. Surprise was usually the deciding factor in whether or not Cole would get his bounty and Stanford often would “speak” to him by resisting to move forward out of animalistic impulse to remain hidden. The wind which brought Pruitt's scent betrayed that he was not far but Stanford was still moving forward.
Cole took another deep breath when his nose was tickled by a strange aroma—an Omega. He sat taller in his seat, straightening his back as though it would help him see better through the rippling mirages that were beginning to form in the distance. An Omega. Out here. There were no large settlements nearby and, frankly, in the west, Omegas were rare outside of Native villages. He tapped a finger on the side of his holster to calm himself while he pulled up the reins and clicked his tongue for Stanford to revert back into a walk.
This indecisiveness wouldn't do. If Pruitt had an Omega, it meant he had leverage. Cole wasn't about to harm an innocent in his quest. He wasn't heartless, and he wasn't a murderer. If the doctor was willing to rip out Elvira Bergund's beating heart, he was more than likely willing to deny his inner Alpha's drive to protect. The Omega was in danger.
“You're not a hero, Harper,” he whispered to himself, his brows knitted tight together.
He rode on, the scent of the Omega becoming more pronounced as he went. It was sharp. Tangy. It stuck in his nose and made his mouth water. There was something off about it. There was too much of something that was in that scent and he could feel his hands tightening and loosening in waves on the reins. It was emotion and sickness and burning desperation. It was most certainly not the scent of a lover.
The Omega is dying.
“Aw hell,” he growled, kicking Stanford into a hard canter while he drew his gun. He was close. He was close enough that he was mostly certain that he would find Pruitt tucked up and hidden on the far side of a towering rock formation. It was peppered with odd bushes, dry brown grasses, and a few small, gnarled trees. It would have been as good a place as any to hide if the wind hadn't whirled over it, collecting that Alpha scent, mingling it with that of the sickened Omega and delivering it straight through providence to Cole's searching nose. Stanford's bellowing, gusting breaths were all he could hear aside from the thunder of his hooves over the loose dirt and the horse barreled around the rocks as if running straight into battle.
When Cole pulled up on the reins with his gun drawn, Stanford reared slightly, reacting not only to the reins but to the oddly rotted scent that was nearly overwhelming.
“Gabriel Pruitt!” Cole roared, his revolver trained upon the Alpha who was knelt over a filled bed roll, his posture protective, offering Cole his back as if his body might stop a bullet. “I'll see your hands, Alpha.”
Without a word and without even glancing over his shoulder, Pruitt acquiesced, lifting his empty hands, his shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows and his body still poised over what Cole assumed must have been the Omega. The scent in such close quarters was positively dreadful and he wondered how in the world Pruitt might have been able to sit so near to it without retching. There was something to be said for the man's constitution, that was for certain.
“You're wanted by the U.S. Marshals in the town of Talton for murder. There's a bounty on your head, dead or alive.”
It was this moment that Pruitt turned his head about and stared up at Cole over his broad shoulder, arching one light brow while he asked in a calm, and decidedly mild tone: “I'm unarmed, Alpha. I've no weapons. If you've the mind to shoot me, I'd have you do it and let it be done. If you're of the sort who'd take an Alpha alive, I'd ask that you please allow me to continue my work here.”
Work?
Cole growled. “That Omega's dying.”
“And I'm a doctor.”
He almost felt affronted by the statement and he kept his gun trained on the Alpha's back. The logistics of taking an Alpha alive were difficult to work out and now that he was faced with the possibility, the thoughts wouldn't stop tumbling about in his head of all that could go horribly wrong. His pause to think seemed to make Pruitt only annoyed.
“If you're going to stand there and make up your mind, may I at least use my hands? This Omega needs help and you do not have the skills required to assist.”
“Use your damned hands,” he snarled back while Stanford pawed impatiently at the dirt, expecting bloodshed.
As Pruitt returned to his task, he cooed and gently shushed, his voice soft and melodic, as if he were no more than a simple Beta. He was giving the Omega something to drink but the bulk of his movements were hidden by his body. Cole watched him work, noting his slow and deliberate motions. Questions started flooding in his brain and overflowed with the most important one coming first.
“She belong to you, Alpha?”
Pruitt sighed. “No. I've no mate. She's from a village not far. Her language is for the most part foreign to me... I'm decent with some parts, but it's got a complicated form.”
“Pick her up.”
Pruitt's glare over his shoulder could have melted iron. “Excuse me?”
“I said, pick her up. I'll have you take her back to her village. There's someone else who can take care of her.”
“No...there isn't. She's expressed that she is not allowed to go back.” He turned his head once again down to his charge and Cole heard a pained moan from the bed roll. “I could not pick her up in her state without risking her harm, anyhow. If you are impatient, Alpha, this will be a trying time for you.”
“And how's that? You can't expect me to stand here for the duration of the time it takes for her to be cured. I've got a bounty to collect.”
“I understand,” Pruitt remarked, still shockingly calm in his speech. “But these things take time and I cannot abandon her. She is in need of help and I am qualified to aide her. If that is a bother to you, then you are invited to pull the trigger of that gun—twice if you wish, for she will not last without me. If you are willing to sacrifice the life of this girl for your convenience, by all means, bounty hunter...”
A jagged line of frustration leaned against his sternum and he nearly yelled. “Well what the hell is wrong with her, anyway?”
Pruitt's brows lifted while he shifted his body about so that Cole had a clear and unobstructed view of the Omega. Her bronze golden skin was fevered and moist, her sable hair fanned over furs while she lay upon her back. Blood stained the bed roll and the front of Pruitt's shirt and trousers but it wasn't enough to distract the Alpha from the truth of the matter which had eluded him. The beautiful Omega girl's belly was distended and her face screwed up in what must have been intense pain, her fingers digging into the sides of her very pregnant stomach while she whined and whimpered.
“Aw hell,” Cole grumbled.